ActiveCampaign and GetResponse are two of the oldest players in the email marketing industry. Since they have been around for quite a long time, they have seen some major updates and as a result, comparisons of older versions won’t be relevant now.
This comparison is being written after using the latest versions of both the tools for a significant period of time. We will also make sure to update it whenever a new feature of any of the two software is released.
So, no matter in which year you are reading this comparison, it will always be up to date and relevant. You will definitely be able to make the right choice for your business after reading the complete blog.
Let’s begin with a short introduction to both the solutions.
Jason VandeBoom founded ActiveCampaign in 2003. With a user base of 150,000, it has 850 employees and offices in 3 countries – Chicago (United States), Dublin (Ireland), and Sydney (Australia).
GetResponse was launched way back in 1998 by Simon Grabowski. With 350,000 customers in 183 countries, the company has offices in Poland, United States, Canada, Malaysia, and Russia and has 300 professionals on board.
Email marketing tools are no longer limited to email broadcasts and automations. With increase in competition, most of them have added a number of features including registration forms and page builder. This helps you manage your entire online marketing from a single dashboard.
With ActiveCampaign, you can create forms in four styles: Inline, Floating Bar, Floating Box, and Modal. However, there are not a lot of templates for forms or even for landing pages. There’s not much customizability available as well.
GetResponse allows you to implement forms in a lot of ways such as download boxes, fixed bars, image boxes, sign-up boxes, exit pop-ups, scroll forms, and shake boxes. You also get the option to run surveys, create websites and funnels, and do advanced split testing.
GetResponse has one of the best form and page builders among all email marketing tools. The quantity and quality of templates available stands out from the competition. It provides a lot more options and customizability than ActiveCampaign.
Email marketing is not about blasting a bunch of emails to a big list of prospective customers. It is about sending the right message to the right person at the right time. And lead and customer management is an important part of it as it assists you in identifying these three factors. This is why all email marketing tools come with a robust system for subscriber management.
ActiveCampaign gives you a lot of features that help you with effective customer management. You avoid missing on important follow-ups and hence are able to make the most out of your each contact.
GetResponse provides normal features that are available with every average lead and customer management system like the ability to view previous interactions, tagging, adding notes, etc.
ActiveCampaign easily beats some of the best email marketing tools when it comes to subscriber management. GetResponse, which is a great tool otherwise, feels average compared to it.
Campaigns and Automations save you a lot of time and effort from identifying the stage at which your leads are and what might be the most relevant message to send to each of them. This is almost impossible to track if you have a large list with thousands of contacts. As a result, email marketing tools help you do so without any involvement from your side once you set up the right automations.
Automation tools available in ActiveCampaign help you send really personalized messages to your leads as you are able to track their past behavior and interaction with your brand. This helps you increase the conversion rate of your email campaigns.
GetResponse comes with similar features but they are not as advanced as ActiveCampaign. It does not provide too many tracking options or triggers. Nonetheless, it has the ability to create some really powerful automations.
Both the tools come with a Visual automation builder which is truly awesome. But ActiveCampaign has one of the best automation systems among all email currently available on the internet. So, even though GetResponse is pretty good, it cannot defeat ActiveCampaign.
The open rate of your email campaigns drastically decreases if the emails do not land in the inbox of your recipients. As a result, deliverability is an extremely crucial metric to consider when making a choice between two email marketing solutions. This is because deliverability and open rate are directly proportional to each other i.e. higher the deliverability, higher will be the open rate and vice versa.
ActiveCampaign has proven to provide a better deliverability than not only GetResponse but most other tools as well. On the other hand, deliverability is a weak area for GetResponse. Any above average tool easily beats it.
Oftentimes having a couple of extra features gives you an edge over your competitors as some users desire to have everything under one roof. Below are the unique features of each of these tools that the other does not provide.
Apart from a few advanced features in the above compared tools, SMS Marketing is the only feature that ActiveCampaign provides and GetResponse does not.
It clearly adds more value with additional features that can prove to be extremely useful for businesses.
The difference in the pricing of email marketing tools can be deceiving. It seems to be minimal in case of the starter plans but as your needs and contacts increase, the difference can increase to hundreds of dollars!
Not only does GetResponse charge almost half than ActiveCampaign for the same number of contacts, it includes more features like chatbots, facebook ads, etc.
ActiveCampaign is definitely the best email marketing tool currently available on the internet and GetResponse stands nowhere near. However, in some cases, GetResponse is the better choice.
Go with GetResponse
Go with ActiveCampaign
If you want the best of everything and price is not a barrier for you. You also don’t care much about additional features like pages, forms, and only want the email marketing features to be really advanced so you can set up amazing automations, effectively manage your leads, and achieve great deliverability.
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