ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse Full Review
If youâve been in the digital marketing industry for a while now, youâve probably heard of ActiveCampaign and GetResponse. Both platforms are great for email marketers and business owners who rely heavily on email and marketing automation platforms to maintain a healthy relationship with their audience.
Since both platforms are arguably popular, it can be easy to see why the ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse debate remains heated and mostly unsolved. Unfortunately, Iâm not here to tell you which platform I prefer over the other.
Instead, Iâll help you decide for yourself so you can choose the platform that is right for you and your business.
With that in mind, itâs time to dive into the ins and outs of ActiveCampaign and GetResponse.
If you've already decided to try any of them, just click the button below.
ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse review summary
Before we dive into the technicalities of this review, letâs take a quick look at both platforms and how their features stack up against each other.
I found that while there are glaring differences and it can be quite easy for you to determine that one is better than the other, theyâre both simply designed to cater to different audiences.
Youâll see what I mean later. For now, take a look at this GetResponse vs ActiveCampaign comparison.
GetResponse comes with a landing page builder tool and ActiveCampaign does not.
ActiveCampaign requires a third-party integration for hosting webinars. On the other hand, GetResponse features a great webinar tool.
You can contact your subscribers through SMS and on-site messaging as well as email through ActiveCampaign. Unfortunately, GetResponse only allows you to reach your subscribers through email.
GetResponse features an eCommerce tool that allows you to sell and accept payment on the platform. ActiveCampaign does not offer this feature.
Review Summary:Â I found that there are many differences in features that can be found on both platforms when you try to compare them. Keeping that in mind, this also means that each tool is better suited for a certain demographic.
For example, GetResponse is better suited for webinar marketing whilst ActiveCampaign is designed to reach a wider audience for email and lead marketers.
By now, Iâve already told you that ActiveCampaign holds a high recommendation from me if you focus on connecting with your leads and if you donât use webinar marketing all too often. One of its key benefits is that itâs filled with advanced features that allow you to maximize your email and marketing automation.
Moreover, it also has tools in place that allow you to maintain a line of communication with your customers, manage and boost your business, and keep all your customer records in one convenient place.
Some of its main features include an email marketing tool that allows you to create and automate marketing emails, CRM, and chat or messaging options.
These tools are designed for business owners who value interaction by giving their audience multiple ways to connect with you and vice versa. This means you can better build relationships with your audience because youâre not limited to reaching out through emails.
Before we move forward, letâs take a closer look at some of the most popular features ActiveCampaign has to offer.
The email and marketing platform that ActiveCampaign offers is incredibly advanced. This means thereâs plenty of room to make adjustments and allows you to reach your audience using different email templates like broadcast, triggered, targeted, autoresponders, funnels, and scheduled emails.
One of the most remarkable things about this advanced email marketing software is that it isnât hard to use. Despite the advanced features, it still gives you plenty of room to use it even if you have little to no prior knowledge of email marketing.
The drag and drop builder is intuitive, easy to use, and optimized to help you send conversion-geared emails without difficulty.
Furthermore, this also means that you shouldnât face any complications trying to use the platform for the first time. There is a very minimal learning curve involved in the software, but this doesnât mean there isnât room to perform more technical changes when needed.
Another feature that youâll appreciate is the premade template selection. There are various pre-made templates designed by professionals and proven to be effective. Theyâre also easily customizable so you can alter any existing templates to fit your brand more accurately.
Email segmentation and dynamic content
Other features youâll find within the email marketing platform include email segmentation and dynamic content tool. This allows you to send varying emails to different customers in the same campaign.
With these features, you can send different emails based on the previous behavior of your customers. This means you could select the type of email sent depending on their actions on your site.
These features make it easier to send effective emails based on what you want your customers to do. For example, if a customer has already purchased on your website, youâd be able to send them an email geared towards convincing them to repurchase. This is essentially what you would call customer retention.
On the other hand, you could also set specific emails to be sent to the same customer list but with a different email for contacts who have yet to make a purchase.
ActiveCampaign also boasts a good selection of reporting tools that allow you to more easily identify and optimize the emails youâre building.
One example would be the A/B split testing tool. This allows you to consistently optimize your emails to make sure you have the best version possible before you send it out.
Essentially, the reporting tools help you identify problem areas, strengthen and maintain high-traffic areas, and maximize your efforts. It also eventually leads to more clicks, opened emails, and purchases.
ActiveCampaign can be integrated with a variety of applications like Facebook, Zapier, or WooCommerce accounts. This not only helps you maximize your marketing efforts and connect it wherever you need to.
The platform allows you to integrate it with over 250 applications.
What use is your marketing calendar, when you have to enable each task manually? This is never a good marketing strategy. After all, you canât expect to be awake 24/7 or risk losing prime marketing opportunities when youâre away from your marketing tools or computer.
The ActiveCampaign automated marketing platform makes it easier for you to maintain a relationship with your customers and reach out during key times efficiently without having to do it manually.
This feature allows you to automize newsletters, trigger emails, or follow-up emails depending on the preferences you set.
If youâre worried about your emails feeling like theyâre too robotic or automized, donât worry. Some several settings and customizations allow you to personalize emails.
This means although youâre not personally sending the emails, theyâll still include your customerâs specific information so it feels as though theyâre getting a personal email.
The in-built sales and CRM tools allow you to keep tabs on your sales and leads. This also makes sure youâre able to more effectively use automation to further optimize your sales process.
The sales automation feature helps you sell more with less effort involved. This is done by maintaining a relationship with your customers and leads. Furthermore, it also allows you to nurture your leads - essentially grooming them, to make them more open to the idea of making more purchases from you.
This passive yet effective marketing technique has been applied time and time again. Whilst in some cases you may need to do so manually, the sales and CRM tools allow you to automize the process.
Several trigger options make sure every action your leads and customers take on certain areas in your page and emails are responded to correctly.
Other than email marketing options, another great feature ActiveCampaign boasts is its SMS and in-site messaging tools. This allows you to reach out to your leads in more ways than one.
Essentially, that means you donât have to rely solely on email marketing, but you can also reach your customers through SMS and in-site messaging; or vice versa.
Machine learning and AI capabilities
Several features go hand in hand with ActiveCampaignâs various automated marketing tools. This includes a win probability tool that identifies leads that are most likely to convert so your sales efforts are spent wisely.
More than that, the predictive sending feature identifies which times your customers or leads are most likely to open and respond to emails. This further optimizes the automation by raising the chances of your lead clicking on your email.
But more than that, ActiveCampaign also offers a wide variety of other features that will help your business flourish. Take a look at those features below:
subscription forms and form builder tool
Gmail extension for Chrome users
customizable Facebook audience
As we have tackled above, ActiveCampaign does utilize some of the most impressive features and tools in the industry. These tools, when used together work hand in hand to effectively allow your marketing techniques to reach their full potential.
Before we move on to the drawbacks of ActiveCampaign, letâs take a look at what ActiveCampaign does right.
This automated marketing tool utilizes some of the most advanced tools and features in the industry to further optimize your marketing efforts.
Despite its advanced features, the user-friendly and intuitive interface allows beginners to navigate the platform with ease.
ActiveCampaign boasts high email deliverability. This means your emails are guaranteed to arrive safely in your customerâs inboxes and not end up in a spam folder somewhere.
ActiveCampaign migrates all of your data from other marketing platforms for free.
The automation features allow you to automate a good majority of your sales and customer retention process.
Machine learning and AI applications allow your team to identify problem areas and areas that are most likely to yield a return on investment
Like any other platform, there will always be room for improvement. The same can be said for ActiveCampaign. While it does offer some great benefits, it cannot be denied that there are certain drawbacks.
Does not have a landing page builder so you may need to integrate a third-party platform to do so.
Does not have an in-built webinar tool.
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Now that weâve talked about everything ActiveCampaign has to offer as well as its drawbacks, itâs time to give our attention to GetResponse. Like I said before, both platforms are good for their respective uses, it just so happens that GetResponse caters to a wholly different demographic.
Letâs take a closer look at the key features GetResponse has to offer:
GetResponse offers a reasonably powerful email marketing tool that allows you to essentially build and send professional targeted emails to your chosen audience.
The great thing about the platform is that you arenât restricted to choosing templates or relying on a drag and drop builder entirely.
You have the option to use a pre-built template or create one from scratch yourself. To build on this, the template library offers a reasonable set of templates to choose from. Each of these varies depending on the kind of task you need the email for.
Despite the great customizability of the platform, it still offers a user-friendly drag and drop builder interface for anyone who is not as well-versed when it comes to the more technical email building side of things.
The page builder is intuitive, easy to navigate, well-organized and it even features a smart editing tool that allows you to edit, resize, or crop images on the builder with ease.
The platform also allows you to send various types of emails like newsletters, autoresponders, automated email sequences, segmented sends, and automated blog content.
Another nifty feature that GetResponse uses is the perfect timing and time travel delivery tools. At its core, these tools identify which times are the best to send emails to your customers and automatically send them out to raise your conversion and click-through rates effectively.
Thanks to the above-mentioned tools, youâre guaranteed a delivery rate of over 99%. This means you donât have to worry about your emails ending up in spam folders where theyâre not doing anyone any favors.
This email marketing software also gives you the ability to build personalized campaigns with customized and dynamic content. This means you can choose any image, CTA, offers, and content you want to use for your emails and tailor them to your customerâs individual actions such as their purchases.
More than that, GetResponse also utilizes an advanced split A/B testing tool that actively identifies which version of your email would be the most effective for your target audience. This allows you to target problem areas before theyâre sent out.
Ultimately, this leads to highly optimized and high-converting emails. Which - letâs be honest, is what we all need.
Automated marketing features
One aspect where GetResponse flourishes well is its automation features. Its automated marketing tools are designed to help you select both simple and advanced automation. This means youâre able to further optimize your marketing efforts by catering to all kinds of scenarios.
Moreover, itâs surprisingly easy to create marketing automation using their builder. The drag and drop interface allows you to preview your automation in real-time so you can fix any issues immediately instead of later.
The automation tool is also designed to tag and score your customer and lead actions. This means your sales team can easily view reports made by the platform and connect them with certain actions and marketing efforts to more effectively optimize the sales process. This in turn, effectively raises your chances of making a sale.
The CRM platform gives you a clean and organized overview of your customers and leads. It allows you to segregate them into different stages and allows you to focus on certain groups to make sure as many leads as possible are converted.
This also gives you better access to your customer files since theyâre all in one neatly organized platform. Itâs also easy to manually move certain leads from one stage to another as needed so you can focus on customer retention and maintaining your leads.
But more than that, think of this as your customer cheat book. You have the option to attach notes to each customer. This allows you to keep track of what youâve conversed about, how they interacted with you, or how they responded to certain marketing techniques.
This will effectively help you maintain a good level of contact with your customers while making sure youâre never redundant or forget specific things about your customerâs experience.
Compared to ActiveCampaign, GetResponse features a highly intuitive landing page builder. And might I say, itâs not just any ordinary landing page builder. The software is designed to maximize your leads and make sure your landing pages are as effective as possible.
Now, if you donât have experience building your landing pages or if youâre simply under a time crunch, there are several templates you can choose from. There is also the option to fully customize pre-made templates with images, content, and branding.
Another feature that GetResponse has going for it is its webinar tool. This allows you to host webinars within the platform itself.
The platform is most likely better used if youâre a webinar marketer or have use of webinars. This also removes the inconvenience of having to subscribe to a different webinar platform.
Take a look at the shining features and benefits that I noticed GetResponse boasts. If any of these appeals to you, then GetResponse is certainly a platform you should look into.
GetResponse features more than just email marketing features. You can utilize its funnel and landing page builder to build effective emails, funnels, and landing pages.
Its builders are both easily customizable and simple. This allows you to take full control of alterations you would like as well as rely on templates when necessary.
The landing page builder comes at no extra cost.
You can also utilize the free webinar software. It also comes with plenty of advanced active and live features that make your webinar experiences all the more enjoyable for all parties involved.
GetResponse employs effective report features that allow you to target specific areas and optimize what needs to be optimized.
Reliable and free 24/7 customer support across all plans.
Great value for the price.
While GetResponse does employ effective marketing techniques, there are a few drawbacks that Iâve noticed as well. Such as:
There is no SMS or live chat feature
The interface is not as well organized as other platforms
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Pricing plans: how much does it cost
As far as pricing goes, both platforms offer a good variety of plan options. Letâs take a look at what plans they offer below:
ActiveCampaign pricing plans
ActiveCampaign offers four different pricing options, namely: Lite, Plus, Professional, and Enterprise. Each of these plans is designed for a variety of contact lists. The plans are paid annually instead of monthly with the cheapest plan priced at $9 monthly.
The Enterprise plan on the other hand is priced at $229 per month. That said, their most popular plan - the Professional plan, will run you $129 a month.
ActiveCampaign also offers a free trial. So if youâre unsure whether you should continue with it or not, feel free to take full advantage of the trial period.
GetResponse pricing plans
GetResponse also offers four pricing plans. The unique thing about the plans offered is that while the cheapest starts at $15 for a monthly subscription, its Enterprise plan (which is the most expensive) is customized and can fit the specific needs of your business.
Their most popular plan - the Plus plan, is priced at $49 a month.
GetResponse also offers a free trial if youâre unsure whether itâs the right for you. Unlike other platforms, the trial runs for 30 days which gives you plenty of time to try out all of the features it offers.
Which platform is the best?
As I said, Iâm not here to tell you which platform is the best. Thereâs simply no comparison. Each of these platforms caters to two entirely different marketing categories.
Nevertheless, I conclude that GetResponse is the ideal choice for you if youâre looking for an all-in-one platform that allows you to build funnels and host webinars without having to rely on third-party integration.
On the other hand, ActiveCampaign might be more your speed if youâre looking for something more affordable and offers more choices when it comes to interacting with your customers and leads.
Overall, both platforms offer a free trial. So if youâre unsure whether you should choose one over the other, I suggest you take the time to get to know each platform better before making a final decision.