GetResponse vs. ActiveCampaign Comparison: Which is better?

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Can’t decide between GetResponse and ActiveCampaign? In this comparison guide, I highlight their different features, pricing, & interfaces and I pick the best one.

 
 
Pricing:
$19/mo - $1,099/mo
Pricing:
$15/mo - $1,169/mo
Best For:
Small businesses and entrepreneurs
Best For:
Solopreneurs, SMEs, and enterprises
Pricing:
$19/mo - $1,099/mo
Best For:
Small businesses and entrepreneurs
Pricing:
$15/mo - $1,169/mo
Best For:
Solopreneurs, SMEs, and enterprises

Email marketing is one of the smartest investments SMBs can make — but which tools should you invest in?

In this GetResponse vs. ActiveCampaign comparison, we’re reviewing two powerful platforms designed to help you streamline your email marketing.

Our final verdict? ActiveCampaign is an extremely powerful software, but GetResponse is better for strictly email marketing for several reasons.

Now let’s dive into their pros and cons, pricing, and features so you can decide which is the better fit for you.

GetResponse vs. ActiveCampagn: At a Glance

CriteriaGetResponseActiveCampaignWinner
SMB Guide’s Rating8.4/108.2/10GetResponse
Marketing Automation CapabilitiesBasic automationAdvanced automationGetResponse
Email BuilderDrag-and-drop, HTML editorVisual email designerTie
Personalization & CustomizationBasic personalizationHighly customizableTie
Campaign Performance TrackingStandard metricsDetailed metricsActiveCampaign
Email DeliverabilityActiveCampaign
List ManagementSimple listsDynamic segmentationActiveCampaign
A/B TestingGetResponse
Compliance & SecurityActiveCampaign
User Experience and User InterfaceIntuitive interfaceProfessional interfaceGetResponse
Integrations and Compatibility170+ integrations950+ integrationsActiveCampaign
Customer Support24/7 live chat; Email support24/7 live supportGetResponse
Pricing$19/mo – $1,099/mo$15/mo – $1,169/moGetResponse
ScalabilityActiveCampaign

GetResponse: Key Features, Pros, Cons, & Pricing

GetResponse homepage

GetResponse is a leading email marketing provider and AI website creation platform. It serves more than 350k customers globally and has positioned itself as one of the top email tools for marketing teams and SMBs.

Some of its notable features are email campaign creation, website design, push notifications, sales funnel creation, and more.

Pros & Cons

Pros

30-day free trial

170+ integrations

24/7 live chat support

User-friendly platform

Cons

No free forever plan

Expensive to scale

Pricing

GetResponse offers tailored plans depending on the exact features you need.

Here’s a quick breakdown:

  • Free: $0 for up to 500 contacts
  • Email Marketing: Offers advanced automated capabilities; $19 per month for 1000 contacts
  • Marketing Automation: Offers more complex automation capabilities; $59 per month for 1000 contacts
  • Ecommerce Marketing: Designed specifically for ecommerce companies; $119 per month for 1000 contacts
  • GetResponse MAX: Custom solutions with premium support; $1099+ per month
GetResponse

Powerful, simplified tool to send emails, create pages and automate your marketing.

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ActiveCampaign: Key Features, Pros, Cons, & Pricing

activecampaign homepage

ActiveCampaign is not only an email marketing software, but it’s also an all-in-one marketing platform. You can use it to create email marketing campaigns, track customer behavior, and even manage those customer relationships.

The platform has been around for more than two decades and is a feature-rich solution for marketers at all levels.

Pros & Cons

Pros

14-day free trial

950+ integrations

AI-powered automations

User-friendly interface

Cons

No free forever plan

No mobile apps

Pricing

ActiveCampaign has four different plan options, and like GetResponse, the total cost will depend on the number of subscribers you manage.

Here’s a quick breakdown of ActiveCampaign’s pricing based on 1,000 subscribers:

  • Starter: $15 per month
  • Plus: $49 per month
  • Pro: $79 per month
  • Enterprise: $145 per month
ActiveCampaign

Your solution for personalized email marketing, automation, and sales engagement.

Start free trial

Marketing Automation Capabilities

GetResponse’s drag-and-drop editor allows you to build complex automation workflows easily.

The Email Marketing plans also come with an autoresponder tool that allows you to set up automatic responses and time or action-based messages.

GetResponse automation features

ActiveCampaign comes with a large collection of pre-built automation templates. These templates are versatile, organized by industry, and easy to navigate.

You also have the ability to import automations.

ActiveCampaign automation templates

For creating automations from scratch, GetResponse’s drag-and-drop editor is the clear winner.

✅ Winner: GetResponse

Email Builder

You can easily create stunning email campaigns in GetResponse via the drag-and-drop designer.

If you want even more control, like adding custom fonts and backgrounds, you can do so with HTML editing. There are more than 500 free templates that you can use if you’re not sure where to begin.

GetResponse email templates

ActiveCampaign’s email designer is similar in that you can choose to start from scratch or from a premade template.

You edit the actual email content in the template editor, which has two main sections — content settings (body of the email) and global settings (overall email appearance).

ActiveCampaign email builder

Both email builders are easy to use, but they do have their differences, so it just comes down to your personal preference.

✅ Winner: Tie

Personalization & Customization

GetResponse allows for extremely advanced segmentation, so users can target subscribers based on things like order history, behavior, and more.

You can target groups of segments or opt to include/leave out individual segments depending on your needs.

GetResponse advanced segmentation

ActiveCampaign provides similar customization options, as well as the ability to add “personalization tags” into campaigns.

These tags pull in individual subscriber information such as name, location, or even specific behaviors to further personalize the email to them.

✅ Winner: Tie

Campaign Performance Tracking

GetResponse provides comprehensive data on your campaign performance, landing page conversions, and even ecommerce analytics.

It integrates directly with Google Analytics, making it even easier to analyze all of your marketing data.

GetResponse analytics

ActiveCampaign also provides you with several report types to track your campaign performance, including:

  • Automation performance reports
  • Campaign performance reports
  • Forms performance reports
  • Open/read trends reports
ActiveCampaign automation reports

Overall, both services provide adequate reporting. But ActiveCampaign’s reporting capabilities are particularly impressive.

✅ Winner: ActiveCampaign

Email Deliverability

GetResponse has an estimated email delivery rate of around 82.9%, while ActiveCampaign’s delivery rate is much higher at around 89.6%.

ActiveCampaign also has a free authentication checker (to ensure your email DNS records are set up correctly) and a subject line generator.

Both of these can help you further increase deliverability as well as open rates.

✅ Winner: ActiveCampaign

List Management

GetResponse and ActiveCampaign both allow you to import/export your contact list to/from other email platforms.

They both include different ways for you to manage your subscribers, including segmentation and tagging functionality.

ActiveCampaign has one major advantage over GetResponse in this category: its CRM functionality, which allows you to conduct lead scoring.

This is a feature that helps SMBs qualify and rank leads based on their behavior, who is most likely to purchase, etc.

✅ Winner: ActiveCampaign

A/B Testing

GetResponse and ActiveCampaign both offer A/B testing on all plans. A/B testing, also known as split testing, allows you to test out different aspects/versions of the same email campaign to see which performs better.

GetResponse also provides an in-depth step-by-step guide on how to A/B test, making the process nearly foolproof, so they come out on top here.

✅ Winner: GetResponse

Compliance and Security

Both GetResponse and ActiveCampaign are compliant with GDPR and U.S. CAN-SPAM regulations. Compliance is automatic, so you don’t have to worry about taking any special actions to enable it.

ActiveCampaign comes with the added benefit of being heavily focused on HIPAA compliance. HIPAA is not something I’ve seen many email providers compliant with, so this could be a big pro for some companies, especially those in the health industry.

✅ Winner: ActiveCampaign

User Interface & User Experience

GetResponse’s interface is easy to navigate on its own — but if you want it to be even more intuitive, you can tailor the dashboard to put your most-used tools and reports front and center.

GetResponse interface

ActiveCampaign also has a very user-friendly interface, not only when it comes to the dashboard and locating certain features but also the various content builders and editors.

ActiveCampaign interface

Any beginner will likely find that both platforms are quick and easy to adapt to, But GetResponse’s customizable dashboard is a real plus for busy marketers who need to complete tasks quickly without unnecessary distractions in their software.

✅ Winner: GetResponse

Integrations and Compatibility

GetResponse offers 100+ integrations with analytics platforms, productivity apps, CRMs, website platforms, and more. There’s also an API connection available.

ActiveCampaign comes with a massive integrations library. They support more than 950 connections with various types of applications.

✅ Winner: ActiveCampaign

Customer Support

24/7 email and live chat support are offered on all GetResponse plans. Email assistance is even offered in several different languages.

ActiveCampaign offers “priority” email and chat customer support to its Pro and Enterprise customers. However, this support isn’t available 24/7 and that is a big downside considering many of its competitors offer round-the-clock assistance.

If you’re not on one of the premium paid plans, you’ll likely need to lean on self-help resources instead. For example, ActiveCampaign has its own dedicated community forum where you can ask questions and discuss issues.

✅ Winner: GetResponse

Pricing

GetResponse and ActiveCampaign are pretty comparable price-wise. However, ActiveCampaign has one major downfall when it comes to pricing — it doesn’t offer a free starter plan, whereas GetResponse does.

Not only that, but GetResponse also includes a generous 50% discount to nonprofit organizations.

ActiveCampaign does offer a generous 2-week free trial, but that still isn’t enough to beat out GetResponse.

✅ Winner: GetResponse

Scalability

It’s possible for GetResponse to scale with your business as it grows, but if you want something that will easily scale and cover multiple company functions, ActiveCampaign is by far the way to go.

✅ Winner: ActiveCampaign

Standout Features of GetResponse

  • Optin forms and lead gen landing pages: To help you increase your conversion rate, GetResponse allows you to create forms and landing pages. You’ll also get access to built-in analytics so you can track the effectiveness of these pages and improve them over time.
  • Abandoned cart workflow: With this automation, you can send notifications to customers who’ve added items to their cart and neglected to complete the transaction. You’ll be able to include coupon codes or other incentives to encourage customers to go back and complete the checkout process.

Standout Features of ActiveCampaign

  • Predictive sending: ActiveCampaign tracks when your contacts open your emails. Then, you can use its predictive sending feature, which will send out your emails at automated times based on when each contact is most likely to open them.
  • Targeted segmentation: ActiveCampaign offers extensive segmentation capabilities, allowing users to create targeted groups based on things like purchases, email activity, and even website visits.
  • Built-in CRM: One of the biggest perks of ActiveCampaign is that it offers a built-in CRM (customer relationship management) tool. This feature helps you figure out how valuable each potential customer is so you know who to focus on. You can also create and assign tasks to remind you and your team to follow up with specific leads.

GetResponse vs. ActiveCampaign: SMB Guide’s Verdict

If you’re ready to invest in email marketing, both GetResponse and ActiveCampaign are solid contenders you should consider.

GetResponse is our top pick because of its free plan option, its flexibility and scalability, and strong email marketing features.

Start your free trial of GetResponse today!

That said, ActiveCampaign is also an extremely useful email tool that comes equipped with powerful marketing and customer relationship/management tools.

If you’re looking for more of an all-in-one solution, give ActiveCampaign a try today!

GetResponse

Powerful, simplified tool to send emails, create pages and automate your marketing.

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Charlee is a freelance content writer for e-commerce and SaaS businesses. She has written for well-known brands like Aura, Identity Guard, and Zola and achieved page one rankings for dozens of projects.