GetResponse review

Last updated February 24, 2023


Here’s the deal: GetResponse is excellent for start-ups selling B2B software or if your business sells high-priced information products.

GetResponse review: 2-minute summary

GetResponse is an excellent fit for start-ups selling B2B software and/or if your business sells high-priced information products, i.e., your customer lifetime value is $1,000 or more. In both cases, GetResponse has everything you need: email marketing, great automation features, live chat for your website, and webinar features. Especially if you’re starting and don’t want to spend a ton of money but, on the other hand, still want a broad set of marketing tools.

When purchasing GetResponse, I recommend using one of its discounts during special events like Black Friday, etcetera.

GetResponse’s wide range of features also comes with a downside.

It originally started as an email marketing tool. Over the years, it added more and more features, e.g., a website builder, webinar functionalities, live chat, etcetera. The risk of moving into different product categories is that you cannot excel, resulting in a mediocre product. Currently, GetResponse still offers one of the top email marketing products. Still, if it continues spreading itself too thin, it might result in its smaller and newer competitors catching up and offering a better product for a lower price.

Click here to sign up for a free GetResponse account.

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GetResponse review: Pricing

  • No refunds; ever
  • 3 different paid plans
  • Relatively high priced
  • Few times per year, significant lifetime discounts for new customers

Click here for our full GetResponse pricing review + warnings, and tips.

Full price comparison

  • Use the below’s spreadsheet to compare GetResponse’s prices with its competitors
  • Below prices are annual prices, including any discounts for purchasing yearly
  • I didn’t take into account non-profit discounts or the 30% discount for the 2-year plan
5001,0001,5002,00025003,0004,0005,0006,0007,0008,00010,00015,00020,00020,00050,000100,000200,000300,000500,000700,000900,0001,200,0001,500,0002,000,0002,500,0003,000,0004,000,0005,000,000
MailerLite Growing Business$10$15$25$25$25$39$39$39$59$59$59$73$109$139$139$289
MailerLite Advanced$20$30$40$40$40$50$50$50$80$80$80$110$150$180$180$340$440$820$1,200$1,900
ConvertKit Creator$29$29$49$49$49$49$79$79$99$99$99$119$149$179$179$379$679$1,279$1,879
ConvertKit Creator Pro$59$59$79$79$79$79$111$111$139$139$139$167$209$251$251$519$879$1,579$2,179
Zoho Standard$4$7$17$17$17$18$24$31$35$38$41$49$61$74$74$138$242
Zoho Professional$6$12$29$29$29$30$40$52$58$63$69$81$101$123$123$230$403$748$1,035$1,380
Sender Standard$19$19$19$19$19$33$33$33$57$57$57$57$87$107$107$227$367$697
Sender Professional$35$35$35$35$35$60$60$60$120$120$120$120$200$250$250$460$860$1,660
Constant Contact Lite$12$30$50$50$50$80$80$80$120$120$120$120$180$230$230$430
Constant Contact Standard$35$55$75$75$75$110$110$110$160$160$160$160$210$260$260$460
Constant Contact Premium$80$110$150$150$150$200$200$200$275$275$275$275$325$375$375$575
ActiveCampaign Marketing Lite$39$39$61$61$61$99$99$99$174$174$174$174$286$286$286$486
ActiveCampaign Marketing Plus$70$70$125$125$125$186$186$186$287$287$287$287$474$474$474$699
ActiveCampaign Marketing Professional$187$187$187$187$187$262$262$262$424$424$424$424$686$686$686$1,011
ActiveCampaign Bundles Plus$116$116$171$171$171$232$232$232$333$333$333$333$520$520$520$745
ActiveCampaign Bundles Professional$482$482$482$482$482$557$557$557$719$719$719$719$981$981$981$1,306
GetResponse Email Marketing$19$19$29$29$29$54$54$54$79$79$79$79$174$174$174$299$539
GetResponse Marketing Automation$59$59$69$69$69$95$95$95$114$114$114$114$215$215$215$359$599
GetResponse Ecommerce Marketing$119$119$139$139$139$169$169$169$199$199$199$199$299$299$299$444$699
Mailchimp Essentials$27$45$45$75$75$110$110$110$180$180$180$180$230$270$270
Mailchimp Standard$20$45$45$60$60$100$100$100$135$135$135$135$230$285$285$450$800
Mailchimp Premium$350$350$350$350$350$350$350$350$350$350$350$350$465$535$535$815$1,025$1,600
AWeber Lite$15$25$25$25$25$45$45$45$65$65$65$65$145$145$145$388$788
AWeber Plus$30$40$40$40$40$60$60$60$80$80$80$80$160$160$160$403$803
AWeber Unlimited$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899$899
Klaviyo Email$20$30$45$60$60$70$100$100$130$150$150$150$350$375$375$720$1,380$2,070
Klaviyo Email & SMS$35$45$60$75$75$85$115$115$145$165$165$165$365$390$390$735$1,395$2,085
Beehiiv Launch$0$0$0$0$0
Beehiiv Grow$49$49$49$49$49$49$49$49$49$49$49$49
Beehiiv Scale$99$99$99$99$99$99$99$99$99$99$99$99$99$99$99$99$99
HubSpot Marketing Hub - Starter$20$20$40$40$60$60$78$96$112$128$144$176$256$336$336$816$1,616
HubSpot Marketing Hub - Professional$890$890$890$890$1,140$1,140$1,140$1,140$1,140$1,140$1,390$1,390$1,640$1,890$1,890$3,190
HubSpot Marketing Hub - Enterprise$3,600$3,600$3,600$3,600$3,600$3,600$3,600$3,600$3,600$3,600$3,600$3,600$3,700$3,700$3,700$4,000$4,450$5,250$5,950$7,350$8,550$9,750
Moosend Pro$9$16$24$24$32$32$48$48$64$64$64$88$160$160$160$315$624$1,216$1,808$2,896$4,080$5,840

Click here for a full-width version if you’re on a laptop or PC.

GetResponse review: Free plan

Does GetResponse offer the best free plan compared to its competitors? The short answer is no – the longer answer can be found here, where we compare the best free email marketing tools. 

Features
Forever free plan✔️
Maximum monthly emails2,500
Email automation
Maximum subscribers500
Maximum sign-up formsUnlimited
Maximum pop-ups1
Maximum views on forms & pop-ups1,000
Maximum landing pages1
Maximum views on landing page1,000 monthly
Can add custom domain✔️
Remove branding
Deliver free ebook
Drag & drop newsletter builder✔️
Support
Email support
Phone support
Chat support
Create a website✔️ (1 website, 10 subpages)
Maximum traffic5GB (+- 2,500 to 5,000 visitors monthly)
Linktr.ee template✔️
Multiple users
Facebook custom audiences
Email design templates✔️
HTML newsletter✔️
Email A/B testing
Send email to custom segments

GetResponse Email Marketing Review

  • User-friendly email editor
  • Not necessarily the best for ecommerce companies
  • Although it works great, it’s nothing special
  • Roughly 175 email designer templates available to use and tweak
  • All templates look sharp and up to date with the latest design standards

I feel GetResponse isn’t the best for ecommerce companies because there are email tools available, like Klaviyo, that are 100% focused on ecommerce businesses. Examples of what I mean by ecommerce businesses are stores like https://www.livingproof.com/ or https://nuunlife.com/.

GetResponse tries to target multiple markets at once. For example, in the part where I review GetResponse’s product box (an ecommerce feature), you can see that a similar feature inside Klaviyo offers a better experience and more functionalities.

On the other hand, If you sell B2B software and/or information products, GetResponse might be a great fit.

I reviewed every feature in detail below of the Email Marketing category of GetResponse’s pricing page.

Newsletters

  • You can send newsletters with every tier, including the free plan

Monthly email sends

  • All tiers, including the free plan, offer unlimited email sending

Visual email editor

The visual email editor is GetResponse’s drag-and-drop email editor. It’s a user-friendly editor!

Custom DKIM

  • All tiers, including the free plan, can add custom DKIM

Most email tools allow you to set up DKIM. If you don’t set up your own DKIM, it will show the email marketing company’s DKIM domain. Here you can see an example below. It shows the from name and email, and next to it, it shows via gmail.mcsv.net. This is MailChimp’s hostname, and the company that sent me this email didn’t set up its own DKIM.

If you want to set up your own DKIM, you must have your own domain, e.g., creatoregg.com, access to the DNS administration panel of your domain, and a DKIM key provided by GetResponse or the email tool you use.

I have never set up my own DKIM for my email marketing, and I have never had any issues, i.e., it’s not required to do so. However, I feel you are perfectly fine just using the email company’s DKIM.

Inbox preview

  • Inbox preview is not accessible on the GetResponse Free plan

GetResponse’s inbox preview feature lets you preview your newsletter in the popular email software clients and webmails.

Perfect timing

  • Perfect timing is available on the Marketing Automation plan, and higher
  • Perfect timing is only available for regular newsletters and not automation campaigns

When scheduling your newsletter, you can enable the feature perfect timing so GetResponse will send the email to your contacts when they’re most likely to open the newsletter. It also means that your contacts will receive the email at different times and even days. According to GetResponse, it can take up to 4 days before you can analyze your newsletter’s results.

For more information and a few examples, see GetResponse’s page here.

Time travel

  • Time travel is not accessible on the GetResponse Free and Email marketing plan

If your email must get delivered at 9 AM sharp for everyone on your list, even if you have a global audience, then this feature makes that happen.

Here’s what competitors are doing:

Time travel is only available for regular newsletters and not automation campaigns. Email tool AWeber (AWeber review) offers it the other way around. For example, you CAN use a Time travel feature for automated emails, but AWeber doesn’t let you use its Time travel feature for regular emails.

MailChimp (MailChimp review) offers a similar feature called Timewarp or Delivery by Time Zone, and MailerLite (MailerLite review) calls it Deliver emails by timezone and with MailerLite, it is accessible to all users, including free plan users.

A/B Testing

  • A/B testing emails is not accessible on the GetResponse Free plan
  • No similar options for A/B testing for automated emails

When testing, you have to choose what you want to test; the subject line or your email’s content. You cannot test both at the same time. After choosing, you can test up to 5 different subject lines or 5 variants of the email content for 1 newsletter.

You configure the A/B test by enabling or disabling the option to automatically choose a winner based on the open rate or click rate after a custom period of 1 hour or 6 days and 23 hours.

RSS-to-email

  • RSS-to-email is not accessible on the GetResponse Free plan
  • I don’t expect many people to use this tool

The image below shows that the term RSS feed for consumers was popular around 2006 but not any longer. The idea behind GetResponse’s RSS-to-email feature is that you can input your blog’s RSS URL, so it automatically sends emails to your subscribers whenever you post something new on your website. You can do the same with a podcast, or YouTube RSS feeds.

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”https://ssl.gstatic.com/trends_nrtr/3140_RC01/embed_loader.js”></script> <script type=”text/javascript”> trends.embed.renderExploreWidget(“TIMESERIES”, {“comparisonItem”:[{“keyword”: “rss feed”, “geo”:” “, “time”: “2004-01-01 2022-11-03”}], “category” :0, “property”: “”}, {“exploreQuery”: “date=all&q=rss%20feed”, “guestPath”: “https://trends.google.com:443/trends/embed/”}); </script>

I feel that the GetResponse RSS-to-email feature isn’t updated regularly because its email templates look outdated and don’t have the same look and feel as GetResponse’s regular email visual editor.

When setting up the RSS-to-email, you select its frequency; every time a new piece is published, every week, or every month.

Click Tracking

  • All tiers, including the free plan, can use Click tracking for their emails

Every email tool offers to click tracking, but not everyone calls it click tracking. It’s a feature that allows you to see how often people opened your email and clicked on a link in an email. You can see percentages, including numbers, which works for regular newsletters and automated emails.

Ecommerce tracking

  • Ecommerce tracking is only available to Ecommerce Marketing plan users

I can’t test it because it’s a premium feature.

Google Analytics Tracking

  • Google Analytics Tracking is not accessible on the GetResponse Free plan

This feature enables you to automatically add UTM parameters to the links in your emails so you can track them in Google Analytics. You can also use the Google Analytics URL builder to generate those URLs manually but as you can understand, converting every URL to a Google Analytics URL is painful.

When you become a paying customer, this feature will be available, so you won’t have to do it manually.

Here’s what competitors are doing:

CompanyAdd UTM tags automaticallyAccessible in free plan
GetResponse✔️
ConvertKit (review)✔️✔️
AWeber (review
MailerLite (review)✔️✔️

Scheduling

  • Scheduling is not accessible on the GetResponse Free plan

You can choose to send a newsletter immediately or schedule it for later. Selecting to schedule for later is by default on your account’s timezone, but there’s an option to choose a different timezone for that specific newsletter.

Predesigned templates

  • All tiers, including the free plan, have access to all GetResponse’s email templates
  • Roughly 175 email designer templates available to use and tweak
  • All templates look sharp and up to date with the latest design standards

HTML editor

  • All tiers, including the free plan, have access to the HTML editor
  • If you want to code your own email template, you can by using its HTML editor

Custom HTML

  • All tiers, including the free plan, have access to the Custom HTML block

The custom HTML block is a block you can add to your newsletter’s content, similar to dragging and dropping an image or text block. For example, you can add HTML and CSS code to the HTML block.

Product Box

  • Product Box is available on the Marketing Automation plan and higher

Good to know; the Product box is an ecommerce feature, and you can use it to show your products in your email content. I connected my Shopify store to GetResponse for test purposes, and this integration automatically imports all your products. So, if you want to showcase your products in your email, you can use the Product box. You do have to manually select the products, though, i.e., it doesn’t automatically show your most popular products. Instead, you need to use the Recommended products block, but that feature is only available on the Ecommerce Marketing plan.

Here’s what competitors are doing:

In my opinion, GetResponse isn’t an email marketing tool for ecommerce companies, although they have a tier called Ecommerce Marketing. Why? Well, take the email tool Klaviyo for example. Klaviyo is an email tool built explicitly for ecommerce companies; nothing less, nothing more. I promise you that you will feel the difference when using GetResponse’s Product box feature compared to Klaviyo’s product box feature. Klaviyo’s feature is more user-friendly, has more customization options, and has a better user interface. 

To give 1 practical example, if I want to not show buy buttons below the products, I can disable the Button feature. Within GetResponse, I couldn’t find an option to disable the button, so I contacted support. Their reply was: “You cannot delete the button, but you can make it invisible by deleting the text and making it the same color as the background.” 

Like, com’on? 

And this is just one example, but I promise you that you’ll feel the same way if you test both products simultaneously.

So, long story short, I wouldn’t recommend choosing GetResponse if your core business is an ecommerce store.

Recommended Products

  • Recommended Products is not accessible on the GetResponse Free plan, its Email Marketing plan, and its Marketing Automation plan. In other words, only on the Ecommerce Marketing plan.

The only difference between the Recommended Products and the Product Box is that the Recommended Products uses your ecommerce data from your store to show dynamic products related to your customer’s previous purchases. For example, if there’s no purchase data available for a contact, it will use the top-selling products.

Here’s what competitors are doing:

GetResponse only allows you to create a product recommendation based on previous purchases or top-selling products if there’s no data.

Klaviyo, on the other hand, allows much more customization. For example, Klaviyo lets you create a product recommendation on products a customer recently viewed, products a customer may also like, products that the customer has added to their cart, the newest products, etcetera. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg; you can add rules if the customer has limited purchase history, and you can add filters, e.g., categories, prices, and stock.

The bottom line? I recommend choosing an email marketing tool solely focused on ecommerce, like Klaviyo, if your emails are mainly about promoting your ecommerce products.

Abandoned cart trigger

  • Abandoned cart trigger is only available on the Ecommerce Marketing plan
  • For this feature to work, you must have an integration with GetResponse and your ecommerce platform, e.g., Shopify, WooCommerce, etcetera. Or you have to GetResponse’s JavaScript code to your website; more information is here

The abandoned cart trigger is for an automation email you can set up. It works like this: when visitors add something to their shopping cart on your website but don’t order it, they will receive a so-called abandonment cart email reminding them of the product they didn’t purchase yet.

GetResponse offers 3 abandoned cart automation templates, but you can easily create your own if needed. The drawback of these templates is that the emails aren’t pre-written compared to, e.g., the email tool Klaviyo.

Promo codes: manual creator

  • All tiers, including the free plan, have access to the Promo codes: manual creator

The manual creator allows you to add a coupon code to GetResponse. I can then add a so-called Promo code block to my email, select the correct discount code, and tweak its look and feel. Then, I can change the text style, border, color, size, padding, and background color. In other words, you can add a promo code to your emails that stand out from the rest of the content.

Promo codes: all unique & synced

  • Promo codes: all unique & synced is only accessible on the Ecommerce Marketing plan

I integrated my Shopify store with GetResponse, which automatically syncs the discount codes I already have in my store or the ones I’ll add in the future.

Unique promo codes will let you import unique codes (tokens) from a CSV file, and those unique tokens will be shown to your contacts if you use the promo code block in your email. One person will see one token only, but you can set a fallback, i.e., master code, in case the unique ones are all used.

SPAM Check

  • All tiers, including the free plan, have access to the SPAM check feature

When writing your email, you can click on spam check to see what GetResponse’s findings are regarding how spammy your email feels.

Warning: I tested the spam checker, which doesn’t look good.

My subject line is Buy this now so i can get rich.

I added roughly 20 affiliate links in this email with the anchor text; buy this now. There’s nothing else in the email.

According to GetResponse, we’re good to go, which is weird since this email is clearly spam.

Share FB + Twitter

  • Share FB + Twitter is not accessible on the GetResponse Free plan

When sending a regular newsletter, you can enable the Facebook and/or Twitter share feature, which automatically shares a link to that newsletter with your followers. It’s not an extraordinary feature since you can do the same by tweeting and linking your newsletter. Instead, it automates a few steps since you don’t have to log in to your Twitter or Facebook.

Remove GR branding

  • You can’t remove the GetResponse branding on newsletters on the GetResponse Free plan

I haven’t seen an email software tool that didn’t add its logo to its newsletters for free plan users. Note that some email tools also add their logo to sign-up forms and landing pages for free users, but GetResponse doesn’t do that, as far as my knowledge is concerned.

Dark mode preview

  • Dark mode preview is not accessible on the GetResponse Free plan

When previewing your email, you can use the Dark Mode Preview setting to see if your email design elements are visible when the colors are inverted.

Recipients: segments

  • Recipients: segments are not accessible on the GetResponse Free plan

When sending a regular newsletter, you can select a segment you created to send a newsletter to a segment of your audience. For example, for some of my newsletters, I exclude people that don’t open my emails regularly. Note that this is a basic feature that every email tool offers.

GetResponse Automation review

  • GetResponse’s automation tool is more flexible than the average email tool
  • None of the features listed below (in the Automation section) are available in the free plan, making the free plan far less valuable
  • The Email Marketing plan limits you to a maximum of 3 email messages in a workflow (automation) 

GetResponse is at the top of the list regarding email automation flexibility. They do not beat ActiveCampaign (ActiveCampaign review), though. In other words, if email automation flexibility is important to you, but you do not want to go all-out with your email marketing budget, I suggest you try GetResponse. Sign up for a free trial here. 

Warning: if you’re thinking about subscribing to GetResponse’s Email Marketing plan you will run into limitations when it comes to email automation, e.g., limited automation templates, limited emails (maximum 3) you can send in an automated workflow, you can’t tweak/edit existing templates to your liking, etcetera.

These limitations make this tier far less helpful, which is too bad because its Email Marketing plan would’ve made it an attractive competitor to one of the cheapest email tools, MailerLite (MailerLite review). My conclusion is that GetResponse’s first paid plan, Email Marketing, isn’t worth it, despite its low price. Instead, you get more bang for your buck with other email tools like MailerLite. But it might be different if you don’t need automation features and you like GetResponse’s user-friendly tools.

Below you’ll find a complete list of features listed on GetResponse’s pricing page of its Automation section, and more importantly, my explantation and review of it.

Welcome & thank you emails

  • Welcome & thank you emails are not accessible on the GetResponse Free plan

The name thank you emails confused me initially since I thought it was some cool feature to set up a thank you email, but the idea is you create an automation workflow to send someone an email when they sign up for your list. The content of this email is up to you, so it can be a welcome or thank you email.😅 

You can automatically trigger your automated workflow when someone enters your list or by any other subscription methods: API, sign-up form, landing page, manual import, etcetera.

Warning: if you are on the Email Marketing tier, you cannot add more emails/messages to any given automation template. For example, the Basic Email Course template contains 3 emails/messages. The issue is that you cannot add more emails to this particular workflow. Even worse, the Basic Email Course template has the most messages. In other words, if you’re on the Email Marketing plan, you can’t create an automated workflow of more than 3 email messages, which would be a no-go for me. But of course, you can upgrade to the Marketing Automation plan, but it’s more expensive.

Automation templates

  • Automation templates are not accessible on the GetResponse Free plan

Pros:

  • 43 automation email templates available in total
  • GetResponse explains every automation template in a blog (example here of the Win back template)

Cons:

  • Not every tier has access to all automation templates (more info here)
  • There are no email copy examples (no actual words) in the automation templates   

What I dislike about GetResponse’s automation templates is that there’s no content in the emails of the templates. They only created the workflow template but didn’t write actual copy (words) in the emails for us to draw inspiration from. Other email tools do present example copy (actual words) in their automation templates, like ConvertKit (ConvertKit review), AWeber (AWeber review), and Klaviyo.

Build from scratch

  • Build from scratch is only available on the Marketing Automation and Ecommerce Marketing plans
  • You can create unlimited build-from-scratch workflows

The name build from scratch is self-explanatory; instead of using a template, you can build your automated workflow yourself.

Drip campaigns

  • Drip campaigns are only available on the Marketing Automation and Ecommerce Marketing plans

In laypeople’s terms and in the context of GetResponse’s pricing page, Drip campaigns mean that you can add unlimited email messages to your automated workflow. For example, when someone subscribes to your list, they will receive an automated email every other day from you for the next 5 weeks.

Note that you have no email automation on the free plan and a maximum of 3 automated email messages on the Email Marketing plan. To add unlimited email messages to a workflow, you must subscribe to GetResponse’s Marketing Automation plan or higher.

Here’s what competitors are doing:

MailerLite (MailerLite review), a cheap alternative to GetResponse, offers unlimited automated email messages in its free plan. As a quick reference, GetResponse’s first paid plan doesn’t even allow us to send unlimited automated emails making MailerLite an attractive alternative if the price is essential.

ActiveCampaign (ActiveCampaign review) offers unlimited automated email messages in its Lite plan. Still, its Lite plan has many other limitations AND is, in most cases (depending on your subscriber number) even more expensive than GetResponse’s Marketing Automation plan.

Birthday emails

  • The Birthday email template isn’t accessible on the GetResponse Free plan

The Birthday message template allows you to send an automated email on a specific date, e.g., a birthday.

Click & open followups

  • Click & open followups are only available on the Marketing Automation and Ecommerce Marketing plans

In an automated workflow, you can add multiple conditions, e.g., when a contact clicks a link, do X or else Y. Another example of a condition is when a subscriber opens newsletter X, do Y, or else Z. The so-called properties of these condition elements are highly customizable, e.g., you can go as deep to select a specific link of a particular newsletter.

Contact tagging

  • Contact tagging is only available on the Marketing Automation and Ecommerce Marketing plans

GetResponse allows you to add tags to your contacts manually and automatically. You must be subscribed to the Marketing Automation plan or higher to do it automatically. You can then use these tags to trigger automations and segment your audience.

I’m not a big fan of using tags because they are often misused as people overuse them, which becomes counterproductive. A great use of a tag is when you import new contacts to your list, and you want to tag those email addresses so you know where they came from, e.g., a trade show, a different email tool, etcetera.

Contact scoring

  • Contact scoring is only available on the Marketing Automation and Ecommerce Marketing plans

Adding/subtracting scoring points to your contacts is to create segments, and you can speak differently to your most engaged subscribers than the lesser involved contacts.

I feel the businesses that benefit the most from this feature are companies:

  • Where its sales funnels are relatively longer
  • Where more touchpoints are required before a subscriber decides to purchase
  • That sell higher-priced information products

For example, maybe you only want to start introducing your product to your contacts with a contact score of 50 or higher.

Abandoned Cart trigger

I’m unsure why GetResponse adds the Abandoned Cart trigger feature twice since it’s already listed in the category above, Email Marketing. Please see the info regarding Abandoned Cart triggers there.

Visited URL automation

  • Visited URL automation is only available on the Marketing Automation and Ecommerce Marketing plans

If you add GetResponse’s script to your website pages, it can track visitors if you add your website links in your email messages. By utilizing the visited URL feature, you can perform an action when a contact visits a specific page on your website.

Event-based automation

  • Event-based automation is only available on the Marketing Automation and Ecommerce Marketing plans

Don’t really understand? I have added the code to puppybee.com and contacted support ho this works. Will hear back from them.

Send Push Notification

  • Send Push Notification is only available on the Marketing Automation and Ecommerce Marketing plans

GetResponse allows its Marketing Automation and Ecommerce Marketing customers to enable web push notifications on their website. The web notification is a pop-up that appears after a customizable period to your website visitor. Maybe you’ve seen these pop-ups yourself by browsing websites. It often asks if you want to receive a notification when they post something new. To be honest, I’ve never allowed push notifications of any website myself, but I do find it a cool feature that I would test out if it was in my marketing tools’ arsenal.

SMS marketing automation

  • SMS marketing automation is only available on the MAX2 plan, which has custom pricing, i.e., you have to contact GetResponse to find out what it costs

Because GetResponse’s SMS marketing feature is only available for MAX2 plan users, and since there’s no trial or demo, I can’t test it. Compared to another email/SMS tool, Klaviyo, it offers all its features to its free users, making it a bit more accessible to test.

Purchase automation

  • Purchase automation is only available on the Ecommerce Marketing plan

For test purposes, I connected my Shopify store to GetResponse, and doing so will allow me to trigger an automation when a customer makes a purchase in my store. This automation trigger is highly customizable since it can be any purchase or a specific product, or a specific price tag.

The only drawback is that you can’t add filters/segments to this element, e.g., if I want to email the people who purchased product X but didn’t purchase product Y. 

Dynamic segmentation

  • Dynamic segmentation is only available on the Marketing Automation and Ecommerce Marketing plans

To add filters/segments, you have to use GetResponse’s feature Dynamic Segmentation, which works fine, but requires some extra steps. Compared to the email tool, Klaviyo GetResponse’s feature is less intuitive.

In the example image below, you can see that a purchase made through my Shopify store triggers this automation to start, i.e., the first step. In this use case, I only want to email those who didn’t purchase my ebooks. To do that, I have to use the Dynamic segmentation element. The drawback is that you have to leave your workflow window to create a new segment in the segmentation tab of GetResponse, which requires more mouse clicks and more time.

Split automation

  • Split automation is only available on the Marketing Automation and Ecommerce Marketing plans

Split automation is an excellent feature that enables you to A/B test entire workflows where you split the people moving through the workflow.  

You can also A/B test individual emails.

My opinion:

The drawback of the Split automation of GetResponse is that it doesn’t allow you to configure an end date or result for testing. Most A/B test features offer us to configure an automatic end date or preferred end result, e.g., the variation with the highest click/open rate or revenue wins. It would be nice to be able to automatically delete the losing variation. Especially if you have many of these workflows set up, it’ll cost you a lot of time to go through them after a week or month to see who’s the winner and change the workflow accordingly.  

Amount filter

  • Amount filter is only available on the Marketing Automation and Ecommerce Marketing plans

An example use case for this feature will be if you have a temporary sign-up form on your website saying: The First 1,000 People Signing Up Receive Free Candy For Life. So, for example, if you type 1,000, this means that the first 1,000 contacts will go through the green connector. The remaining contacts will go through the red connector.

GetResponse Autoresponders review

  • None of the features listed below (in the Autoresponders section) are available in the free plan

GetResponse is a tool from 1999, i.e., many of its features you see now were created a long time ago. For example, the Automation features discussed in the section above were introduced in the midst of 2016.

Why do I tell you this? Because the Autoresponder feature is even older. In other words, the first automated email feature of GetResponse was its Autoresponder feature. I’m unsure why GetResponse doesn’t remove the Autoresponder feature since it’s less flexible than its bigger brother, the Automation feature. So maybe there’s a group of GetResponse users who love the simplicity of this feature, which I understand.

Looking at its features below, you can see it’s similar to the features in the Automation section.

Below you’ll find a complete list of features listed on GetResponse’s pricing page of its Autoresponder section, and more importantly, my explantation and review of it.

Welcome emails & Autoresponders series

  • Welcome emails & Autoresponder series are not accessible on the GetResponse Free plan
  • If you are on the Email Marketing plan or higher, you can send an unlimited number of emails with its Autoresponder

Warning 1: the only way to trigger an Autoresponder is when a contact joins a list, i.e., you cannot activate the Autoresponder on specific opt-in forms, product purchases, etcetera. This is a significant drawback since you are now sending the same messages to your entire list. On the other hand, that is where GetResponse’s feature Automation (see section above) comes in handy.

Warning 2: you can only create 1 Autoresponder per list; i.e., if you want to create another Autoresponder, you must create a second list. The drawback of using multiple lists is that every email address, including duplicates, counts toward your total number of contacts.

One cool feature of the Autoresponder is that you can view your emails calendar-ish, which helps you maintain a bird’s-eye view. 

For example, number 6 represents 6 days after a contact joined your list, i.e., if you have an online course and send people emails every day the moment they enter your list, you can do so in a simplistic way with the Autoresponder.

Ecommerce tracking

  • Ecommerce tracking is only available on the Ecommerce Marketing plan and higher

After installing GetResponse’s script on your web pages, it’s a simple setting you can enable ecommerce tracking for your emails.

Time travel

  • Time travel is only available on the Marketing Automation plan and higher

If your email must get delivered at 9 AM sharp for everyone on your list, even if you have a global audience, then this feature makes that happen.

GetResponse Platform & Support review

  • No support for free plan users
  • Immediate and great help on chat support

Below you’ll find a complete list of features on GetResponse’s pricing page of its Platform & Support section, + my explanation and review of it.

Number of accounts

  • Only available on the MAX2 plan

Let’s say you have a global company with offices in Europe, the UK, the US, etcetera. It might be handy to create and assign separate accounts for all your offices, i.e., one for Italy, one for the Netherlands, etcetera.

Number of users

  • Multiple users are only available for the Marketing Automation plan or higher
Free planAccount owner; no extra users
Email Marketing planAccount owner; no extra users
Marketing Automation planAccount owner + 2 extra users
Ecommerce Marketing planAccount owner + 4 extra users
MAX2 planAccount owner + 499 extra users

Having the option to add another user will come in handy if you want to outsource your email marketing but don’t want to share your account login details.

Roles management

  • Roles management is only available for the Marketing Automation plan or higher

When adding a new user, you must assign a role to them. GetResponse has predefined roles, but you can also create a custom role to define the user’s permissions. More information about the different user roles can be found on GetResponse’s website.

Dedicated Customer Experience Manager

  • Only available on the MAX2 plan

You can chat, call, email, or use Slack to contact your dedicated customer experience manager 24/7.

Email support

  • Email support is available on the Email Marketing plan and higher

24/7 Chat support

  • 24/7 chat support is available on the Email Marketing plan, and higher

I’ve contacted chat support numerous times, and almost every time, I immediately connected to a customer service representative. The longest time I had to wait was not longer than 10-20 seconds. Furthermore, GetResponse makes it easy to contact support. On most pages, if not all, is a link to chat support. I’m a fan of their support!

Phone support

  • Only available on the MAX2 plan

Phone support is available 24/7 for MAX2 plan users.

Slack support (for selected MAX customers)

  • Only available on the MAX2 plan

Slack support is available 24/7 for MAX2 plan users.

Two-factor authentication

  • All tiers, including the free plan, can activate two-factor authentication for their account

Two-factor authentication is a general practice that allows users for a more secure account.

Dedicated IP

  • Only available on the MAX2 plan

Usually, when you sign up for an email marketing service, you send newsletters from a shared IP address, i.e., multiple people, including you, are sending their newsletter from the same IP. A dedicated IP address means you are the only one sending a newsletter from this IP address. The advantage of using a dedicated IP is that IP addresses have a so-called sender reputation, influencing the deliverability rate. In a nutshell, if your IP address has a good reputation, your emails have a higher chance of reaching the inbox vs the spam folder.

On a side note, I never had a dedicated IP address for my business, and I have an average open rate of 60%+, and I sent roughly 100,000 emails monthly. So, in my experience, I don’t feel that I need a dedicated IP address to get my emails delivered. But who knows, maybe my open rates will be even higher if I used a dedicated IP address … 

List Management

  • Not every email tool offers something like GetReponse’s scoring points (see below)

Import contacts

  • All tiers, including the free plan, allow you to import contacts

Export contacts

  • All tiers, including the free plan, allow you to export contacts

Integrations

  • Integrations with other platforms are available on the Email Marketing plan and higher

To know if GetResponse offers an integration, you need to check out this page on GetResponse’s website.

Add scoring

  • Adding scoring points to your contacts is available on the Marketing Automation plan, and higher

You can add scoring points to your contacts manually or automatically. An example would be to add X scoring points when a contact opens your email, clicks a link, opted-in, etcetera. By using scoring points, you can target your highest engaged contacts.

Add tagging

  • Tagging your contacts is available on the Email Marketing plan, and higher

You can add tags to your contacts manually and automatically. Most email tools allow you to add tags to your contacts.

GetResponse Segmentation review

GetResponse offers great segmentation options but is not necessarily extraordinary compared to its competitors. Most email tools provide similar features.

Quick note: as you’ll see below, free plan users CAN create a segment. BUT free plan users cannot send a newsletter to those segments. Free plan users can only send newsletters to the complete list and not segments of the list.

Below you’ll find a complete list of features listed on GetResponse’s pricing page of its Segmentation section, + my explanation and review of it.

Based on Contact details

  • All tiers, including the free plan, allow you to create a segment based on contact details
  • Free plan users cannot send newsletters to segments
  • Contact details include custom fields, name, email, engagement score, etcetera

Based on Contact action

  • All tiers, including the free plan, allow you to create a segment based on contact action
  • Free plan users cannot send newsletters to segments
  • Contact actions include message (not) opened, last send date, last click date, etcetera

Based on geolocation

  • All tiers, including the free plan, allow you to create a segment based on geolocation
  • Free plan users cannot send newsletters to segments

Based on scoring

  • Segmenting based on scoring points is available on the Marketing Automation plan, and higher
  • As an example, you can create a segment of contacts that are highly engaged with your content and send tailored messages to them

Based on tags

  • Segmenting based on tags is available on the Email Marketing plan, and higher

Based on Consent field

  • All tiers, including the free plan, allow you to create a segment based on consent field
  • Free plan users cannot send newsletters to segments

Based on ecommerce

  • Segmenting based on ecommerce elements is available on the Ecommerce Marketing plan and higher

Based on conversion funnel

  • Segmenting based on a conversion funnel is available on the Email Marketing plan, and higher

Based on events

  • Segmenting based on events is available on the Marketing Automation plan, and higher

Based on lead magnet

  • Segmenting based on lead magnets is available on the Email Marketing plan, and higher

Based on SMS action

  • Only available on the MAX2 plan

Based on external segments

  • Only available on the MAX2 plan

GetResponse Website Builder review

  • Works fine for building an online presence next to your social media
  • Works fine for building a website to send paid traffic to or for a simple local business website
  • Not recommended if you are planning on building an ecommerce store
  • Not recommended if you plan to rank high in Google (organically) and publish extensive blog posts

If you plan to build a website next to your social media presence or send paid traffic to, e.g., Google Ads or Facebook Ads, GetResponse’s Website Builder can help you build an excellent website. I would not recommend using GetResponse’s Website Builder if your goal is to rank organically in Google and create extensive blog posts like the one you’re reading now. For that, I recommend using WordPress.org.

If you’re in the market for building an ecommerce website, I recommend using tools like WooCommerce for WordPress, Shopify, etcetera. Personally, I switched my ecommerce store from WooCommerce to Shopify at the beginning of 2022.

Website Builder

  • All tiers, including the free plan, have access to the Website Builder
  • Free plan users can start and launch a website for free (Website Builder) with a 5GB bandwidth per month, which comes down to around 2,500 to 5,000 visitors per month maximum. This should be enough for you to start and experiment with getting visitors.
  • One of the most user-friendly and flexible website builders of email tools I’ve experienced

In this part of my GetResponse tutorial on YouTube, I’ll show you to create a website with the Website Builder in GetResponse. I definitely like the low-threshold way of starting a website. This is a great way to begin a professional-looking website, primarily if you mainly focus on social media or paid traffic or have a local business, e.g., restaurants, hair salons, etcetera.

What is too bad is that there isn’t a great integration between GetResponse’s Website Builder, the Conversion Funnel Builder, and the Landing Page Builder. These three are all stand-alone products, and you can’t integrate them. So it would be nice if the landing page templates and the process of creating a landing page were accessible inside the Website Builder and vice versa. The same story for the Conversion Funnel Builder. For example, I cannot create a product page (to sell an ebook) inside the Website Builder. For that, I need to use the Conversion Funnel Builder.

Another drawback is that the website builder has a different user interface than the landing page builder making the software unnecessarily harder to master. Note that this is a common thread in GetResponse’s features, and I’m not a big fan of it.

AI Creator

  • All tiers, including the free plan, have access to the Website Builder

I’ve tested building a website with GetResponse’s AI website builder creator, and I can understand why they are giving it away for free. The colors, the fonts, the images … It’s just terrible. It seems like a website built in the 90s. In other words, I do not recommend using the AI creator.

Predesigned templates

  • All tiers, including the free plan, have access to all its 125 predesigned templates
  • 125 predesigned website templates available
  • 8 blank templates available
  • Many different categories, e.g., law & government, travel, finance, food & drink, etcetera

GetResponse’s predesigned templates have a professional look. If you’re looking for a simple informational website for your business GetResponse got you covered. With its Website Builder, the templates are easily customizable. 

Connect your domain

  • All tiers, including the free plan, can connect their custom domain

GetResponse allows you to connect your domain, which I highly recommend if you’re planning on building a website or publishing a landing page. Using your domain increases trust, which can result in higher conversions. Note that barely any email tool allow you to connect a custom domain on the free plan.

GetResponse’s default URL example: 

https://creatoregg.getresponsewebsite.com

Custom domain example: http://creatoregg.com

You can follow my step-by-step tutorial on YouTube if you want to know how to connect a custom domain inside GetResponse. 

Bandwidth

Free plan5GB bandwidth/mo (+- 2,500 visits/mo)
Email Marketing plan10GB bandwidth/mo (+- 5,000 visits/mo)
Marketing Automation planUnlimited bandwidth
Ecommerce Marketing planUnlimited bandwidth
MAX2 planUnlimited bandwidth

What does this mean bandwidth limitation mean? Well, when someone visits one of your website pages, it needs to send all of that page’s data, like text, images, and maybe a video, to your visitor’s computer or smartphone. For example, for quick math, an average webpage size is 1MB. Dividing 5000MB (total available bandwidth of the free plan) by 1MB = 5000. 

It means you can have 5,000 people visiting your website every month. If you reach your quota and don’t upgrade, your website will go offline until new bandwidth is available next month.

It would help if you didn’t forget that sometimes one visits more than one page on your website. So, for example, if 2,500 people visit two pages on your website, you reach the bandwidth limit too. 

You get the point.

Buy a domain

  • Buying a domain is available on the Email Marketing plan, and higher

Number of active websites 

Free plan1
Email Marketing plan1
Marketing Automation plan5
Ecommerce Marketing plan5
MAX2 plan5

Number of subpages

Free plan10
Email Marketing planUnlimited
Marketing Automation planUnlimited
Ecommerce Marketing planUnlimited 
MAX2 planUnlimited 

Gallery

  • The website feature Gallery is available on the Email Marketing plan and higher

The Gallery feature is one of the blocks you can drag and drop into your website page. It offers roughly 15 different styles of showing various images on the webpage. Without this feature, you can still add images to your website but not in the same styling.

Pop-ups

  • The website feature Pop-ups is available on the Email Marketing plan and higher

The Pop-ups feature is highly customizable, e.g., you can tweak the size, position, trigger, content, timing, frequency, design, tweak the mobile version, etcetera.

Unfortunately, GetResponse doesn’t offer the same pop-up predesigned templates as in its regular forms and pop-ups feature. In my experience, that’s an ongoing issue with GetResponse’s features. It feels like its developers are enthusiastic about creating new tools and features fast, but they don’t integrate well with one another, and the pop-up feature in the website builder is an example of that. So the user interface and options when creating and designing a pop-up in the website builder are very different than in the regular pop-up/form feature.

Contact forms

  • All tiers, including the free plan, can add contact forms to their GetResponse website

The Contact form feature is highly customizable; e.g., you can tweak the labels, success message/page, design, and the mobile version.

Sign-up forms

  • All tiers, including the free plan, can add sign-up forms to their GetResponse website

The Sign-up form feature is highly customizable; e.g., you can tweak the labels, success message/page, design, and tweak the mobile version.

Custom code

  • The Custom code feature is available on the Email Marketing plan and higher

You can add a custom code block to your web pages for adding HTML, CSS, or JavaScript.

Chat

  • Chat is available on the Email Marketing plan and higher

I can’t test it because it’s a premium feature.

Timer

  • The Timer feature is available on the Email Marketing plan and higher
  • Many designer customization options are available in the timer settings
  • Two timer types: evergreen and fixed date

The drawback of this timer feature is that you cannot set up a rule to make it do X when the timer hits 0:00, making it far less valuable. For example, other timer software tools offer the option to redirect the landing page URL to a different page when the timer hits 0:00. This enables you to provide a discount to your audience for a limited time. For example, when the timer hits 0:00, the deal automatically disappears. Unfortunately, such a scenario isn’t possible with GetResponse’s timer; therefore, I’m unsure of developing helpful use cases for this feature.

Membership Area

  • The membership area feature is available on the Marketing Automation plan and higher

When creating a GetResponse website, you can choose for every page, e.g., homepage, contact page, etcetera, whether everyone has access to the page, only members, or only password holders. 

Even though it’s a cool feature, I’m unsure of any actual use cases. For example, you might think of sharing access to an online training course with multiple videos, but the drawback is that GetResponse doesn’t offer video hosting. With no video hosting, you still need to purchase video hosting, e.g., Wistia, making it far less valuable. You’re probably better off moving your online training to a dedicated online course platform, e.g., Teachable since they offer video hosting and more features for online courses than GetResponse.

All-in-all, I’m not the biggest fan of this feature.

Remove GR branding

  • To remove GetResponse branding, you have to subscribe to its Email Marketing plan or higher
  • At the bottom of every page, i.e., the footer, on your GetResponse website, there will be a banner with GetResponse’s logo that includes a link to its website

Google Analytics Integration

  • All tiers, including the free plan, have access to the Google Analytics integration

In the site settings tab of your GetResponse website, you can add your Google Analytics ID. 

Facebook Pixel Integration

  • The Facebook Pixel feature is available on the Email Marketing plan and higher

SEO Settings

  • All tiers, including the free plan, have access to the SEO settings

Every page on your GetResponse website has an SEO settings tab where you can edit the page title and page description. And if you don’t want Google to index your page or website, you can enable the no-index setting too.

GetResponse Landing Pages review

  • Landing page editor works with a drag-and-drop builder
  • Unfortunately, the landing page builder is a stand-alone builder, i.e., it isn’t the same as the website builder
  • Its landing pages feel outdated
  • Would not recommend using GetResponse’s landing pages

In my opinion, the user interface of the landing page builder is not as good as GetResponse’s website builder. The landing page builder is older, and, unfortunately, it doesn’t use the same builder for all its tools. So I recommend using GetResponse’s website builder to create landing pages instead of this page builder.

Below I’ll explain the differences and why you probably do not need the landing page builder if you use the website builder.

Landing Pages

Free plan

  • Maximum of 1 landing page
  • Maximum 1,000 visitors monthly
  • Maximum 1 active website + 10 subpages
  • Maximum 5GB bandwidth monthly (+- maximum 2,500 visitors monthly)

The limitations of GetResponse’s landing page feature and its website feature for its free plan are very similar. Therefore, there’s no drawback to using the website builder over the landing page builder.

Good to know is that every subpage basically is a landing page of its own, i.e., you can create up to 10 landing pages/subpages on the free plan.

Email Marketing plan

  • Unlimited landing pages
  • Unlimited website visitors
  • Maximum 1 active website + Unlimited subpages
  • Maximum 10GB bandwidth monthly (+- maximum 5,000 visitors monthly)

The drawback of the Email Marketing plan is the bandwidth limitation for the GetResponse websites.

Marketing Automation plan

  • Unlimited landing pages
  • Unlimited website visitors
  • Maximum 5 active websites + Unlimited subpages
  • Unlimited bandwidth monthly, i.e., unlimited visitors monthly

I don’t see any drawbacks to using the website builder over the landing page builder in the Marketing Automation plan.

Ecommerce Marketing plan

  • Unlimited landing pages
  • Unlimited website visitors
  • Maximum 5 active websites + Unlimited subpages
  • Unlimited bandwidth monthly, i.e., unlimited visitors monthly

I don’t see any drawbacks to using the website builder over the landing page builder in the Ecommerce Marketing plan.

MAX2 plan

  • Unlimited landing pages
  • Unlimited website visitors
  • Maximum 5 active websites + Unlimited subpages
  • Unlimited bandwidth monthly, i.e., unlimited visitors monthly

I don’t see any drawbacks to using the website builder over the landing page builder in the MAX2 plan.

Connect your domain

  • All tiers, including the free plan, can connect their domain to a GetResponse landing page

Even free plan users can connect their own domain to a GetResponse landing page, which is nice! Not that many email tools offer domain connection for free plan users. Adding your own domain creates trust and will (probably) improve your conversion rate.

You can find an example below if you’re unsure what a custom domain is.

GetResponse’s default URL example: 

https://info-21aab.gr8.com/

Custom domain example: http://creatoregg.com

Pages & visitors

  • Free plan users can receive a maximum of 1,000 visitors monthly on their landing page
  • All other tiers can receive unlimited visitors on their landing pages
Free plan1,000 visitors
Email Marketing planUnlimited
Marketing Automation planUnlimited
Ecommerce Marketing planUnlimited
MAX2 planUnlimited

Predesigned templates

  • All tiers, including the free plan, can access GetResponse’s 150+ predesigned landing page templates
  • There’s no option to change the width of the landing pages/sales pages
  • Cannot go back to change the template once chosen

Although GetResponse offers 150+ predesigned templates, the most popular template has the most simplistic design.

  • The pop-up forms element for the landing pages is buggy and not user-friendly

Sign-up forms

  • All tiers, including free plan users, can add sign-up forms to their landing pages

You can add two types of sign-up forms to your GetResponse landing page with the drag-and-drop builder; the pop-up form and the static sign-up form. The static sign-up form is self-explanatory because it immediately shows a form where people can enter their contact details and click the button to sign up.

The pop-up sign-up form isn’t intuitive in my experience and uses weird text that makes it unclear how it works. After some trial and error, I’m sure you’ll figure it out, but software should make your life easier, and the pop-up forms of GetResponse don’t do that.

You cannot change the sign-up form button link since the only option is to redirect.

GetResponse Ecommerce tools review

  • 9 out of the 10 features in this category are not accessible for free plan users

Although GetResponse offers ecommerce tools, I do not recommend using GetResponse if your main business is ecommerce, i.e., stores like https://www.livingproof.com/ or https://nuunlife.com/. For such businesses, I would recommend an email tool entirely focused on ecommerce, e.g., Klaviyo.

The reason is that there’s a big difference between GetResponse and Klaviyo in terms of user-friendliness, ecommerce customization options, and user interface.

Stores and products center

  • The feature Stores and products center is available on the Email Marketing plan, and higher

For test purposes, I connected my live Shopify store to GetResponse, and the connection works fine. Connecting any of the following software is possible: WooCommerce, Magento, PrestaShop, or BigCommerce store.

If you don’t have a store set up, you can add your products to GetResponse and sell them that way.

Product box

I explained the product box feature in the Email Marketing section of this GetResponse review.

Abandoned order recovery

I explained the Abandoned order/cart recovery in the Email Marketing section of this GetResponse review.

Quick transactional emails

  • Quick transactional emails are available on the Ecommerce Marketing plan, and higher

This feature can create order confirmation emails or abandoned cart emails.

Order confirmation automation

  • Order confirmation automation is available on the Ecommerce Marketing plan and higher
  • 10 predesigned email templates available for the order confirmation email
  • You can edit the emails in the same way as the regular GetResponse newsletter, which is nice

Warning: when using the GetResponse order confirmation email, make sure you deactivate your store’s confirmation email. If I don’t want my customers to receive an order confirmation twice, I have to deactivate the default Shopify confirmation email first.

Promo codes: manual master

I explained Promo codes: manual master feature in the Email Marketing section of this GetResponse review.

Promo codes: unique & synced

I explained Promo codes: unique & synced feature in the Email Marketing section of this GetResponse review.

Forms and pop-ups review

  • One of the most user-friendly editors for embedded forms and pop-ups
  • Great customization options for both pop-ups and embedded forms
  • Love the design templates and options
  • Mobile view optimizer

What can make it a bit confusing is that the menu bar of GetResponse’s dashboard offers two sign-up forms features; the old and the new. This review is only focused on the new forms and pop-ups. I’m not a big fan of the old forms feature.


The new Forms and pop-ups feature offers two options for you to display your message; (1) in a pop-up style or (2) embedded form style.

The differences between the two styles are:

  • An embedded form will always immediately show on your webpage, and there are sadly no limitation options, e.g., specific start/end dates or display rules as you have with pop-ups
  • The embedded form has fewer available templates

I recommend skimming through the text below to better understand when to use what.

Pop-ups

  • All tiers, including free plan users, can create a pop-up
  • 105 pre-designed popup templates available + 24 blank templates
  • Highly customizable pop-ups (love it!)
  • One of the most user-friendly editors (love it!)

There are 4 different pop-up styles:

  1. Bar pop-up
  2. Full-screen pop-up
  3. Slide-in box pop-up
  4. Pop-up box

Active pop-ups limit

  • Free plan users are limited to 1 active pop-up
  • All other tiers can create unlimited pop-ups

Popup display rules

  • All tiers, including free plan users, can edit the pop-up display rules

There are numerous options to display your pop-up. For example, you can schedule it for specific dates, change its frequency, stop showing it when someone signed up, etcetera.

Views limit

  • Free plan users are limited to 1,000 pop-up views monthly
  • All other tiers have unlimited pop-ups views

Embedded banners

  • All tiers, including free plan users, have access to Embedded banners

Embedded banners are not pop-ups. Instead, an embedded banner will always immediately show on your webpage, and there are sadly no limitation options, e.g., specific start/end dates or display rules as you have with pop-ups.

What GetResponse means by Embedded banners on its pricing page are promotional banners, e.g., showing a banner with a discount code, a link to a different page, promoting your social media, etcetera. You can create these banners the same way you do when creating a regular sign-up form; plenty of predesigned templates are available.

Once you’re done with your design, you can choose where to display the form, e.g., your entire website or specific pages. The only thing left to do is to add the code, e.g., <getresponse-form form-id=” 042598e9-6711-409c-8f41-5dc832c61e73″ e=” 0″></getresponse-form>, where you want to display the form.

Templates

  • All tiers, including free plan users, have access to all templates
  • 105 pre-designed popup templates available + 24 blank templates
  • 48 predesigned embedded form templates available
  • All templates have a modern and professional design

It’s not a deal breaker, but I’m not a fan of the fact that once you’ve chosen a template, you cannot go back and change it. Instead, you have to create an entirely new pop-up or embedded form.

Sign-up forms

  • All tiers, including free plan users, can create sign-up forms

You can either create a pop-up sign-up form or an embedded sign-up form. What makes a sign-up form a sign-up form is that it contains an email field where one can sign up for your list.

If the design you like doesn’t contain a sign-up form (email field), you can easily drag and drop the sign-up form to your pop-up or embedded form.

Contact forms

  • All tiers, including free plan users, can create sign-up forms

Similar to sign-up forms, you can either create a contact pop-up form or an embedded contact form. If the design you like doesn’t contain a contact form, you can easily drag and drop the contact form into your pop-up or embedded form.

The big difference between the sign-up form and the contact form element is that when someone enters messages to you through a contact form, they will not be added as a new subscriber.

Note that the email field is mandatory and cannot be deleted, which is too bad! For example, let’s say you’re just looking for feedback but don’t necessarily want to email them after there’s no need to ask for an email address. When the email field is required, people will be less likely to give feedback if they don’t want to share their email.

Promo codes

  • The element Promo codes is available on the Marketing Automation plan and higher

For test purposes, I connected my Shopify store to GetResponse. If you are on the Ecommerce Marketing plan or higher, all discount codes will be synced, i.e., if you create a discount code in Shopify, it will be “available” in GetResponse too. By available, I mean you can easily select the discount code you want to show in a particular form or popup. This saves time and prevents you from misspelling your discount code.

Webinars

  • The webinar feature is available on the Marketing Automation plan and higher
  • A low-barrier way to get started with webinars since it doesn’t cost extra
  • GetResponse offers its great landing page builder for your webinar registration pages

From your perspective, most webinar platforms are priced higher than $50 monthly, i.e., if you use GetResponse’s webinar features as part of your email marketing tool, it might be a great deal.

The cool thing about GetResponse’s webinar feature is that you can use GetResponse’s landing page builder to create your sign-up page, which has more customization options than, for example, the registration page builder of the well-known webinar platform Livestorm. Although Livestorm’s registration page looks very clean, simplistic, and professional, there aren’t that many elements you can add, e.g., additional images, text, videos, etcetera.

Stick to what you know

Creating an email marketing software product isn’t child’s play, and GetResponse does a great job with its email tools. But the same thing can be said about creating an excellent webinar software platform. If you’re looking for the best webinar software, I do not recommend using GetResponse. Instead, look at software products that are 100% focused on building the best webinar platform. It’s the same reason I don’t use my ecommerce platform’s (Shopify) email marketing app. Instead, I purchased a dedicated email marketing tool.

Does it mean you can’t run (successful) webinars with GetResponse? Of course not.

It just means GetResponse’s webinar tools are less intuitive and less user-friendly, and there are fewer features than solely webinar platforms like Demio, WebinarJam, Livestorm, etcetera.

That’s why I say: stick to what you know. More and more email tools try to become the all-in-one marketing solution, i.e., they try to do everything. I’m unsure that’s the best for us as customers. I instead prefer them to make the best email marketing product. On a side note, they can charge more money or add a new tier if they add new products/features.

Live Webinars

  • Up to 100 attendees on the Marketing Automation plan
  • Up to 300 attendees on the Ecommerce Marketing plan
  • Up to 1,000 attendees on the MAX2 plan

Here’s what competitors are doing:

  • Webinar software Demio charges $49 monthly for a 50-attendee room
  • WebinarJam charges $79 monthly for a 500-attendee room (warning: only annual subscriptions)
  • Livestorm charges $220 monthly for a 200-attendee room

As you can see, prices for hosting a webinar quickly rise to $100 or more, and if you can get a webinar feature included in your email marketing tool might be a great money saver.

Note that these companies above only focus on building the best webinar software and serving customers that only use their software for webinars. 

On-demand webinars

  • On-demand webinars is available on the Ecommerce Marketing plan, and higher
  • Webinar immediately starts the moment one enters their name and email address
  • Webinar is based on a previous live webinar, i.e., you cannot upload your own file
  • GetResponse’s logo will be visible at the top, and you cannot remove it
  • Warning: only Full HD (1920×1080P) available on the MAX2 plan – other plans only support HD (1280x720P)
  • No live chat available for on-demand webinars
  • You cannot schedule the on-demand event because it will start instantly when someone signs up 

The definition of an on-demand webinar is an automated prerecorded webinar, i.e., you don’t have to be present during the webinar.

Here’s what competitors are doing:

Demio offers live chat and scheduling functionalities on on-demand webinars. Furthermore, it doesn’t add its logo to your webinar as GetResponse does.

If you genuinely want a great webinar product, you shouldn’t use an email tool like GetResponse to host your webinars.

Paid Webinars

  • Paid webinars is available on the Ecommerce Marketing plan, and higher

GetResponse’s landing page builder comes in handy when running paid webinars because you can customize it to your liking. 

You don’t need a fancy registration page when you run a webinar for your colleagues. Running webinars for cold traffic, i.e., people that never heard of you, is an entirely different beast. So you must create a compelling sales page to convince them to sign up.

Webinar funnels

  • Webinar funnels are available on the Marketing Automation plan and higher

GetResponse’s webinar funnel walks you through the three steps of creating a sign-up page, a welcome email, and a thank-you page for your webinar.

I’m not a big fan of this webinar funnel because it feels outdated. For starters, it uses the landing page builder when creating a sign-up page, and there’s no option to use the website builder. These are two separate builders, as I described earlier in this review.

Secondly, the email editor is outdated and doesn’t look even close to the regular email editor of GetResponse’s newsletter, which is confusing and odd.

Recording storage

  • 3 hours of recording storage for the Marketing Automation plan
  • 6 hours of recording storage for the Ecommerce Marketing plan
  • 20 hours of recording storage for the MAX2 plan

A great marketing technique is sending a webinar replay to your subscribers. And here’s where GetResponse’s recording storage comes into play. The Marketing Automation plan only allows for 3 hours of storage of recording footage. Note that this isn’t a monthly limit. It’s just a maximum of 3 hours, i.e., you probably want to delete your previous webinar recording before you start your next.

Here’s what competitors are doing:

GetResponse is directly competing with webinar platforms, e.g., Demio, Livestorm, etcetera, with its webinar features. So, what are these webinar platforms offering us regarding recording storage? Well, both Demio and Livestorm do not have a recording storage limitation. The fact that GetResponse limits our recording storage isn’t the best …

# of presenters

During a webinar, there can be up to 3 presenters, including yourself.

HD webinars

GetResponse doesn’t support full HD (1920×1080P) live webinars. It only supports HD (1280x720P) for live webinars. During

For recordings, full HD (1920×1080P) is available on the MAX2 plan – other plans only support HD (1280x720P).

Breakout room option

  • The breakout room option is only available on the MAX2 plan

With breakout rooms, you can split your audience into separate groups, i.e., rooms during the live webinar. It might come in handy for students, networking, etcetera.

Here’s what competitors are doing:

To use the GetResponse breakout rooms feature, you must be a MAX2 plan customer, which is a bit over-the-top compared to other webinar platforms. For example, Livestorm offers the breakout rooms feature in its free plan.

Web push notification

  • Web Push Notification is available on the Marketing Automation plan and higher

The web notification is a popup that appears after a customizable period to your website visitor. Maybe you’ve seen these popups yourself by browsing websites. It often asks if you want to receive a notification when they post something new. To be honest, I’ve never allowed push notifications of any website myself, but I do find it a cool feature that I would test out if it was in my marketing tools’ arsenal.

In my opinion, the biggest drawback of web push notifications is that you cannot export web push subscribers like you can with your email list. So, for example, let’s say I spend 1 year building my email list to 3,000 subscribers with GetResponse. For whatever reason, I decided to leave for one of its competitors. In this case, I can easily export my email list and move. But this isn’t the case with people who subscribe to your push notifications. So I asked GetResponse’s customer service if it is possible to export web push subscribers, and they told me it’s not possible

Custom opt-in prompt

  • Custom prompt is available on the Marketing Automation plan and higher

If you don’t create a custom prompt, it’ll just say, “Will you allow www.puppybee.com/ to send notifications?”. 

With the custom prompt, you can edit the message and change the text of the confirmation and cancellation buttons.

Web push automation

  • Web push automation is available on the Ecommerce Marketing plan and higher

You can use the element Send push notification in an automated workflow. For example, you can send a push notification when someone subscribes to your list. 

What are real use cases for using web push notifications automatically? Firstly, note that every use case must allow web push notifications from your website before you can send your web push subscribers a message. Below you can find two ideas for notification automation:

Idea #1 – Abandoned Cart Notifications

Similarly to an Abandoned Cart email, you can send a push notification when someone abandons their cart without completing the checkout process. For example, Pushengage.com wrote a case study about it.

Idea #2 – Welcome notification offering a discount code

When someone subscribes to your email list, send them a push notification showing a discount code for one of your products.

As you can see in the image below, you can write your title and description, add a URL, a button, and a photo. 

Scheduling

  • Scheduling push notifications is available on the Ecommerce Marketing plan, and higher

The scheduling feature is self-explanatory. You can send the notification immediately or schedule it for later.

Conversion funnels

When creating a funnel, you have to choose whether you want to create a (1) lead funnel, (2) lead magnet funnel, (3) sales funnel, or (4) webinar funnel.

The lead funnel and lead magnet funnel are meant to collect email addresses, the sales funnel for selling products, and the webinar funnel for promoting your webinar.

Lead and lead magnet funnels are available on the Email Marketing plan and higher, and the sales and webinar funnels on the Marketing automation plan and higher.

My thoughts on GetResponse’s conversion funnels:

In short, I’m not a fan. Why? Because everything is outdated in these funnel builders. Firstly, the landing page templates are outdated. You can still see copyright 2019 written at the bottom of the landing page. Secondly, you cannot use its new website page builder for building a landing page. Third, when creating an email, the email editor isn’t the new email editor you have when writing a regular newsletter – you’re stuck with the old one. Fourth, the email templates are outdated and not the same as in the new email editor for regular newsletters. Fifth, we are stuck with its autoresponder feature inside this funnel builder instead of using its marketing automation features. 

Next to the fact it’s outdated, I’m unsure I even like the flow and process of building a funnel this way.

No, not a fan.

Paid ads

Google Ads

  • Google Ads is available on the Email Marketing plan, Marketing Automation, and Ecommerce Marketing plan but not on the MAX2 plan, which is weird since the MAX2 plan is the most expensive plan.

GetResponse offers integration between Google Ads and its platform, so you can create a Google ad inside GetResponse. To enable the integration, you must sign up with Google Ads and add your credit card to your Google Ads account. This isn’t something you can do within GetResponse.

In a nutshell, I have seen the process of how it works, and to be frank, I feel you’re better off creating the Google ad inside Google Ads. You’ll have more options there, and it’s always up to date. There are dozens of great YouTube tutorials explaining how it works if it’s your first time.

Facebook Ads

  • Facebook Ads are available on Email Marketing plan and higher

Like Google Ads, I recommend creating your ads inside Facebook’s native ad manager instead of using GetResponse. You’ll have more options, and the software will always be up to date. Plenty of YouTube tutorials will show you how to get started with Facebook Ads if you’re a beginner.

Lead Extension

  • Lead Form Extension is available on the Email Marketing plan, Marketing Automation, and Ecommerce Marketing plan but not on the MAX2 plan, which is weird since the MAX2 plan is the most expensive plan.

The image below shows the lead form extension tool inside Google Ads. It’s a way for your people to enter their information in a form without visiting your website. An example use case could be to give away a free ebook for one’s name and email address.

At the bottom of the lead form extension in Google Ads, you can export your leads to a third party, e.g., GetResponse.

GetResponse allows you to create this Lead form inside its tool instead of using Google Ads. Although it might work fine, I often prefer using the native tool, in this case, Google Ads, instead of using third parties. 

Integrations

  • Integrations are available on the Email Marketing plan and higher

GetResponse offers many integrations like any other email tool. If you’re looking for a specific integration, I suggest you check this page or contact its support team.

Mobile app

GetResponse App

  • The GetResponse app is available on the Email Marketing plan and higher

There are apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android.

For test purposes, I installed the iPhone app, and these are the things I find important in an email tools’ mobile app: 

  • Easy to use and an excellent user interface
  • Easy way to send a newsletter
  • Intuitive way to import new contacts when you’re at an offline event, for example
  • Easy way to see your campaigns’ results/reports at a glance

Sending a newsletter

Besides checking your email marketing statistics, the second most important thing for an email tool’s app will be sending newsletters. I tested the newsletter feature, and it works fine and is self-explanatory. You can easily add your subject line, segment your audience, and enter when you want to send the email. The one thing that might be an issue is that you cannot create designer newsletters. The only option is text-only emails.

GetResponse alternatives

What is the best email marketing software? I’ve thoroughly tested the 10 most popular email marketing tools. Read out my FULL roundup review here or watch the video below.


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Sincerely,

Robbin 👋