Do you know that for every $1 spent on email marketing, it brings $44 in return?  And on average, 320% more revenue is attributed to welcome emails on a per email basis than other promotional emails. Plus, consumers who receive email offers spend 138% more than those who don’t receive email offers. Thus, if you aren’t using email marketing yet in your business, you’re missing out on incredible opportunities to generate more revenue.

Email marketing is crucial to the long-term success of any online business. With email marketing, you can maintain a list of contacts and customers, which can help you build a relationship that enables your business to grow. Aweber and GetResponse are two of the best email marketing services out there. So, how do the two email services compare, and which one is best suited for your business?

Aweber vs GetResponse: Pricing

Both Aweber and GetResponse charge recurring fees, so overall cost could largely influence your decision. They base the pricing structure son the number of subscribers you gain. However, as your list grows your business will generate more revenue, which means the extra costs will be absorbed.

Aweber Pricing

Aweber has 5 pricing plans to choose from. The plans are based on the size of your email list, and the following pricing structures apply:

• Up to 500 subscribers $19 per month
• For 501 to 2,500 subscribers, you’ll pay $29 per month
• For 2,501 to 5,000 subscribers, you’ll pay $49 per month
• For 5,001 to 10,000 subscribers, you’ll pay $69 per month
• For 10,0001 to 25,000 subscribers, you’ll pay $149 per month

However, if your email list is larger than 25,000 subscribers, you’ll have to get a quote from Aweber to determine your monthly costs.

Apart from the limits on the number of subscribers you can host, there’s no difference in features between Aweber plans: The functionality of each plan is the same.

Also, Aweber offers discounts for bundled payments, which you can make quarterly or annually. The quarterly payments will give you a 14% discount, while annual payments offer you a 14.9% discount.

If this is you first purchasing an Aweber plan they offer the lowest first-time payments on their quarterly and annual plans.

For example, for the cheapest plan, the initial quarterly payment would be $32.67, and every quarter afterward the cost would be $49. Similarly, the annual plan would be $177.65 for the first year and $194 for every year after that.

GetResponse Pricing

The GetResponse pricing structure enables you to customize many aspects along the way.

For instance, you can choose the number of subscribers you have and how often you want to make your payments. If you can afford to make multiple year’s payments at once, the discounts will be worth it.  A 12-month payment nets an 18% discount, which is almost a fifth of the total cost. And if you can afford to make a two-year’s payment upfront, you’ll get an impressive 30% discount.

GetResponse has 4 plans, namely:

• Basic – this plan starts at $15 per month, and it allows you to send an unlimited number of emails to up to 1,000 subscribers.

• Plus—this starts at $49 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers.

• Professional—this starts at $99 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers.

• Enterprise—this starts at $1,199 per month for email lists with over 100,000 subscribers.

There are separate pricing plans available for non-profit organizations; however, you’ll have to contact GetResponse directly about those.

The major difference between the GetResponse plans is the addition of landing pages, webinars, CRM, and e-commerce. And the more you pay, the more functionality you’ll get.

Aweber Vs GetResponse Pricing: Who Is The Winner?

In terms of pricing, there’s no clear winner in the batter of Aweber vs GetResponse. Also, both email services allow a one-month, most-access included free trial to try out their services.

On average, GetResponse is $4 per month cheaper than Aweber. Also, GetResponse offers larger discounts at 18% and 30% than offer Aweber, which offers 14% and 14.9% discounts.

Aweber Vs GetResponse: Deliverability

Deliverability is one of the most crucial factors of your email autoresponder. Because there’s no point in paying for all that technology if your emails don’t reach your subscribers.

However, this doesn’t mean your emails don’t end up in the mailboxes. No, it means that your emails are marked as spam and so your subscribers don’t view them.

This results in cold leads and wasted money.

While deliverability is the sender’s responsibility, there are some marketing aspects, which are out of your control. For example, some internet service providers (ISPs) will flag certain autoresponder sites more than others.

ISPs are likely to block your autoresponder-sent emails if they meet certain criteria of suspicion. For instance, having your emails constantly marked as spam, delivering to “invalid” email addresses, and the credibility of your autoresponder with ISP.

This means besides deliverability; you must consider an autoresponder’s relationship with ISPs. The best place to start is by tracking GetResponse and Aweber’s deliverability.

GetResponse Deliverability

Because of two decades of building relationships with the major ISPS across the world, GetResponse has 99% email deliverability.

Key features, such as strict import and spam policies, list management tools, delivery tracking, and enforcing the best practices have improved GetResponse’s deliverability.

Also, GetResponse automatically removes subscribers from your email list if they mark your emails as spam. This prevents ISPs from flagging your emails as spam in the future.

Aweber Deliverability

Aweber has a 99% deliverability score because they consistently monitor their system for email bounce-back, email abuse, time management metrics, such as clicks and opens, low-quality emails, and suspicious sending patterns.

Because Aweber owns its infrastructure top to bottom; this allows them to keep a close look at their business.

Aweber also has a delivery help page that explains how and what they monitor throughout its system.

Aweber Vs GetResponse Deliverability: Who Is the Winner?

In terms of deliverability, there’s no clear winner between Aweber and GetResponse. Because both companies maintain a deliverability score of 99% or higher.

Both organizations offer various resources to assist you to raise your deliverability rate. This includes links to deliverability trackers as well as tips to make your email marketing campaigns more effective.

Aweber Vs GetResponse: Functionality

Aweber has built a great reputation for the simplicity and usability of its email service. They continually look for ways to make things easier for their customers, while adding to their graphics and templates collection.

Aweber offers you the benefit to make things as simple or as complex as you want. If, for instance, you’re looking for a “set it and forget it” email service, you can easily use their drag-and-drop system to load a series of emails.

Aweber also offers a vast collection of templates and email opt-in forms, which are slick and professional.

You can use their HTML editor to build emails that meet your specifications and send them at specific times of the day for optimum results.

On the other hand, GetResponse has had a reputation for being less user friendly and offering limited options in terms of opt-in forms and templates. However, recently they have introduced the ‘Autoresponders 2.0’ which is a great upgrade.

Using their calendar system, you can easily schedule your emails. This calendar system is easy-to-use and intuitive for users of all levels.

Both Aweber and GetResponse offer plenty of beautiful templates and graphics to suit different markets and for generic use.

In terms of functionality, GetResponse is your best option because it allows you to get as simple or as complex as you want.

Aweber Vs GetResponse: List Automation

Auto-response systems are crucial in running successful mass email campaigns, so the capabilities of your email service are essential. However, your needs may warrant the need for a simpler approach.

GetResponse List Automation

GetResponse offers an advanced list automation process, which allows you to build a complicated network of list automation. Each successive step in list automation allows or disallows further or follow-up emails based on certain triggers.

While GetResponse’s process for setting up the lists is more time-consuming than Aweber’s drag-and-drop option, it gives room for more variability. GetResponse has two options to filter contacts.

The first option is to sort contacts into selected lists. And the second option is to check if your contacts are already subscribed to lists, and which lists they’re subscribed to.

Also, GetResponse allows you to use the “Copy to list” action when moving contacts from one list to another. However, it’s crucial to note that if you duplicate recipients, both duplications will reflect in the subscribers count.

Once you have built your lists, the actual autoresponder system enables you to build auto-funnels. These are drip campaigns and lists that enable additional customization about which subscribers will receive what emails and when.

You can sort and activate the drip lists based on several triggers, such as how subscribers interact with your emails.

And based on the trigger, the automated system can respond with one or several actions. These actions include moving subscribers to additional lists, sending messages, or removing subscribers from your lists.

Aweber List Automation

According to Aweber, its email automation is as easy as ‘Drag, drop, and send.’ This means you can automate your email sequence using a drag-and-drop builder.

Aweber’s list automation allows you to add triggers to your automation, which allows subscribers to receive new emails after taking certain actions (or no action at all).

Aweber allows you to select from three rules when automating your lists. This makes it easy to manage your recipients.

• Rule 1: subscribe-on-subscribe. This allows, for instance, those who subscribe on list A to subscribe to list B.

• Rule 2: unsubscribe-on-subscribe. This rule allows those who sign up, for instance, to list A to unsubscribe from list B.

• Rule 3: unsubscribe-on-unsubscribe. This means those who unsubscribe from list A can get unsubscribed from list B.

With Aweber, it’s easy to set up list automation, and once you’re done, it’s done.

However, you can only choose one rule at a time. This means if you have four lists, A, B, C, and D the above examples would exclude all subscribers subscribed to lists C and D.

So, you have to set up multiple campaigns at a time to serve your audience better. For instance, if you have occasional visitors and in-depth readers for your blog, you want to send thorough resources to your in-depth readers who care about more information.

Aweber Vs GetResponse List Automation: Who Is the Winner?

When it comes to list automation, GetResponse has an all-around more inclusive setup. This is because GetResponse offers massive funneling and automation capabilities.

Aweber is perfect for your business, especially if you’re looking for simplicity and one-and-done marketing. It’s easy and quick to set up and it’s good for nurturing relationships. But this is only suitable for blanket emails and partnerships.

However, if you want more customization and engagement instead of reminders: GetResponse is your best bet. While their system can be initially complex, it allows for a more specific action.

Aweber Vs GetResponse: Split Testing

Do you know your target audience?

While you may think you know your audience really well; however, it’s essential to split test to figure out what speaks to your customers.

A/B testing can help you know what email marketing strategy is working and what’s not working.

GetResponse Split Testing

With GetResponse, you can test up to 5 variants of each email campaign.

Also, you can change your subject line, content, and delivery time to make sure you get the target response from your audience.

After choosing what you want to test, you can be able to track the performance of up to 5 messages at a once. Also, you can track the performance of your campaigns on your user interface (UI).

Aweber Split Testing

Aweber lets you test up to 3 variants of your emails against each other. This is tremendous for a basic email marketing service—but it’s not as impressive as GetResponse.

However, the good thing with Aweber is that you get to choose the number of subscribers that’ll get exposed to each email variant. This means you can test out a new, radical campaign on only a few of your subscribers.

With Aweber, it’s quite easy to track your split tests because all the details appear on your UI homepage.

While Aweber allows you to test 3 emails against each other at any given instant, you can still test a range of features, such as body copy, call-to-action placement, pre-header text, and the time you send the message. Thus, Aweber lets you look at many things, even though it gives you fewer test options.

Aweber Vs GetResponse Split Testing: Who Is the Winner?

GetResponse wins because it allows you to test more emails at once; however, Aweber offers more functionality because it enables you to explore the impact of your CTA button, images, subject line, body copy, and more. Because of that, Aweber is the winner here.

Aweber Vs GetResponse: Analytics

To create effective email marketing campaigns, you need to know what’s working and what’s not working. This is where email analytics comes in handy.

Both Aweber and GetResponse offer solid reporting metrics, including click rates, open rates, unsubscribe rates, and more.

GetResponse Email Analytics

GetResponse offers the ability to navigate your analytics and reports easily. You can easily look at everything from your marketing automation to your auto-responder and get the individual insights for every campaign.

GetResponse makes it easy to track open rates, goals reached, click-through rate, and much more. In fact, you can even check the type of device your customers are using to open your emails, so you can decide whether to put more effort into mobile marketing.

Also, GetResponse supports your conversion efforts by providing tracking codes so you can track the number of sign-ups, sales, and visits that come from links in your email campaigns.

Once you’ve collected your data, GetResponse allows you to organize it the way you want—into both charts and tables.

Aweber Email Analytics

Aweber offers a comprehensive selection of reports to browse through.

Here are some of the reports you browse through:

One thing that Aweber doesn’t offer that GetResponse offers is Google Analytics integration. This means if you opt for Aweber, you won’t be able to combine your SEO reports with your email marketing efforts.

However, Aweber still makes analytics simple and intuitive.

Aweber allows you to track how many people click on links in your email campaigns. Also, Aweber helps you track who your most valuable subscribers are, and which emails fetch more revenue.

Aweber Vs GetResponse Email Analytics: Who Is the Winner?

When it comes to email analytics, GetResponse is ahead because its reporting dashboard is quite intuitive and you can easily integrate with Google Analytics. However, Aweber isn’t far behind.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to choosing between Aweber and GetResponse, your decision should mainly depend on your needs. While both email services offer the tools needed to create emails, campaigns, and nurture subscribers, they each take a different approach.

Choose GetResponse if you:

• Are looking for a cheaper price.
• Want annual, quarterly, or non-profit discounts.
• Want an easy-to-use intuitive system
• Are looking for a comprehensive way of managing your email segments
• Need professional and easy-to-use:
  • Customizable templates
  • Marketing autoresponders
  • Email campaign automation

On the other hand, Aweber may be your best bet if you:

• Want all the key features at every price point
• Have an extensive email list or you’re planning to grow
• Have a small email list with a need for add-ons
• Are looking for a drag-and-drop automation
• Are looking for comprehensive split testing and analytics

However, remember that both email services come with a free trial, so you can test out both GetResponse and Aweber and decide which one is best suited for your business.

In fact—I’d recommend you test out both of them before making the final decision.