What Exactly is GetResponse?

GetResponse is an all-in-one marketing platform which, as well as email marketing, offers landing pages, a CRM and advanced automations. I rank them pretty favorably due to their range of advanced features. Their entry plan is reasonably priced and they offer a generous discount to NGOs.

Getresponse is an email marketing app that allows you to:

• create a mailing list and capture data onto it
• create newsletters that can be sent to the subscribers on your mailing list
• automate your emails to subscribers via use of ‘autoresponders’
• view and analyse statistics related to your email marketing campaigns — open rate, click through, forwards etc.

Recently however, Getresponse has shifted its emphasis considerably: the product now aims be more of an ‘all-in-one’ marketing solution rather than just an email marketing tool.

Accordingly, in addition to email marketing, Getresponse now also provides e-commerce features, webinar hosting, landing pages and automated sales funnels.

Getresponse has been in business since 1998 and, according to the company, over 350,000 individuals and businesses now use the platform for their email marketing. Whilst this userbase is not as big as those for some other email marketing tools (notably Mailchimp), it is large enough to provide confidence that the company is well-established and is not likely to disappear any time soon.

GetResponse claim to be the easiest newsletter tool available, with a tonne of pro features. This is a big claim, especially as their prices are so competitive. The Polish-based company’s global reach extends to 182 countries, and claim to engage over 1 billion subscribers every month! That’s a lot of emails.

Feature-wise, they do boast a lot more than most other email marketing services. From simple A/B testing, to custom landing pages; comprehensive design testing to video email marketing.

GetResponse Pros and cons

Below you’ll find my overall summary of the pros and cons of using Getresponse.

Pros of using Getresponse

• So long as you are happy to use a ‘Basic’ plan, Getresponse is way cheaper than many of its key competitors (in certain cases, significantly so) whilst offering just as much, if not more functionality as them.
• The discounts you receive when paying upfront for one or two years of service are extremely generous — you’ll be hard pressed to find similar discounts from key competitors.
• The marketing automation functionality is truly excellent.
• Getresponse offers a great approach to data segmentation — it’s far more flexible on this front than many competing products, especially Mailchimp.
• Getresponse’s webinar functionality is a genuine USP — I haven’t come across this functionality on similar products.
• Its ‘Conversion Funnel’ feature is potentially useful for merchants who want to manage all aspects of their sales funnels and e-commerce activity under one roof.
• Its reporting features are awesomely comprehensive.
• Getresponse is transparent about deliverability rates, publishing figures on its website and providing deliverability statistics for the e-newsletters you send.
• All Getresponse plans come with a useful (if fiddly) landing page creator that facilitates A/B testing — something that could potentially save you a lot of money.
• Custom DKIM is provided on all plans.
• Support is provided in a wide variety of languages.
• You can try out all the Getresponse features free for 30 days without the need to enter credit card details.

Cons of using Getresponse

• Although you can use the Facebook pixel with Getresponse’s landing page feature, you can’t do so in a GDPR compliant way.
• The drag-and-drop interfaces for creating landing pages and forms are a bit fiddly and need improvement.
• Improvements could be made to how data capture forms work, so that users have the option to switch them on or off on mobile devices.
• There’s no 2-factor authentication at login.
• There’s a hard limit of 500 webinar attendees.

Recommendation: I Strongly Recommend Get Response to all Business owners and Internet Entrepreneurs. (It’s a tool they can hardly do without).

Pricing and Plans

GetResponse offers pricing for wide range of businesses. The least expensive plan is the $15-per-month email tier, which lets you contact up to 1,000 subscribers. Packages with access to the Autofunnel feature (more on that below) start at $49 per month with the Plus plan. A small business with 2,500 contacts in its marketing database would pay $25 per month for GetResponse, one of the lower prices we have seen in the space. This becomes an even better deal when you consider that GetResponse doesn't impose any email sending limits, which is becoming a common practice among email marketing services. The range of pricing is well-balanced and anticipates what startups or growth stage businesses would need in terms of marketing tools.

The Basic Plan scales up to a maximum of $450 per month for 100,000 contacts. Each plan is available on a month-to-month basis. If you sign up for an annual contract, then the price goes down 18 percent for all tiers. If you prepay for two years of service, then you get a 30 percent discount. Campaigner offers no such discount for annual sign-ups.

GetResponse's Professional plan, which we tested, begins at $99 per month for 5,000 subscribers and adds an unlimited webinars feature, unlimited landing pages, and marketing automation, which lets you create templates for emails based on customer actions like abandoning a shopping cart. The automation features also let you create workflows to send auto-responder emails based on actions like filling out a customer form. Automation can take some time and trial and error to set up but will reward businesses with opportunities to retain customers, push sales, and find ways to segment the audience.

The company offers Salesforce integration for customer relationship management (CRM) and the ability to run webinars to collect leads. A basic CRM feature allows for a customizable sales pipeline overview. When viewing the sales pipeline in Stage view, you can drag-and-drop deals between stages. Users can monitor deals and stages as well as add notes and reminders to other team members. Aligning with Salesforce is a huge benefit, specially for SMBs that are already on the path to adopting a leading CRM platform solution.

GetResponse supports multiple users on an account should you need log-ins for employees or freelancers, or should you need to do email marketing for multiple clients. The first five user accounts are $20 per month, and additional users are $5 per month. In addition, the free trial offering has been expanded from 250 to 1,000 contacts, which is a big deal. An updated inbox preview tool gives the option to see what subscribers will see with the updated inbox preview tool before emails are sent.

GetResponse offers WordPress integration. The feature lets you create a landing page in the GetResponse landing page editor, then select a page in WordPress, assign your directory name and then publish the page. By integrating your landing page with WordPress, you can build webinar and promotion pages as well as use pop-ups to generate more conversations. In addition to WordPress, GetResponse also now integrates with the e-commerce platforms Magento and PrestaShop so e-commerce data can be imported into GetResponse so users can do advanced segmentation.

Sign-up is simple. You just provide your email address and name, and GetResponse sends you an activation email with a blue button labeled "Activate My Account." Once you click the verification link, you continue the registration, providing your mobile phone number so you can receive a verification code by text. Menu options in the Quick Actions tab at left are easily accessible. Options include Create Form, Create Newsletter, Create landing page, Add contacts, and Create Autoresponder.