ActiveCampaign Vs GetResponse: Calling this comparison “The clash of the titans” won’t be an understatement. GetResponse and ActiveCampaign are two of the best-selling platforms in the email marketing industry and have made lives easier for many email marketers out there.
To present you with this exhaustive comparison, we have substantially experienced and evaluated every major value proposition that matters. We have a clear winner, but for that, you must read the article thoroughly to understand the nuances of both platforms as we delve into the details.
Before moving ahead, let me point out that both platforms have some similarities and some definite differences. We have tried to mention the basics right away.
For instance, both providers go a long way in ensuring your email campaign’s success. However, the devil lies in the details as some email marketers amongst you might find ActiveCampaign’s reporting and analytics suite to have an extra edge coupled with its advanced marketing automation when compared to what GetResponse has to offer.
As I said earlier, deciding the clear winner is up to you, as each platform has something unique to offer. This comparison will only help make a better informed and hence, intelligent decision.
As you read along, both providers offer free trials, so in case you want to try it yourself, you are in luck.
Similarities between ActiveCampaign and GetResponse
For instance, ActiveCampaign is a boon if you are looking for workflow automation, as the platform’s forte lets you create customized workflows based on a number of parameters. Another advantage of ActiveCampaign is the ease of connecting with your valued customers through various mediums. It also lets you create interactive landing pages and run campaigns right from the CRM software.
On the contrary, GetResponse has special email marketing features for growing businesses. The email provider has some clever email marketing software tricks up its sleeve to help you create a sales funnel, organize a webinar, build websites, and more. You can pick the features based on your campaign’s needs.
Differences between the two email service providers
- As stated above, GetResponse has an in-built webinar software, while you will have to rely on third-party integration when working with ActiveCampaign.
- While you can create landing pages on GetResponse, ActiveCampaign does not offer this feature at all.
- ActiveCampaign does not integrate e-commerce through its landing pages (sell goods and accept payments). However, this is not the case with GetResponse.
Now that we have discussed the noticeable similarities and differences between the two of the best email service providers let’s delve deeper and find out which one emerges as the better option at last.
Activecampaign vs Getresponse: How do both platforms stack against each other
Let’s see how ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse fare against each other in a direct and comprehensive comparison.
| Feature | ActiveCampaign | GetResponse |
| Personalization | Yes | Yes |
| Webinars | No | Yes |
| Available storage for media and data | Unlimited | 1 GB |
| Facebook Ads | Only via integration | Yes |
| Access to 24*7 customer support | No | Yes |
| No. of languages for dashboard | 20+ | 14 |
| Social ads creator | No | Yes |
| Stock photos | Yes | More than 2 million |
| Newsletter editor | Yes | Yes |
| Funnels for conversion | No | Yes |
| Integrations | Yes | Yes |
| SMS support | Yes | Yes |
| Push notification for web | No | Yes |
| Google Ads | No | Yes |
| Entry level pricing | $9.00 per month | First 500 contacts are free |
| MMS Marketing | Unavailable | Yes |
| Calendaring | Yes | Unavailable |
| Budgeting | Yes | No |
| Social Listening | Yes | Unavailable |
| Sandbox / Test Environments | Yes | Unavailable |
User Convenience
One quick review of both platforms and you’ll realize that ease of use has been the central focal point while creating both of them. You don’t need to be a seasoned professional to get acquainted with the navigation of either ActiveCampaign or GetResponse.
Setting up the test campaign is a quick process that shouldn’t take you more than an hour. However, when it comes to comparing the user interfaces of both platforms, ActiveCampaigns slightly aces ahead with cleaner and more welcoming design language and layout for faster implementation.
Both the automation platforms offer features such as the drag-and-drop email builder. It comes very handy, especially for the less familiar ones, since it takes away a large part of designing the emails manually. You just need to pick the right template and keep adding other elements as per your requirement.
Email Automation
Email marketing automation is where it all comes down to. The ability to send emails automatically draws the line between a sustaining and a successful email marketing campaign.
It helps you define and channel your sales funnel to navigate your leads accordingly and eventually make a sale.
Email automation is one of the decisive factors when it comes to the efficiency, effectiveness and revenue of a campaign. Let’s see how both the service providers stack up against each other in apple to apple comparison.
Talking about ActiveCampaign, the platform offers many interesting and convenient features, such as the drag-and-drop automation workflow builder.
ActiveCampaign simplifies the funnel creation process, and the integrated automation map tool helps you visualize things in the form of a flowchart with assistance.
The automation map tool provides you with a bird’s eye view of your entire automation workflow in one place. Since you can review the entire automation workflow, it gives a clear idea of any possible hindrance providing you with enough time to correct the course.
A trigger initiates an automation workflow where you can put various conditions, actions and other crucial elements. ActiveCampaign lets you play with notes, contacts, platform-specific audiences, and beyond.
For a more detailed penetration and tracking of the user behavior, you can always rely on Activecampaign’s advanced site tracking features. Not just that, goal setting and reviewing is also a cakewalk with Activecampaign’s email marketing automation tool, which eventually helps you track and transform your email marketing endeavors accordingly.
On the other hand, GetResponse also comes equipped with a host of features to get your email campaign off the mark.
There are various domains in which these tools are offered, such as funnels, leads, sales, CRM, etc. They all come in handy while designing the funnel of your choice.
The algorithm generates the steps and the eventual user journey for you. This is where the difference between GetResponse and ActiveCampaign becomes more evident, as the former relies heavily on pre-fabricated templates for funnel creation which are not only handy at the last minute but also save a ton of crucial decision-making time.
Many diverse options are available for sales funnel creation, the major being the quick sales funnel and full sales funnel. As the name suggests, quick funnels don’t contain a specific landing page, whereas full sales funnels carry extra steps and include various layers of information for a cohesive and complete user experience for email marketers.
However, these ‘pre-fabricated’ templates might save you some time and, eventually, money, but they hinder you from having the liberty of having your own customized automation workflow.
Email Editing
Having a user-friendly and well-integrated email editor is an essential part of any marketing platforms. A lot of time goes into editing and fine-tuning those heavily worked-upon emails; hence, a good one can make all the difference.
Let’s compare the editors of ActiveCampaign and GetResponse and figure out which one you should opt for.
One key element that’s deeply integrated into ActiveCampaign’s every aspect is user-friendliness, and their editor is no different. Within a few minutes of usage, you’ll find it to be highly intuitive with the specialized ‘drag-and-drop’ interface.
The tool lets you start by simply picking up a template and personalizing it as per your email campaign’s needs. You can choose from around 125 templates which are primarily segregated between B2B and B2C recipients.
They are further divided into categories such as cart abandonment emails , conference, travel, hospitality, and many more. These are responsive templates, i.e., they can be viewed on any device.
The tool lets you integrate various elements into your emails, such as media (images, GIFs, and videos), YouTube embeds, and much more. It also allows you to create from the beginning using HTML.
If you opt for ActiveCampaign’s more premium pricing plans, you can avail of the predictive content blocks. Based on the previous user behavior pattern, the tool’s prediction model picks up the template which will fetch the best results.
This feature is very beneficial during the email testing phase as it lets you create multiple sets of the same email with different content, CTAs, and beyond.
Where the basics are concerned, you can expect similar things from GetResponse’s email editor. This includes a drag-and-drop interface with all the major content blocks.
There is a plethora of templates catering to various aspects and user touch points of your email campaign, right from welcoming the recipients to promoting your offers in front of them.
If you want to opt for the simpler route, you can choose from column-styled emails. Not just that, you can craft your own template right from the beginning as well. You can name these templates and sort them accordingly to form your own personalized library.
Contrary to ActiveCampaign, GetResponse provides you with great versatility and focus on the email’s layouts and sections, thus making designing the flow a breeze. You can simply shuffle between the blocks, arrange them and save them as templates to be later reiterated in the block format for your next campaigns.
You must note, though, that this versatility comes at the cost of some intuitiveness, as the GetResponse user interface relies more on the sidebar editor.
However, as it’s the case with ActiveCampaign, GetResponse also enables you to edit images right on the platform. You can do basic photo editing such as cropping, resizing, adding filters, and more. One distinct advantage of GetResponse is the platform’s offering of over 5K royalty-free images to use while designing your email campaign.
It might seem a small feature, but it surely comes proves to be a big leverage as high-quality images are key to creating visually-appealing campaigns.
It depends on what exactly you are looking for and which platform suits your email campaign’s need better. In a nutshell, both email service providers have unique features with distinct advantages when it comes to email editing.
While ActiveCapaign is convenient for adding text to your emails, GetResponse is intuitive and offers a wide range of themes and media while making layout creation a relatively easier process.
Segmentation
Segmentation is the practice of segregating your subscribers (or just recipients) into dedicated, focused groups. Multiple factors govern the division of these recipients, such as demographics (age, location, gender, occupation, and beyond.)
Email segmentation helps in fine-tuning your email campaign and delivering messages that are more effective and efficient. Personalized emails largely generate higher sales numbers, and segmentation lies at the core of it.
Let’s see what both email marketing service providers have to offer when it comes to segmentation:
Segmentation flexibility and ActiveCampaign go hand in hand. The platform offers a highly customizable segmentation framework that lets you deep dive into your recipients and comb through them based on some really effective parameters.
One example of ActiveCampaign’s intuitiveness is its ability to combine custom fields with email lists and tags. You can create as many combinations as per the need of your email campaign to create highly targeted lists.
There are other usual parameters on offer based on the touch points and user behavior, such as abandoned carts, placed orders, and more. The ace in ActiveCampaign’s pack of tricks is its prowess in applying 20 conditions in each segment.
This feature alone creates a whole new world of possibility for an email marketer as they can now create an extremely focused list and target their audience with high precision even when dealing with thousands of recipients in their database.
ActiveCampaign has a reasonably simple segment-creation process. All you need to do is perform the advanced search on the list of your subscribers and put a condition.
Once the algorithm has filtered as per the search, you can further fine-tune your search with AND/OR logic or by using other parameters. When you combine these two, a segment is formed. Similarly, the automation builder lets you create segments, and that too in an intuitive manner.
GetResponse’s segmentation feature is also considerably flexible. The platform lets you categorize your recipients with tags and scores. You can further create a segment based on how they behave and engage after receiving your email. Custom data fields can also be added to group the contacts further.
There are some convenient and well-thought-out filters when it comes to advanced search in GetResponse. For instance, lead generation can be further broken down to open rates, unsubscribes, spam reports, and other crucial factors.
Such factors prove to be a tremendous target-setting advantage while bifurcating the recipient list. GetResponse offers dynamics segment updates whenever the requirements are altered. It can also help you further by automating the engagement score assignment process as per the required metrics.
Reporting and Analytics
Data drives digital. You can only correct what you can measure. These two statements have redefined the paradigm for every email marketer out there.
Though skillsets have their fair share of importance, hit and trial also make for a large chunk of the insight-gaining exercise. This hit-and-trial methodology is reiterated further until it becomes a tried and tested tactic that eventually delivers better results with each attempt.
The process of reiterating and improvising the email marketing strategy largely depends on reporting and analytics. Knowing what worked is one thing, but knowing what didn’t work is another superpower in its own right.
With frequent technological advancements, both email service providers leverage data to provide you with actionable insights to help you better your email campaign’s results.
ActiveCampaign, as well as GetResponse, allow access to crucial parameters such as email click-through rates, unsubscribe rates, and much more. However, there are some differences in their offerings as well. Let’s have a look at them:
One of the key advantages of using ActiveCampaign is that it lets you quantify customer loyalty which in turn helps you keep track of new and recurring customers as part of your email marketing endeavors.
It gives you the edge to correct the course of action in case your email campaign falls short of the desired targets. Another major convenience is the platform’s ability to let you track down the user’s journey.
Various attributes laid across the multiple touch points of your brand can be monitored with ActiveCampaign so that you have a clear idea of which part of your email campaign is churning out the most results.
It further enables you to focus more on the high-performing aspects and yield better results. When it comes to reporting, you can access numerous forms of data offering you a bird’s eye view of the entire email campaign, such as automation, site, landing e-commerce, and much more.
When it comes to reporting, ActiveCampaign provides you with the option to generate customized reports consisting of the most crucial metrics of your email campaign.
Not just that, ActiveCampaign also lets you do A/B testing the automation sets based on various factors such as email copy, subject line, timing, demographics, and many more. You can set the tests per your requirements and run the A/B tests.
GetResponse also presents you with some neat features. For instance, it lets you draw a comprehensive and conclusive comparison between two campaigns.
This level of clarity in insights helps you pinpoint the exact email links in your campaign and let you deduce what worked and what did not. The reporting also extends to interesting aspects of your email campaign, such as the most successful subscription models, your email campaign’s average subscription rates, subscriber demographics, and much more.
GetResponse’s one distinct advantage as an email service provider is the offering of activity and post-delivery reports. As the name suggests, post-delivery reports help you with insights once your email has been delivered, while activity reports keep track of subscribers and their subscription patterns and behavior.
Designing options
Giving your email the desired form and function is the primary goal of every email marketer. Talking about the templates, both ActiveCampaign and GetResponse provide you with enough options from their respective libraries.
However, contrary to GetResponse’s claim of 500+ templates, the quality ones are quite less. You still end up with a pretty substantial number of templates to choose from. On the other hand, ActiveCampaign offers around 250 templates catering to various themes. Both providers offer mobile-responsive templates.
If you are looking for email design customization, then you can always rely on HTML builders that both platforms come integrated with. You can simply create or include your own HTML templates.
Email Templates
One of the most sought-after things email marketers look for on such platforms is email templates. Both providers have covered their basics extensively with one or two specific advantages.
Talking about GetResponse, the platform offers templates crafted specifically for their in-house GetResponse New Email Creator. As mentioned before, all these templates are mobile-responsive. GetResponse’s library consists of some well-thought-out templates that you can adapt as per your campaign and run a successful email campaign.
For added convenience, these templates are categorized under various domains such as travel, e-commerce, holidays, announcement, promotions, and beyond. You can simply pick a template and customize it with the drag-and-drop builder.
ActiveCampaign has a similar offering when compared to GerResponse. Even with a lesser number of templates, you are likely to find a suitable template according to your requirement.
These templates are also mobile-friendly and can be easily customized with the drag-and-drop builder like the one GetResponse comes equipped with. However, you may find Activecampaign’s template to be a bit outdated since their library is not as frequently updated as GetResponse’s.
Deliverability
Probably the worst nightmare of any email marketer is their email not showing up in front of the right set of eyeballs. Those emails might land up in the promotions, updates, or, even worse, spam folder.
Delivery percentages are obsolete in most cases as they need more information on why the emails are getting delivered at the right place at the right time.
Most email marketers tend to look for the fault in their stars while the problem might be at the receiver’s end. Low email deliverability doesn’t question your EMS’s credibility; hence, you should focus on what matters most to amplify the deliverability rate.
DKIM authentication is one of the foremost things you should check. It is a credible factor to authenticate that your emails actually carry some value for the recipient and should not be considered spam or promotional emails.
GetResponse and ActiveCampaign come equipped with DKIM authentication. Once you have activated it, your deliverability is most likely to rise.
Once the DKIM activation is in place, it’s time to review your email service provider’s anti-spam policy. No email marketer would want account termination after putting so much effort into designing an email campaign.
Hence, having a firewall right at our end will always be better than shooting emails in the dark and being marked spam. GetResponse performed much better in the filter test when compared to ActiveCampaign and filtered out every spam email consistently.
The latter let some spammy email flow which was not the case with GetResponse.
Having a dedicated IP address is the most robust practice to get your emails delivered and eventually amplify your deliverability rate. Both email service providers offer dedicated IP addresses. However, this feature is only included in their most expensive variants.
Landing Pages
Landing pages are the defining paradigm of email campaign. They prove to be a great data acquisition tool while offering some additional value to the visitors. There’s a landing page for every campaign, be it promotions, awareness, announcements, or a new launch.
Let’s compare GetResponse vs ActiveCampaigns’ offerings related to landing pages:
ActiveCampaign
As it’s the theme with other features of ActiveCampaign; customizability is also the mainstay of landing pages. With over 50 highly customizable templates you can further edit and eventually create your own library, ActiveCampaign has a lot to offer.
The platform’s landing page editor is well-equipped and features the intuitive drag-and-drop functionality to change the form and function of the landing page as per the email campaign’s requirement.
You can easily place, remove and resize elements on the page to attain the desired visual appeal. With the option to tweak the background, shadows, and opacity, ActiveCampaign’s landing page editor truly takes the editing game to the next level.
There is a wide range of elements available to include on the landing page, like subscription forms, payment buttons, Shopify gateway, and much more.
Not just that, it also allows you to fine-tune the landing pages and make them responsive to be viewed on any device and edit them accordingly.
However, it should be noted that landing page creation and editing can only be accessed with the expensive plans of ActiveCampaign. Hence, it might prove to be a bit heavy on the pocket if landing pages heavily drive your email campaigns.
GetResponse has a different approach as far as landing pages are concerned. The platform gives you access to over 200 customizable landing page templates, and that too, right from the least expensive or basic plans.
These templates are further categorized based on the occasion and audience. The editor is coupled with convenient editing options such as reshaping and replacing the elements along with access to stock photographs.
Registration Forms
One of the key differentiators between GetResponse and ActiveCampaign is registration forms. While GetResponse offers you a plethora of registration form templates to choose from and even gives you the option to make your own, ActiveCampaign doesn’t offer anything close.
However, you get various form types while opting for ActiveCampaign. On the other hand, GetResponse only provides you with standard forms.
With GetResponse, you have the choice to embed forms in your own website, or GetResponse can host them for you. Even its form builder is an intuitive tool with multiple options to edit a page which is not quite the case with ActiveCampaign. However, both platforms let you create and add custom fields to the form.
Spam, Design Testing, and Previews
GetResponse offers inbox testing where you can review the design in multiple browsers and a wide variety of devices. The spam score varies from 0-5 and determines the probability of your email being marked as spam.
ActiveCampaign, on the other hand, follows a more binary approach. It only reveals ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ and does not let you determine and correct (if needed) the governing factors. However, the platform provides you with an option to preview the email campaign you created for various clients, but you have to pay a premium fee to avail of that feature.
Facebook and Google ads
Given the intrusion of social media into almost all forms of marketing, email marketing has also become dependent on the former. Nowadays, email service provider’s capabilities are also judged by their prowess to simplify the whole procedure of Facebook and Google ads. And that too without creating much of a fuss.
Facebook, being one of the largest ad platforms, holds much importance for every email marketer out there. It offers highly filtered demographics for precise targeting and effective results. To leverage this ability, both email service providers offer solutions to make your job easier. Let’s have a look:
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The Social Ads Creator app from GetResponse enables you to create highly aesthetic ads with ease and intuitiveness. The drag-and-drop toll does not take long to get familiar with.
Talking about setting up Google Ads, the process just requires you to integrate your existing Google Ads account and then set the target demographics and specific ad budget as per your email campaign’s requirements. You are all set to go! Once you have designed the ad, it’s time to get the ball rolling and publish it.
On the other hand, Active Campaign does not provide you the liberty of launching Google or Facebook Ads from the platform itself. However, you may edit your Facebook Custom Audience contact list right from the dashboard.
Integrations And Extras
When it comes to integrations, both platforms offer Zapier integration for better workflow automation. However, Active campaign’s own SMS marketing system offers the platform a distinct advantage.
You will find similar integrations in both the providers on a broader overview, such as CRMS, e-commerce, etc. However, upon close comparison, ActiveCampaign offerings become far more apparent as it provides better integration options when compared to GetResponse.
Pricing
Here’s how the different plans of ActiveCampaign pricing and GetResponse pricing stack against each other based on their pricing:
| ActiveCampaign | GetResponse |
| Lite: $9/month | Free Plan (500 contacts) |
| Plus: $49/month | Email Marketing (1000 Contacts) Starts at $13.30 |
| Professional: $149/month | Marketing Automation (1000 Contacts Per Month) Starting at $41.30 |
| Enterprise: On-demand | E-commerce Marketing (1000 Contacts Per Month) Starting at $83.30 |
| Marketing Automation+Sales CRM Bundle (Plus) $93.00 (5 User Seats Per Month) | Max: On-demand |
| Marketing Automation + Sales CRM Bundle (Professional) $386.00 (10 User Seats Per Month) | MAX²: On-demand |
| Free Trial: Available | Free Trial: Available |
Conclusion
It all boils down to this, isn’t it? Which one is better or even the best email service provider out there? Well, if you have come this far, chances are that we would have already helped you make up your mind. If not, then let’s briefly summarize what we have learned so far about two of the most profound and prudent email platforms.
To begin with, both GetResponse and ActiveCampaign are very effective, efficient, and evolved marketing tools. They not only help you with automating your workflow and churning email campaigns faster and better, instead they also help an email marketer amplify the impact of any email campaign.
The bigger the impact your campaign makes, the deeper you connect with your leads and eventual customers, and meanwhile, this cohesive ecosystem of automated marketing funnels grows your business.
Coming down to straight facts, one has to be better than the other. That’s the whole point of this blog. Well, even as we decide on a winner, it’s still up to you to pick your desired one because of your specific needs and the platform’s ability to fulfill them effectively.
GetResponse is affordable, and one distinct feature is the ability to host webinars. It creates a seamless ecosystem of email marketing and CRM, adding a flair of convenience.
However, if you can do without webinars or landing pages, then look no further than ActiveCampaign. The intelligent and intuitive marketing solutions provide you with unmatched reach and connectivity with your subscribers.
The added flexibility in pricing and operational aspects gives ActiveCampaign an unbeatable advantage, considering the most common use-case scenarios of most email marketers.
Better deliverability, reporting, analytics, convenience, ease of use, and flexibility are some of the key pointers that make ActiveCamapign our choice of the email service provider.
However, if you still want to try your hand at GetResponse, you may opt for their 30-day free trial offer and see what suits you best.
If you still need help in selecting an esp then get in touch with InboxArmy, we are one of the top email marketing agencies in USA. You can also check our esp migration services.
