GetResponse Review (2024): Features, Details, Pros, Cons, & More

GetResponse is one of the most popular email marketing and campaign management platforms on the market, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right choice for every business. To help you figure out whether it’s a good fit for you, we’ve put together this complete GetResponse review. 

We signed up for the platform ourselves and put it to the test to find out what it has to offer, how it stacks up against the competition, and whether or not it lives up to its claim of being ‘the world’s easiest email marketing software.

We’ll be taking a deep dive into all of GetResponse’s main features, weighing up the pros and cons, discussing pricing, and answering all of the questions you need answers to before signing up. 

Finally, we’ll be giving you our verdict of whether or not it’s worth the investment, and who – if anyone – we’d recommend it to.

Ready? Let’s get started!

What Is GetResponse?

GetResponse is best known as an email marketing tool – but it’s so much more than that. The company has been around for a long time. It was first founded back in 1998, initially as a ‘smart autoresponder’ tool. 

They grew quickly from there and branched out by adding email templates and various other email marketing features. By 2010, they’d become one of the most popular email marketing platforms.

A little over a decade later, and GetResponse has completely transitioned to a true all-in-one marketing platform with a complete suite of versatile marketing tools, including automation workflows, a landing page builder, SMS marketing features, sign-up forms, webinars, and much more.

Now, GetResponse aims to be a complete campaign management and online marketing solution, rather than a dedicated email marketing tool. You can use it to set up lead magnets and grow your mailing list, send out newsletters, create sophisticated automations, and even build your whole website from scratch.

To date, GetResponse has helped over 350,000 customers in 183 countries to manage their online campaigns. Those customers include some of the biggest brands and organizations, such as Hilton, Ikea, and UNESCO.

GetResponse Pricing

GetResponse offers four different paid plans, plus a Free Forever plan. The cost of each paid plan depends on how many people are on your mailing list. The more subscribers you have; the higher the cost. 

Note: Prices are monthly and based on a 12-month billing period. GetResponse prices may change over time, and this table may not always be accurate. Make sure you check prices on the official site before you sign up. For more information on the new Free Forever plan, go here.

As you can see, GetResponse is affordable if your list is small, but it gets very expensive if you have hundreds of thousands of subscribers. The Max plan is a custom-made solution, which means you’ll have to get in touch with the GetResponse for a quote based on your requirements.

Comparing the Plans

Every paid GetResponse plan includes the following basic features:

• Basic email marketing tools (access to the visual email builder and predesigned email templates so you can create and send newsletters, A/B testing, Google Analytics tracking, etc.)
• Website and landing page builder tools
• The ability to set up autoresponder series and welcome emails
• Signup forms

However, there are certain advanced/premium features that are only available for customers on higher-priced plans.

Here are the main differences between the different pricing tiers that you should know about:

• Marketing automation. Basic automation templates are included in the Basic plan but to unlock the full power of automations and build them from scratch, you’ll need to upgrade to Plus or above.
• Webinars. You can only create and host webinars on GetResponse if you sign up for the Plus plan or above. There are different caps on the number of attendees you can have on each plan (100 on Plus, 300 on Professional, and 1,0000 on Max). On-demand and paid webinars are only available on Pro and Max plans.
• Team members. If you’re a solopreneur and plan on managing your campaigns all by yourself, the Basic plan may be sufficient. However, if you want to need to give additional team members access, you’ll need a higher-priced plan. You can add 3 extra users on Plus, 5 on Professional, and up to 500 on Max.
• Sales funnels. The Basic plan caps you at just one sales funnel. You can have unlimited sales funnels on the Plus plan and above.
• Segmentation. Simple list segmentation based on contact details, geolocation, etc., is available to Basic plan users. However, more advanced list segmentation based on things like events, tagging, and contact scoring are only available to Plus plan customers and above.
• Dedicated IP address and support. Only Max plan customers get access to a dedicated support line and IP address.
• Abandoned cart recovery. While basic eCommerce features are included on lower-priced plans, automated abandoned cart recovery is only available on the Professional plan or above.

The NEW GetResponse Free Plan

In addition to the paid plans we’ve talked about above, GetResponse recently also started offering a Free Forever plan.

It’s fairly limited and doesn’t include any premium features, like marketing automation, autoresponders, or list segmentation. However, it does include the core email marketing features, templates, website builder, and landing page builder.

It also only lets you build and host 1 landing page, adds GetResponse branding to all your newsletters, and only supports up to 500 contacts, so you’ll outgrow it quickly. 

When you’re ready to upgrade, you can try out the premium features with a 30-day free trial (no credit card required).

GetResponse Features

As we mentioned earlier, GetResponse has shifted its focus in recent years and now aims to be an all-in-one campaign management solution. As such, it has an extensive feature set compared to some of its competitors in the email marketing space.

Here’s everything you need to know about all of the main features GetResponse has to offer.

Email Marketing Autoresponder

Autoresponders are an essential part of a complete email marketing strategy and can help you to nurture leads and maximize conversions. 

They’re essentially automated email sequences that are sent out to individual subscribers based on time (e.g. after a set number of days, weeks, months) or in response to a particular event (e.g. opens, clicks, transactions). 

For example, you could set up autoresponders to:

• Send out a welcome email to greet new subscribers whenever someone opts into your list
• Follow up a week or two later with relevant content to nurture them and guide them further down your sales funnel
• Send them special offers after a set amount of time when they’re ready to buy
• Automatically share new blog posts with your subscribers when you publish them or as part of a daily, weekly, or monthly digest.

You get the idea. GetResponse was originally designed as a dedicated autoresponder tool, and it’s still a market leader in the space, with one of the most comprehensive autoresponder functions out there.

Setting up autoresponders in GetResponse is easy. From your dashboard, click Create autoresponder. On the next page, you can tweak your settings by choosing when you want the message to go out.

Once you’ve done that, set the from and to address, write a subject line, design your message using a premade template, and you’re done! Easy, right?

Marketing Automation

Autoresponders are fine for basic drip campaigns, but if you want to create more complex and sophisticated email sequences, you’ll need to build your own custom automations. Fortunately, GetResponse provides the tools you need to do just that.

Using the intuitive drag and drop automation builder, you can map out the entire customer journey and create complete workflows and sales funnels from scratch (only available on Plus plans or higher).

It’s super easy to use. You just connect up conditions with actions to tell GetResponse, “if X condition is met, then do Y action.” In doing so, you can map out the entire user journey and take different segments of your customers on different paths.

Email Templates

Like many other email marketing platforms, GetResponse comes with a powerful email builder and a catalog of 120 professionally-designed email templates. 

All templates are fully-responsive, editable, and very well-made. You can browse through them by your campaign goal (i.e. sell, promote, welcome, educate, etc.), and there’s something to fit pretty much any type of email you can think of. 

For example, there are templates for Black Friday promotional emails, Happy Birthday templates, templates to announce new product launches, and templates for every major holiday in the calendar. 

Once you’ve selected a template, you can customize it by adding, removing, or rearranging sections and blocks.

You can edit fonts, text size, colors, and backgrounds, plus add images, videos, buttons, product tables, and much more. If there’s a particular element you use frequently in your emails, you can save it as a custom block, so you don’t have to edit it from scratch every time. 

Once you’re done customizing the design, you can see how it’ll look on both desktop and mobile (or compare both side-by-side) on the preview screen. 

Email Broadcasts, Split Testing, and Perfect Timing

GetResponse makes it easy to set up email broadcasts and optimize them for maximum engagement. 

When you create a newsletter, you can choose to Send immediately or schedule it for later. If you choose to schedule it for later, you have the option to turn on Perfect timing or Time travel.

Time travel is a really useful feature if you’re targeting international subscribers. It delays emails for each individual recipient to ensure it hits their inbox at the specified time in the recipient’s local time, regardless of where they are in the world. 

Perfect timing is even better. Instead of relying on arbitrary times, it uses historical data to automatically work out the optimal time window to email each of your subscribers (i.e. the time window in which they’re most likely to open and click your emails). It’ll then delay your broadcasts for individual recipients to ensure it hits their inbox at the best possible time.

Aside from the above, GetResponse also provides you with other tools to optimize your email campaigns. For example, you can use the split testing feature to send out multiple variations of your emails and compare the performance. 

GetResponse lets you run split tests with up to five variations at once. However, it doesn’t support Multivariate testing, so you can’t change both subject line and content in the same test – you have to pick one or the other. 

Email Deliverability

GetResponse claims to have an impressive deliverability rate of over 99% (that’s the percentage of emails that reach the recipients’ inbox, on average). 

Obviously, we don’t have access to the data ourselves, so we can’t confirm the accuracy of that claim, but based on what we do know (we’ll get to that in a moment), it’s probably accurate.

First off, we know that GetResponse has a strict zero-tolerance to spam and actively suspends accounts that don’t follow best practices and abuse the system to maintain their domain reputation.

This matters because GetResponse users send emails from a shared IP address, which means the emails you send will be coming from the same domain as other senders. The greater the sender reputation of the shared IP, the higher the deliverability rate. 

We actually tested the sender reputation of GetResponse ourselves by plugging their IP addresses into SenderScore. 

As you can see, they scored in the high-90s across the board, which is excellent (anything above 80 is ‘great’ and can help ensure preferential treatment from mailbox providers).

GetResponse also gets bonus points for providing users with the deliverability rate of each email they send on their analytics dashboard.

Reporting and Analytics

GetResponse offers one of the most full-featured reporting and analytics tools of any email marketing software. You can keep track of all the most important email metrics (open rates, CTR, unsubscribes, web event tracking, etc.) from the Reports page.

There are also some more advanced reporting features that make GetResponse stand out from its competitors, such as:

• Automated reporting. Get reports delivered straight to your inbox at regular intervals.
• Conversion tracking. Install a tracking code on your website, and GetResponse will track signups and sales that come through your email links. 
• Individual user data. In addition to giving you a birds-eye view of all the important data, GetResponse also enables you to zoom in and look at specific subscribers. You can find out where they signed up, which emails they’ve opened, the region they’re from, the email clients they use, and more.
• Campaign comparisons. Open up a side-by-side view of your campaign data to compare their performance at a glance.

Conversion Funnels

Conversion Funnels is one of GetResponse’s most powerful features. It takes it from a standard email marketing platform to a complete eCommerce marketing solution.

You can use Conversion Funnels to build your list, sell more products, set up a lead magnet, run ad campaigns, and more, all from your GetResponse dashboard. 

All you have to do is open the Create dropdown and click Create funnel. From there, you can choose what you want your funnel to do by selecting any of the ready-made campaigns. 

GetResponse will then guide you through the process of setting everything up from start to finish. 

If you choose to set up a lead magnet funnel, it’ll prompt you to upload your lead magnet or choose one of the assets already provided, then create your sign-up page, download page, and welcome email.

Landing Pages

Unlike most email marketing services, GetResponse also comes with hundreds of pre-designed landing page templates and a landing page editor tool. 

You can use this to set up squeeze pages for your email campaigns without having to rely on an expensive third-party tool like Leadpages, Instapage, or Unbounce.

The templates are all professionally designed and look great.

You can organize them by category or campaign goal (i.e. promotion pages, thank-you pages, download pages) and choose one that fits your needs, or alternatively, start from a blank slate and build your landing page from scratch.

However, the landing page creator itself leaves a lot to be desired. The interface feels a little clunky, and it’s not nearly as powerful or flexible as dedicated landing page builders like Elementor. 

That being said, there were a few things about it that we liked. The ability to create multiple variants within the builder and tab between them was pretty neat and helps with setting up split testing.

It’s also very easy to use. The limited number of blocks to choose from keeps things simple so beginners won’t feel overwhelmed.

If you want more flexibility and you’re confident in dabbling with code, you can also tweak the HTML, though doing so can prevent you from making any further changes in the editor. 

Related: Top Landing Page Builders of 2024

Website Builder

One of GetResponse’s newest features is its integrated website builder. 

You can now build your entire site within GetResponse using a drag-and-drop editor.

Start from a ready-made website template and customize it or answer a few questions and let the AI-powered builder generate your site for you.

The website builder interface is similar to the landing page creator. It’s easy to use (you can edit everything on the front end and see changes to your site in real-time) but isn’t very flexible.

You have to work within GetResponse’s parameters, so you don’t have as much control as you would if you built your site on WordPress. 

Websites built with GetResponse also don’t seem to load as quickly as I’d have liked. Given that loading speed is one of the most important Google ranking factors following the Page Experience update, this can greatly impact your SEO efforts.

At the moment, I wouldn’t recommend building your entire store on GetResponse unless you just want something really simple. If you want to build a full-fledged eCommerce store or blog, I’d stick with a platform like Shopify or WordPress/WooCommerce. 

Webinars

GetResponse comes with in-built support for webinars right out of the box. You can use webinars to help generate more leads and revenue for your business. 

You can use the platform to:

• Set up your own webinar URL
• Choose your subscription settings
• Create a registration page
• Send out invitations using pre-built, professional-designed email invitation templates that are automatically populated with the details.

Live Chat for Your Customers

GetResponse now includes a live chat function, which you can use to offer real-time support to your customers, collect more leads, and drive more sales.

You can add a live chat widget directly to landing pages built in GetResponse in one click or, alternatively, integrate GetResponse Chats with your own website by pasting in a code snippet. You can even add a chat button to your emails!

The chat window is fully customizable, so you can add your own brand colors and logo. 

The great thing about live chat is that it allows you to field customer queries 24/7. While you’re offline, your chat widget can continue to collect leads and field queries for you.

If you download the mobile app, you’ll receive notifications whenever you receive a new query so you can respond as soon as possible.

Not only that, but you can even apply tags to your contacts based on their chat history, which can help you to execute more personalized campaigns. 

Integrations

GetResponse aims to be an all-in-one solution, but if you want to hook it up with other tools in your marketing stack, you can. 

There are over 150 supported integrations, including WordPress, Shopify, Google Analytics integration, Zapier, Salesforce, Amazon Payments, Zoho, and many more. you can browse the full list here)

GetResponse also provides a developer-friendly API that you can use to integrate the platform with your own apps. 

Forms and Data Management

Sign Up Forms

Creating awesome opt-in forms is key to a successful campaign. Fortunately, GetResponse makes creating forms easy by providing users with a catalog of fully-customizable form templates.

You can add your own custom fields or just include the standard fields and add the forms you build to your site via Javascript or HTML. All forms are very customizable: you can add your own custom fields, change the fonts, enable or disable the CAPTCHA, and more.

One feature that’s missing (which we’d have liked to see) is the ability to disable pop-up forms on specific devices like smartphones. 

If you want to get around this, or you’d prefer to have even more control over the look of your forms, you can always use a third-party tool like Gravity Forms to build your sign-up forms and then add them to your landing pages on GetResponse instead.

List Segmenting

GetResponse offers powerful list segmentation features. You can segment your contacts based on all kinds of conditions, including things like demographic data, tags, lead score, events, etc.

Once you’ve divided up your list, you can send emails out to multiple segments at once. For example, if you have 4 segments in your list and only want to send out an email to 3 of them, you can exclude the fourth.

This is something other platforms like Mailchimp and Aweber can’t do. 

Just bear in mind that some segmentation features (e.g. lead scoring and segmentation based on events) aren’t available on all plans. Make sure you check what’s included with each plan before you sign up.

GDPR

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is an EU privacy law that came into effect in 2018. It includes specific rules and requirements about handling user data and acquiring and logging user consent for things like cookies. 

It’s important to stay compliant with GDPR if you want to avoid fines. GetResponse makes this easier by providing a Consent fields tool.

You can use this tool to create fields that you can use to collect consent from your subscribers when they join your list and add them to your signup forms and landing pages.

Is It Easy to Use?

GetResponse claims to be ‘the world’s easiest email marketing platform’ – but does that claim ring true? 

We wanted to find out, so we signed up for GetResponse ourselves and put it to the test – and the answer is yes. Overall, we found it to be very beginner-friendly.

The dashboard is neat, uncluttered, and straightforward. When you first access it, you’re greeted with a tutorial that walks you through all the main features:

Follow through the steps, and it’ll show you how to create your first email newsletter. It’s a really simple process.

You just open up the creator, give your newsletter a title and subject line, add your recipients, and design your message:

There are templates for pretty much everything, including newsletters. Click Design message to choose a newsletter template and select one. You can then change the content and design in a front-end editor.

All the other tools are similarly straightforward to use, so even if you choose to turn the tutorial tips off, you should be able to get the hang of everything pretty quickly. 

Even advanced tools like the automations builder are simple enough for complete beginners to use, thanks to an intuitive interface and pre-designed templates.

GetResponse Customer Support

Customer support is one of GetResponse’s weaker areas. Unlike many of its competitors, it doesn’t offer a phone support option (except on the Max plan). You can only get in touch with support via live chat or email.

Personally, I don’t consider this a big problem as I prefer live chat support to phone support anyway.

However, if you’re the kind of person that prefers to hear a real human voice when you contact support, you’re sadly going to be disappointed.

The good news is Max plan customers still get access to a dedicated phone support line, and the live chat support is very good. 

I tested it out with a sales query, and I got a response literally instantaneously. Within two seconds of sending a message, the agent had already replied.

This is a much faster response time than I’ve experienced with other platforms. Usually, it takes at least a minute or so to get a response, so this was really impressive. The agent I dealt with was also very helpful, and communication was clear.

GetResponse Pros and Cons

There’s a lot of information to digest in this review, so before we wrap up, here’s a recap of the main pros and cons of GetResponse.

Pros

• Powerful automation features
• Excellent deliverability rate (over 99%)
• Conversion funnel builder
• Excellent range of professionally-designed landing pages
• Responsive live chat support
• List segmentation
• Powerful analytics, reporting, and optimization features
• Easy to use and beginner-friendly
• GetResponse cost is on par with other email marketing automation tools

Cons

• Advanced automation and segmentation features not included on all plans
• The website builder isn’t very flexible
• The landing page creator is a little clunky
• Expensive if you have a large contact list

GetResponse Review Final Words and The Bottom Line

So, what’s the final verdict?

Overall, we’d absolutely recommend GetResponse to anyone looking for a platform to help them both capture and nurture leads. 

The intuitive landing page editor, powerful funnel builder, sophisticated automations, webinar support, list management/segmentation, and email marketing features provide you with all the tools you need to get new leads into your funnel and nurture them until they’re ready to convert.

However, while GetResponse aims to be a complete all-in-one solution, it can’t do everything just yet.

The website builder is still in its infancy, and it really can’t compete with dedicated eCommerce business platforms or website builders just yet.

Therefore, if you’re planning on building your entire website or eCommerce store from scratch, we’d recommend choosing a different platform like Shopify, Magento, or WordPress instead and using GetResponse alongside it to manage your campaigns.

GetResponse FAQs

Here are the answers to some frequently asked questions about GetResponse.

Does GetResponse Have a Free Plan? 

Yes, GetResponse offers a limited Free Forever plan for users with up to 500 email contacts. See our GetResponse pricing section of this review and their Free Forever plan page for more information.

What is GetResponse Used For?

GetResponse is a complete campaign management solution in the world of internet marketing. It’s primarily used for planning, creating, and executing email campaigns, but it can also be used to create landing pages, build websites, set up funnels, and a lot more with its marketing automation features.

Which is Better: Mailchimp or GetResponse?

It’s tough to say. Both platforms have their pros and cons, but if we had to pick our favorite, it’d probably be GetResponse. GetResponse ranked fourth in our list of the best email marketing services, whereas Mailchimp ranked eleventh.

Is GetResponse Better Than ClickFunnels?

Again, it’s tough to pick which one is better as they both have different use cases. On balance, we’d say Clickfunnels is the better choice for building marketing and sales funnels, but GetResponse wins when it comes to email marketing. If you’re looking for an all-in-one platform, we suggest GetResponse.

GetResponse Alternatives

If you don’t think GetResponse is the right solution for you, there are plenty of GetResponse competitors to choose from. 

Here are some of the most popular GetResponse alternatives that you might want to check out:

• ConvertKit. A complete marketing platform built for creators. It’s a great option for solopreneurs and anyone selling digital products. For more information, read our review article here.
• AWeber. Another solid email marketing solution. It doesn’t offer as broad a feature set as GetResponse (no website or conversion funnel builder, etc.), but its email marketing features are pretty strong. Unlike GetResponse, AWeber also offers phone support.
• ActiveCampaign. The number one customer experience automation platform. It comes with powerful marketing automation and CRM tools, as well as email marketing features. For more information, read our review article here and check out our comparison too.
• Sendinblue. Another solid all-in-one marketing platform that offers similar features to GetResponse, like marketing automation, Facebook ads, landing page creation, email marketing, etc. Their Lite plan is very affordable and includes up to 100k monthly emails.
• Mailerlite. A cost-effective email marketing solution with powerful lead generation and analytics features.
• MailChimp. One of the most popular email marketing providers on the market. It has a similar feature set to GetResponse but integrates better with other marketing tools.