Aweber vs GetResponse: A Detailed Analysis And Review

When it comes to choosing an email marketing service for your business, it almost always comes down to two choices:

“Should I sign up to Aweber or GetResponse?”

The truth is that very few if any other companies come close at all to the extensive number of features and fantastic functionality that these two companies provide with their email marketing services.

However, we all want to get the best bang for our buck, and when it comes to something as important as our email lists, we want to make sure the choice we make is the right one for us. And when two companies are both so fantastic, making that choice can be hard.

In this article, I’d like to explain some of the differences between Aweber and GetResponse, and help you decide which email marketing service is the best choice for you and your business.

This article is going to cover a lot of information, so I’m going to break it down by features and explain how the two companies differ. At the end you’ll find a summary of all of the main points and my personal recommendation based on the information provided.

Aweber vs GetResponse:

Deliverability

First and foremost, one of the most important things you should be looking for when choosing an email marketing service is the successful delivery rate of the emails that company sends out. After all, if your emails are not even showing up in your subscriber’s email inboxes, everything else is moot.

According to my research, both Aweber and GetResponse have very high delivery rates, both above 90%. Some bloggers have reported a slightly improved open rate after switching from Aweber to GetResponse, but there have been no solid case studies done to back this up. Unfortunately, I’ve only managed to stick with one of the two services long enough to do any large campaigns, so I do not have any personal data that can be used to back up these claims.

Winner: Draw (perhaps an unconfirmed edge to GetResponse, however.)

Autoresponder

One of the most important features of any email marketing service is the autoresponder.

An autoresponder is a program that sends out emails automatically, often a series of emails in a specific order and frequency that you set. For example, if you were to sign up to my free 7-day traffic building course, my autoresponder would send you an email each day for the next 7 days.

GetResponse Autoresponder

Setting up a new autoresponder message with GetResponse is incredibly easy. Simply click the day where you’d like to add a message and a page like this one will open up:

From there, all you have to do is create your email and publish it, and it will be added to your autoresponder sequence. Pretty simple!

Aweber Autoresponder

Aweber’s autoresponder is also fairly straightforward, but Aweber’s main drawback comes in its functionality.

Currently, Aweber only offers the ability to create time-based autoresponder messages, meaning you can only set up your autoresponder to send messages at specific time intervals. GetResponse also offers an action-based autoresponder, meaning you can trigger emails to be sent out when a subscriber completes a specific action (such as purchasing a product.)

This is obviously a huge advantage over Aweber, and will only become increasingly important as your business grows and segmenting your lists become more of a priority.

GetResponse also offers a bit more control over the subscribers currently going through your autoresponder series. For example, GetResponse has a button that tells you how many people have finished your autoresponder sequence, so you can move them to a new list or sequence if you’d like. Additionally, when adding new messages to your autoresponder, GetResponse will ask you if you’d like that email to be sent out to everyone who has completed your sequence. Aweber will just do it anyway without asking, which can be extremely awkward if you’re adding new messages somewhere in the middle of your sequence, for example.

Winner: GetResponse, by a long shot.

Sending Messages

Let’s take a bit deeper look into how Aweber and GetResponse handle the process of creating messages, along with sending out email blasts. For the record, GetResponse calls these ‘Newsletters’ and Aweber calls these ‘Broadcasts.’

Both Aweber and GetResponse have a pretty straightforward creation process when it comes to actually setting up the messages. The drag-and-drop system is incredibly easy to use and doing simple things like formatting text can be done with the press of a few buttons.

Both companies have a feature that allows you to send your emails at a specific time relative to the subscriber’s time zone. What this means is that if you want your email to land in your subscriber’s email inbox at 9 AM, you can turn this feature on and that’s when your email will be delivered, regardless of the time zone that person is living in. Pretty neat!

Despite the similarities, GetResponse does have an edge over Aweber when it comes to sending messages in two major ways.

First of all, GetResponse allows you to preview exactly what your email will look like on a multitude of devices, along with many different email clients as well.

Secondly, GetResponse has far better split-testing options which we’ll talk about in a moment.

Winner: GetResponse.

Split Testing

Split testing is important to many aspects of our businesses, but this is especially true when it comes to sending emails.

GetResponse Split Testing

GetResponse’s split testing tool is really neat. Simply turn on the A/B testing switch when creating your message and you’ll be able to split test everything from the subject line to the actual content of the message itself.

But here’s the thing that makes GetResponse’s split testing feature so much better than Aweber’s. As you can see in the picture above, GetResponse allows you to send out your message to separate segments of your list, and then send out the winning message to the rest of your list after the test is over. This ensures the majority of your list only sees the message that ultimately ended up being better.

When you’re working with huge lists of people, this can have drastically huge results in terms of click-throughs and conversions.

Aweber Split Testing

Aweber also allows you to split test your emails and compare your results afterwards, but does not have the functionality to run the same type of tests GetResponse does.

Winner: GetResponse

Analytics

The difference between a good email marketer and a great email marketer often comes down to how closely they pay attention to their analytics, and how they use that data to improve their email marketing campaigns.

GetResponse Analytics

GetResponse provides quite a bit of information to you, and allows you to quickly and easily view data about your total campaign in general or dive into specifics regarding specific emails. This data is laid out in a way that makes it quick and easy to get to what you need to see.

Aweber Analytics

Aweber includes a bit more data in their analytics section, although it is a bit more difficult to read. They also lack the ability to email specific groups of people (such as those that opened but did not click-through an email you sent, for example) which is one of my favorite GetResponse features.

Winner: Draw. Consider what’s more important to you, and you’ll know which company’s analytics platform will be better for you and your business.

Templates

If you’re a blogger, you probably won’t be using templates all that often. Stick with good-old plain text and your emails will likely come off as far-less spammy and far-more personal.

However, some people really like using templates anyway and you really can’t go wrong with either company.

GetResponse Templates

GetResponse has over 500 HTML templates in plenty of different categories, including art and entertainment, business, health, retail, sports, and more! Regardless of the market you’re working in, there are plenty of customizable templates available for you to use.

Aweber Templates

Aweber also has no shortage of customizable templates in various categories.

One thing worth mentioning is that both Aweber and GetResponse both have responsive templates, meaning they’ll detect and change based on the device the email is being read on. This means the layout isn’t ruined when an email is read on a mobile phone or tablet, for example.

Winner: Draw. Neither company has any real advantage over the other in terms of email templates.

Landing Pages

GetResponse offers customizable landing / squeeze page templates for an extra $15 a month, and Aweber offers none at all. Personally, I think it’s a better idea to use something like LeadPages for creating your squeeze pages, but if you want something cheap and simple than GetResponse has plenty of landing pages for you to use.

Winner: GetResponse

Integration

Aweber is currently ahead of GetResponse in terms of the number of products that support it, but I don’t expect this to be true for much longer. GetResponse is growing so quickly that any developer would be foolish not to add support for GetResponse.

I highly recommend checking your individual products if integration is an issue for you, and requesting GetResponse support is added if it’s not already!

Winner: Aweber (for the time being!)

Support

Both Aweber and GetResponse have email, live chat, and phone options along with a knowledge base that will answer most questions. However, Aweber has phone support on weekends where GetResponse does not.

Winner: Aweber

Price

GetResponse Pricing

Aweber Pricing

As you can see, GetResponse is a few dollars cheaper per month for most packages, and the lowest pricing option will give you twice as many subscribers with GetResponse. That’s great, because by the time you need to upgrade, your list should be paying for itself anyway.

In terms of trials, GetResponse wins here too because it requires no credit card. This means you can start using GetResponse right away simply by clicking here and signing up!

Winner: GetResponse

Recap:

Deliverability: Draw (GetResponse may be slightly better, unconfirmed)

Autoresponder: GetResponse

Sending Messages: GetResponse

Split Testing: GetResponse

Analytics: Draw

Templates: Draw

Landing Pages: GetResponse

Integration: Aweber (for now!)

Support: Aweber

Pricing: GetResponse

Conclusion

While you can’t really go wrong with either Aweber or GetResponse, you still want to choose the best service possible for your business.

Based on the criteria above, there is not really a better choice for most people than GetResponse. After using both Aweber and GetResponse extensively, I personally sided with GetResponse and have never looked back. Today, GetResponse is the email marketing service I use for all of my websites, and I have never had any reason to reconsider that.

Do yourself a favor and sign up for GetResponse right now. I promise, you won’t be disappointed!

Final Thoughts

If you have any questions about either Aweber or GetResponse, please let me know and I will do my best to answer your questions and help you make your decision. If you’ve already made your decision, I’d love to hear who you chose and why. Finally, if you have run into information that is outdated or inaccurate, please notify me right away and I will correct it as soon as possible.

Thank you, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts!