GetResponse vs ActiveCampaign

GetResponse was founded in 1998 in Gdansk, Poland, and it focuses on newsletters and marketing automation.

ActiveCampaign was founded in 2003 by Jason VandeBoom. Hubs in Chicago, Sidney, and Dublin.

Beginner-friendly

No coding or design skills are required as there are plenty of automation recipes available. The system itself is comparatively complex, though, and needs some getting accustomed to.

E-commerce businesses, solopreneurs

Businesses that plan to scale their email marketing up to include CRM, e-commerce integrations, and diverse automation schemes.

Free plan includes:

• 2,500 emails/month
• Contact list limit of 500 contacts
• Landing pages
• Sign-up forms
• Website builder with a 5GB bandwidth
• Connect a domain

There’s also a 30-day free trial for all paid plans.

No free plan. Has a free 14 days trial with up to 100 email sends to 100 contacts. The features available within the trial match the Professional tier of features.

The trial is limited to 1 user and doesn’t include:

• Predictive Sending
• Predictive Content
• Sending auto-responder campaigns
• Custom fields in forms
• Using “Email Results” in subscription forms
• SMS credits or sending
• Adding a domain to a landing page

GetResponse includes 4 pricing tiers, depending on the features, contact list, and extra services.

Email Marketing: starts from $13.3/month for 1,000 contacts billed biannually and includes

• Newsletters
• AI email generator
• Autoresponders
• AI campaign generator
• Website and landing pages
• Signup forms and popups
• Email and live chat support

Marketing Automation: starts from $41.3/month for 1,000 contacts billed biannually, includes Email Marketing features and

• Marketing automation
• Event-based workflows
• Webinars
• Advanced segmentation
• Contact scoring
• Sales funnels

Ecommerce Marketing: starts from $83.3/month for 1,000 contacts billed biannually, includes Marketing Automation features and

• Ecommerce integrations
• Quick transactional emails
• Abandoned cart recovery
• Promo codes
• Product recommendations
• Web push notifications

GetResponse MAX: starts from $999/month billed biannually for contact lists larger than 100,000, includes E-commerce Marketing features and

• Dedicated, priority support + phone and Slack support
• Dedicated infrastructure
• Personalized onboarding
• SMS marketing
• AI recommendations
• Transactional emails
• FTP contact imports

Marketing + CRM

For 500 contacts, billed yearly/monthly:

• Lite $9 / $15
• Plus $49 / $70
• Professional $149 / $187
• Enterprise — individual pricing

Other pricing features:

• 2-year price lock
• Billing pause for 12 months with the account and campaigns intact.
• Only charges for the contacts the client actively markets to, no matter how many lists they’re on.
• A 20% discount for nonprofits.
• Free 14 days trial.

All paid users and users on a free trial have access to 24/7 support:

• Email — in English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian, Polish, and Italian.
• Live chat — in Polish or English.

GetResponse MAX users have access to dedicated priority support via the same channels, and also phone and Slack support. Free plan users have no access to support.

Working hours: 9 am – 11 pm CDT (GMT-5)
Either live chat or email requests

Aside from online support, ActiveCampaign offers:

• Free online training
• Community and forum
• FAQ website section
• Study Hall — in-person learning classes

• Email builder with templates
• AI email generator
• AI campaign generator
• Send time optimization
• Autoresponders
• Automation workflow builder with pre-built templates
• Web events and advanced triggers
• Pop-ups and forms
• Other channels: SMS, web push notifications, live chat management
• Segmentation
• List management
• Lead magnet and conversion funnels
• E-commerce features: transactional emails, promo codes, recommendations, abandoned cart emails
• Website builder with AI wizard
• Paid ads: Google, Meta, goal-focused
• Webinars
• Reports and analytics
• A/B testing

• Marketing automation
• Landing page builder
• Built-in CRM for small-medium-sized businesses
• Many service integrations
• Drag-and-drop email designer
• Free migration from other services
• SMS marketing
• Site messages
• Live chat and automated chatbot workflows

150+ free email templates categorized by purpose and industry:

• Business
• Education
• Events
• Holidays
• Sales

GetResponse offers templates for transactional and triggered emails (like cart abandonment), company newsletters, different types of promotional emails, and more.

125+ templates
No-code dynamic content available
Email template recommendations and guides

Templates for:

• Abandoned Cart
• Conference Event
• Customer Service
• Holiday
• Newsletter
• Reviews Feedback

291 integrations with e-commerce tools like Shopify, landing page builders like Instapage and Leadpages, website builders like Squarespace, and more.

Facebook, Google Analytics, WooCommerce, WordPress, Shopify, Unbounce, ClickFunnels, Salesforce, Zapier, and more

Web app, fully functional mobile apps for iOS and Android, including separate mobile apps for webinars and live chat management

• Website
• Email extensions for Chrome and Outlook
• Mobile app for Android and iOS (possible to review email reports, track customer activity, and manage CRM data).

• No installable solution

English Polish German Spanish Portuguese Italian French Russian Vietnamese Indonesian Dutch

Czech Dutch English French German Hungarian Indonesian Italian Polish Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese Russian Slovenian Spanish Danish Finnish Simplified Chinese Turkish Vietnamese

GetResponse offers a visual automation workflow builder with behavioral conditions and pre-made templates for welcome messages, retargeting, win-back campaigns, and more. You can also build your own sequence from scratch.

800+ automation recipes for email and other marketing channels.

Offers the whole customer experience automation:

• Links different integrated services (like Shopify or Facebook) into cohesive scenarios.
• Collects broad data on each customer, so it’s possible to customize segments based on almost any parameter.
• Helps to choose the best content, send time, and delivery channel for each individual customer.
• Has AI advice on improving the marketing strategy.

• Good updated email builder
• Customizable dashboard
• Very easy to use
• A lot of marketing channels available at one place

• Hundreds of automation options even for sophisticated purposes
• CRM features
• Mobile app
• A dedicated email deliverability specialist checks the client’s email for compliance before sending
• Automation of 1:1 communications to customers on the website or social media

• Trouble accessing customer support
• Can be slow and buggy, some reviewers report an outdated UI
• Can get expensive and many cool features are only available on high tiers
• Limited website and landing page builder

• High price and no free plan
• Customer support is often unavailable or slow
• Complicated automations system
• Steep learning curve
• Reports aren’t great (not enough information, no real-time results, visually unappealing, etc.)