Now Let’s Talk About The Pricing

.1 Mailchimp pricing

There are four plans available for Mailchimp. In order of expense, these are:

• Free: a cut-down version of the product featuring an advert for Mailchimp at the bottom of e-newsletters
• Essential: starting at $9.99 per month to send emails to a list up to 1,500 subscribers in size
• Standard: starting at $14.99 per month for a list of up to 2,500 subscribers in size
• Premium: starting at $299 per month for a list of up to 10,000 subscribers in size.

.2 GetResponse pricing

With GetResponse, there are also four plans available again, in order of expense, these are:

• Basic: starting at $15 per month to send an unlimited number of emails to up to 1,000 subscribers
• Plus: starting at $49 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers
• Professional: starting at $99 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers
• Max: custom pricing.

Each plan boasts different features and rises in price with the dimensions of your list. I’ll discuss these features shortly but before that, it’s worth zooming in quickly on a couple of key limits you would like to remember.

The differences between the plans

The key differences between Mailchimp plan to observe out for are the power to code your own templates and therefore the new journey builder features that are only available on the costlier ‘Standard’ plan or higher.

And, if comparative reporting and multivariate testing are important to you, you ought to note that these features are only available on the expensive $299 ‘Premium’ Mailchimp plan.

The key differences between the Getresponse tiers involve access to webinar functionality and marketing automation arguably the 2 standout features of the platform.

You only get access to those on the ‘Plus’ plan or higher. And limits apply to what percentage of participants can attend a webinar, or what percentage of automation ‘workflows’ you’ll create vary by the plan (the more you pay, the more you get, basically!).

Focussing on: the GetResponse ‘Basic’ plan VS Mailchimp ‘Essential’ plan

I suspect many readers of this comparison are getting too interested by comparing the Mailchimp “Essential” plan against the Getresponse “Basic” plan. These are the foremost cost-effective paid-for offerings from the two companies.

Because the pricing bands for the two products aren’t precisely equivalent, you’ll find that relying on your list size, sometimes Getresponse works out cheaper, and sometimes Mailchimp does.

For example, hosting 25k records on Getresponse ‘Basic’ costs $145 per month; on Mailchimp Essentials it’s $200.

But hosting a 30k list on Mailchimp Essentials is cheaper — it’s $230 to Getresponse’s $250.

Additionally, if your list may be a smaller amount than 500 records in size, Mailchimp will allow you to urge into email marketing cheaper — the ‘Essentials’ plan allows you to figure out a listing of up to 500 subscribers for $9.99 per month.

However, Mailchimp’s sneaky approach to calculating list size — by including unsubscribed contacts thereon — means we are to a degree comparing apples to oranges here…as your list grows, and people unsubscribe from it, your costs can grow considerably with Mailchimp.

Furthermore, if you’re prepared to pay upfront for your Getresponse account, there are some sizeable discounts available that make Getresponse a substantially cheaper option for you. Paying upfront for a year entitles you to an 18% discount; paying upfront for two years results in a 30% discount.

No comparable discounts are available for Mailchimp.

And finally, there are a few useful features that are available on the Getresponse ‘Basic’ plan that you simply won’t find on the Mailchimp ‘Essentials’ plan:

• the option to code your own templates
• comparative reporting (where you can compare the results of one campaign against another)
• send time optimization (where your email marketing solution automatically figures out when the best time to send emails to individual subscribers is).
• the ability to sell products (more on that later in the review).

So given all this, it’s hard to not conclude that Getresponse offers more bang for the buck once you compare its entry-level plan against Mailchimp’s.

Pricing, of course, isn’t the sole factor you ought to be basing a Mailchimp vs GetResponse decision on.

Templates

Both Getresponse and Mailchimp offer an honest range of email templates that you simply can use as a startline when designing your e-newsletters.

Mailchimp offers around 100 templates; Getresponse offers around 200.

In terms of quality, it’s probably a draw; both platforms provide a group of various designs that are contemporary in appearance.

It’s important to notice that with both products, you don’t got to use one among the supplied templates — you’ll use your own HTML code in both Getresponse and Mailchimp to style your own (note however that you simply will need to get on a costlier ‘Standard’ plan if you plan to try to do this in Mailchimp).

You can also buy additional templates for both platforms from a third-party supplier like Theme Forest.

Interface

The user interfaces offered by Getresponse and Mailchimp are quite different Mailchimp opts for a really minimalistic kind of approach, with many big fonts (on big spaces) being employed to present menus, stats, and data.

It’s quite distinctive and a few users will probably appreciate the big and bold approach.

Getresponse, against this, provides an interface that’s based more on traditional drop-down menus.

Neither system is especially hard to use — personally, I marginally prefer the Getresponse interface because you don’t seem to possess to scroll or click quite such a lot to urge at particular features or data.

In Mailchimp, all the large fonts employed mean tons of stuff is ‘below the fold’, particularly on laptops – it makes for a clean interface but one where screen real estate isn’t always efficiently used.

That said, I even have found Mailchimp’s interface to be more robust — I’ve occasionally encounted the odd glitch on Getresponse; nothing serious, but Mailchimp’s rear seems just a touch bit more reliable and fewer buggy.

Both back ends are generally fine though really – it’s a case of private taste here.

Editing email designs

.1 Drag-and-drop

Both Getresponse and Mailchimp allow you to edit your templates using ‘drag-and-drop’ style editors.

These editors are fairly similar in concept, therein they permit you to get images and text calls in a fashion that suits you without resorting to any HTML coding.

However, I’d argue that as things stand, Mailchimp’s email editor is slightly better than the Getresponse one.

It’s just a touch bit more ‘solid,’ and it also allows you to set global styles for your templates — you’ll define what H1s, H2s, and body copies should appear as if during a message style tab.

With Getresponse, you’ve got to edit these on the fly.

.2 Web fonts

Both Mailchimp and Getresponse allow you to make use of web fonts in your e-newsletters.

However, the choice of web fonts provided in Mailchimp is extremely limited only a really small number of Google Fonts are often used, and really boring ones at that (they look so almost like web-safe fonts that you simply might also use the online safe ones!).

With Getresponse, the choices are far more extensive you’ll use plenty of Google fonts in your emails.

.3 Mobile-friendly emails with GetResponse and Mailchimp

Both Getresponse and Mailchimp let you create mobile-friendly versions of your HTML email, and preview the mobile version as you do so.

Single opt-in and double opt-in in Mailchimp and GetResponse

There are two ways you’ll add subscribers to a mailing list: employing a ‘single opt-in’ or a ‘double opt-in’ process.

When you use one opt-in process, the person completing your sign-up form is added to your list immediately. With a double opt-in process, the person signing up to your list is shipped an email containing a confirmation link that he or she must click before they’re subscribed.

The main advantage of one opt-in process is that it makes it easy for users to subscribe; it also generally increases conversion rates and thus the number of subscribers on your list.

A double opt-in process is best for verifying that the people subscribing to your list are using real email addresses and results in cleaner data and more accurate stats.

The good news is that Mailchimp and Getresponse allow you to use either a double opt-in or single opt-in approach to data capture.

This is not the case with all competing email marketing products, so a thumbs up for both Mailchimp and Getresponse here.

Split testing

An important feature of email marketing solutions is split testing. this enables you to undertake out a spread of subject headers and/or content on some sample data (for example, 5% of your list) before automatically sending the best-performing version to the rest of your list.

If you’re using relatively small lists, this feature isn’t vital, because for statistical reasons split testing is merely worth doing on relatively large lists — but anybody meaning to do big mailouts will certainly need good split-testing functionality.

Now, Getresponse only allows you to test different subject headers against one another.

Mailchimp against this allows you to test content variants, different sender names, and send times in its split tests — as long as you’re on an ‘Essentials’ plan or higher.

Mailchimp allows you to split-test 3 different versions of your email; Getresponse’s limit here is 5 (although as discussed, using subject headers only).

The ‘Premium’ plan starts at an eye-watering $299 per month, but if you’ll accept this type of cost, you’ll be ready to split test 8 variants of your e-newsletters against one another.

So beat all, a win for Mailchimp within the split testing department.

Creating data segments in GetResponse and Mailchimp

Both Getresponse and Mailchimp allow you to make data segments easily enough you’ll use a spread of filters to spot subscribers supported particular criteria and save them.

However, Getresponse beats Mailchimp handily when it involves sending e-newsletters to your segments.

This is because the essential version of Mailchimp only allows you to send e-newsletters to at least one segment at a time, whereas Getresponse allows you to send them to as many as you wish.

For example, if you had a list about guitars with three pre-existing segments in it, ‘red guitar owners’, ‘blue guitar owners, and green guitar owners’, and you wanted to send an e-newsletter to the red guitar AND blue guitar owners in one go, you’ll do that in Getresponse really easily you’d just tick the relevant red and green segments and hit send.

By contrast, in Mailchimp, to realize an equivalent thing you’d need to create a fresh segment containing red guitar owners OR blue owners.

More work, and more segments cluttering up the place!

Similarly, Mailchimp only allows you to send e-newsletters to at least one list at a time. Although it’s usually best practice to consolidate your data into one list and use fields to flag data types, there are nonetheless occasions where you’ll find yourself working with subscribers who are stored in multiple lists.

In Getresponse, this isn’t a drag you’ll send e-newsletters to multiple lists directly.

And finally, excluding segments is far easier in Getresponse once you’ve picked your list of recipients, you’ll simply tick the segments or lists that you simply want to exclude from the mailout.

If you would like more advanced segmentation options, you’ll get these in Mailchimp but you’ll get to get on an upscale ‘Premium’ plan.

(You can read more about the type of segmentation options you’ll expect on a Mailchimp ‘Premium’ plan here).

Getresponse’s more flexible approach to both segmentation and list management is, in my view, one of the strongest reasons for using it over Mailchimp possibly the strongest.

Reporting

Reporting on both Mailchimp and Getresponse is extremely comprehensive: you’ll track all the standard things like open rates, click-throughs, and unsubscribes, but you’ll also drill down into the info much further.

For example, you’ll search somebody on your list and obtain a summary of what lists they’re on; their location; IP address; and what emails they’ve previously opened.

This is all very useful data for understanding your audience and informing your future marketing strategy — if rather Orwellian!

One reporting feature in Mailchimp that i actually like is its ‘engagement stats’ panel. As the name suggests, this shows you the odds of your subscribers who engage often, occasionally, or rarely together with your e-newsletters.

Furthermore, it allows you to email them really easily — you only click a touch paper plane icon and you’ll send them a message immediately.

You can identify and mail your most engaged subscribers in Getresponse too; however, it’s a rather more manual process involving creating a segment of individuals with a high engagement score.

Getresponse’s reporting system has a superb feature that isn’t present in Mailchimp however: its automatic creation of emailable ‘groups’ — supported by more precise user action — after a mailout is shipped.

After an email broadcast, Getresponse will show you many segments of contacts who took specific actions — you’ll see groups of individuals who opened your email, didn’t open your email, clicked your email but didn’t meet a goal, etc. — and you’ll mail all of them again really easily. this is often extremely useful for sending quick reminders or follow-up offers to relevant contacts.

Mailchimp does allow you to see this information too — but so as to make segments from it you’d got to export and reimport the info, using new flag fields to manually create your segments.

This is unnecessarily fiddly — and, as discussed earlier, you’ll quite possibly run into some headaches with emailing these segments, because Mailchimp is so restrictive in this area.

All in all, though, the reporting functionality in both Mailchimp and Getresponse is extremely comprehensive — either tool will allow you to get a really complete overview of how your e-newsletters are performing.

Integrations

Both Getresponse and Mailchimp integrate with a good range of other services – you’ll get to check their websites for an exhaustive list, but services like Paypal, BigCommerce, Facebook, and Magento are samples of the type of services catered for.

I have found that, generally, Mailchimp tends to be more of a ‘default’ option than Getresponse for several services (Squarespace and Facebook being prime examples), and Getresponse seems to rely quite a lot on a 3rd party tool, Zapier, for quite a lot of its integrations (which makes them a touch longer to line up and involves more configuration).

That said tons of the ‘big’ services are catered for perfectly well with Getresponse; if you wish the tool and need to integrate it with a longtime service like Paypal or Facebook, you won’t have any difficulty doing so.

Additionally, an ‘integration’ often means simply adding a sign-up form to an internet site, and both Getresponse and Mailchimp make it straightforward enough to try to do that (see below for more information on check-in forms).

But there are times — particularly with services like Squarespace and Wix— where integrating a list check-in form into your website may be a bit easier if you’re a Mailchimp user.

(Interestingly, however, there’s not a politician Mailchimp integration for e-commerce giant Shopify, due to a dispute over data protection and privacy issues. But there are workarounds available.)

Facebook ads in Mailchimp and GetResponse

Both Mailchimp and Getresponse differentiate themselves from many of their competitors by allowing you to manage Facebook ad campaigns directly from their platforms.

So, if you’re somebody who likes to figure out all aspects of a marketing campaign in one place, you’ll find this functionality handy.

You can find out basic ad campaigns using the quality set of Facebook demographics (i.e., create simple ads that focus on users who are aged X and curious about activity Y).

More useful perhaps is the choice to connect your Mailchimp or Getresponse account to Facebook, which can then — in its trademark big-brother way — examine the e-mail addresses on your list and show ads to anybody on your database with a Facebook account (this is named a ‘custom audience’).

When you’ve connected your accounts, your lists also can be synced together with your Facebook account, meaning that Facebook will automatically start showing the ads to any new subscribers (i.e., additionally to the people that were on your list once you connected your accounts).

Be careful though — new GDPR rules mean that using custom audiences — which effectively means sharing user data with Facebook — is often risky from a legal point of view (at least where EU users are concerned).

So do your due diligence first before using these features!

Adding a sign-up form to your website

Both Getresponse and Mailchimp allow you to style sign-up forms and grab a snippet of code which you’ll increase embed a form on your website.

With Getresponse, the planning options are a touch more extensive — you’ll make use of a wider range of typefaces on your form and you’ll choose between a variety of pre-designed form templates (some good, some cheesy).

Neither platform is great when it involves supplying you with fine grain control over your forms, however — you can’t specify for instance whether or not a pop-up form should appear on mobile devices (some site owners prefer to not use crop-up forms on mobile devices, as doing so can have a negative impact on a site’s performance in search results).

Mailchimp also provides some iPad / Android forms that you simply can use for capturing data via tablets at events — something which wont to be available with Getresponse but unfortunately seems to possess been discontinued.

That said, you’ll always use a Getresponse landing page on an iPad for this purpose — and speaking of which…

Landing page creation

A landing page creator allows you to form use of varied templates and a haul and drop editor to make a landing or ‘squeeze’ page which improves the sign-up rate to your list.

These are distraction-free sign-up pages that are designed to enhance sign-up rates. A/B testing is usually wont to test different versions of landing pages against one another, so as to spot the best-performing ones and use these to maximize the number of sign-ups.

.1 Landing pages in Mailchimp

Up until relatively recently, landing pages weren’t included with Mailchimp plans.

If you wanted to use landing pages with Mailchimp, you had to either code something yourself or make use of a tool like Instapage or Unbounce (the fees are very high).

The good news for Mailchimp users is that landing page-building functionality is now provided on all Mailchimp plans.

However, as things stand, this functionality may be a bit limited: no A/B testing is included, and only a couple of templates are available.

.2 Landing pages in GetResponse

In Getresponse you get comprehensive landing page functionality: many responsive templates, A/B split testing, countdown timers, and free stock photography are all included with this feature.

The landing page designer might be better from a usability point of view — it’s a touch clunky and fiddly to use — but it’s ultimately a strong tool that permits you to try to do considerably more with landing pages than Mailchimp.

Translation

For users wishing to provide versions of their confirmation emails and thank-you pages in different languages, Mailchimp is a better bet than Getresponse, as it provides this functionality.

The biggest differences between GetResponse and Mailchimp: webinars, conversion funnels, and website building

.1 Webinars

With Getresponse ‘Plus’ plans and up, you get something that’s not included in Mailchimp’s feature set at all: the power to host webinars.

Webinars are commonly used as how to get business leads, with businesses offering access to webinar content in exchange for an email address. Normally this involves using two apps — one for hosting the webinars, and one for managing your email marketing.

Getresponse has been very clever here by offering a webinar feature as a part of its email marketing offering. And it’s a particularly good feature, compared positively with dedicated webinar products that cost significantly quite Getresponse.

A few Getresponse webinar features worth flagging up as being particularly useful are:

• the fact that your attendees don’t get to install any software to attend the webinars
• the ability to record your webinars and share them with participants later
• screen sharing functionality
• video sharing functionality (YouTube)
• the option to upload Powerpoint presentations to Getresponse to be used during a webinar
• free online storage for playback files.

One thing to watch out for is the attendee cap: Getresponse limits this to 100 people on its ‘Plus’ plan, 300 on its ‘Professional’ plan, and 500 on its ‘Enterprise’ plan. And you can’t run ‘paid webinars’ (i.e., where people pay to attend) unless you’re on the ‘Professional’ plan, which is a bit disappointing.

Webinars are not available at all on the cheapest Getresponse offering (it’s a ‘Basic’ plan), but you can pay another $40 or $99 per month to enable this functionality and allow 100 or 500 attendees respectively to tune in.

500 is the absolute maximum number of participants you can host in a single Getresponse webinar — there’s currently no way to increase that limit.

.2 Conversion funnels

Both Mailchimp and Getresponse provide tons of useful ways to integrate with leading e-commerce platforms and you’ll trigger mailouts supported a good range of user actions on a web store.

(Note however that there’s no official integration available between Mailchimp and Shopify).

With the introduction of its new ‘Conversion Funnels’ feature, Getresponse has now effectively become a web store — of sorts — in its title.

It’s now possible to manage an e-commerce inventory within and sell products directly from Getresponse and to form use of Getresponse’s conversion funnel feature to automate ad campaigns, data capture, transactions, abandoned cart recovery, and more.

You can do similar things with Mailchimp, but you’ll get to connect a third-party online store to proceedings – i.e., people won’t be ready to buy your products using Mailchimp alone.

Now my feeling is that for now, serious e-commerce operators will still make use of established platforms like Bigcommerce or Shopify to sell products online (and recover results from doing so) instead of employing a marketing platform like Getresponse.

That said, Getresponse’s all-in-one approach has the potential to be useful to some merchants, particularly those starting out, or those that want to manage as many aspects of a sales process as possible using just one tool.

.3 Website building

Mailchimp recently introduced a replacement feature that permits you to create an easy website.

It’s similar in nature to something like Google Sites, therein it allows you to make an easy website employing a drag-and-drop interface.

Whilst it’s not getting to be a replacement for a fanatical website building platform like WordPress or Squarespace any time soon, it’s still a potentially useful gizmo for a few users, especially solopreneurs or small businesses.

And the excellent news is that unlike tons of other Mailchimp features, it’s available on all plans — even the free one.

The closest Getresponse involves offering a feature like this is often via its landing page creator — but all you’ll be ready to do thereupon is create a one-page website. It’s not as fully-fledged because of the Mailchimp offering.

Two-factor authentication

Both Mailchimp and Getresponse facilitate two-factor authentication.

Two-factor authentication requires you to not only enter a password at login but also to verify your identity as an account owner by entering during a second piece of data — for instance , a code sent by SMS to your phone.

Given the stress placed by GDPR on the importance of knowledge security, it’s good that both products cater to this.

Customer support

Finally, there’s customer support to think about.

Getresponse wont to be a transparent winner during this department, because phone, live chat, and email support were offered, whereas Mailchimp only offered email or live chat support.

Getresponse recently axed their phone support, however — on all plans but their enterprise-level “Max” offering — so now both products provide an identical level of support on their cheaper plans. Mailchimp provides phone support on its costliest offering too (the $299+ ‘Premium’ plan).

If phone support is an absolute deal-breaker for you, you would possibly want to require a glance at Aweber — one among the few email marketing products that also include it at a reasonable rate. (For more details on this product, please see our Aweber review).

In terms of quality of support, I even have more personal experience of Getresponse support than Mailchimp — I’ve found it to be reasonably good, with low waiting times for chat support.

My experience of Getresponse email support could are slightly better though — when I’ve used it in the past there’s been more to and fro involved and a slower resolution of issues.

GetResponse vs Mailchimp: the verdict

Overall, I even have to mention that Getresponse is the clear winner during this shootout — it’s (generally speaking) cheaper to use and comes with considerably more features. Unlike Mailchimp, there are not any send limits; and unsubscribed contacts don’t count towards your list size. All this ultimately makes Getresponse the far better value product of the 2 being discussed here.

Additionally, Getresponse’s webinars and conversion funnels are really useful tools to possess in your digital marketing toolbox — and what I feel that they are doing makes Getresponse more of an “all in one” platform than Mailchimp.

On top of that, the flexible approach to data segmentation makes Getresponse a way better tool for managing an email list (or multiple lists) and using your data in creative or sophisticated ways.

There is one strong argument for using Mailchimp over Getresponse: its free plan, which is admittedly very generous for anyone with a little list and basic email marketing requirements.

I’ll leave you with an inventory of the key pros and cons of every product. Of course, it’s always worth making your own mind up by using the free trials available: you’ll try Getresponse for free of charge here, and Mailchimp for free of charge here.

The pros and cons of GetResponse and Mailchimp

.1 Reasons to use GetResponse over Mailchimp

• You get considerably more functionality on the entry-level ‘Basic’ plan than the Mailchimp equivalent (including fully-fledged autoresponders, e-commerce features, and therefore the choice to code your own templates).
• You are only charged for active subscribers on your list — Mailchimp charges you to host unsubscribed contacts.
• There are not any sending limits in Getresponse.
• Emailing and excluding multiple segments and multiple lists is extremely easy in Getresponse — but impossible altogether but the foremost expensive version of Mailchimp.
• You can host webinars with Getresponse; with Mailchimp, you’ll get to use another application.
• Getresponse’s landing pages facilitate automatic A/B testing; Mailchimp’s currently doesn’t.
• Hundreds of templates are available for Getresponse’s landing pages; Mailchimp only offers a couple.
• Generous discounts are available for Getresponse if you pay upfront for a year or more’s service.
• Some users may find the built-in e-commerce / ‘conversion’ features useful.

You can try GetResponse for free here.