GetResponse Review-Is It The Best Email Autoresponder?

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Email marketing is one of the most popular marketing methods among bloggers, online entrepreneurs and affiliate marketers.  Email marketing is critical to the success of your online business.

It is important to know how to create and manage email marketing campaign but before you do that, it is imperative to choose a better if not the ‘best’ email auto responder service.

The first step in setting up a successful email marketing campaign is to select an appropriate email autoresponder service provider.

Selecting an appropriate email autoresponder software or service is not an easy task especially in the current market scenario where there are so many email autoresponders in the market and most of them look quite same.

It is not an easy task to switch email autoresponders after setting up an campaign so it’s better to do some research before picking up a provider so that you don’t have to go through the painful process of switching marketing software later.

I have used Getresponse and Aweber both and therefore I can vouch for both of them.

You cannot go wrong with either of them but as you can’t go for both of them and you need one name, I am putting a short comparison which will help you in figuring out appropriate email autoresponder for you.

GetResponse Vs Aweber

getresponse vs aweber

Feature Overview

GetResponse and Aweber are loaded with features and depending upon your preference and requirements, you may like one or another. The key difference between Aweber and Getresponse was Blog Broadcast feature offered by Aweber.

Blog broadcast is a hell of a feature offered by Aweber which became it’s USP as far as bloggers were concerned but recently Getresponse too came up with their version of blog broadcast which is called ‘RSS To Email ’ by them.

Blog Broadcast from Aweber is fairly straightforward product meant to send emails to your subscribers for new post published on your blog.

It is extremely easy to configure and offers following features;

• Attractive Ready To Use Templates
• Configurable Time of delivery
• Set number of threshold posts to trigger your blog broadcast
• Configure frequency
• Social share

In case of GetResponse, their newly launched RSS To Email feature provides equally good features except templates. But as a matter of fact, you should not use any heavy template for your emails as it will increase their spam score and they will land in your subscribers junk/spam folder.

So if you compare Aweber’s Blog Broadcast with GetResponse’s RSS To Email, then practically both are quite same with little to no difference. Aweber’s blog broadcast has existed in the market for more time, so it is more popular but as time will pass, GetResponse’s RSS To Email will also become popular.

But email marketing or email autoresponder is not just about sending posts update to your subscribers, it goes much beyond that. So if you compare generic features, Aweber and GetResponse both are equally good. But there are few features which you don’t use in your everyday life but need occasionally.

Online Surveys

Though these features are used occasionally but these features are extremely critical and it is always better to have them. For example, online surveys are extremely crucial for understanding your subscribers and their requirements.

GetResponse offers online survey but Aweber does not.

In case of aweber, you have to create surveys using some third party service provider and then you can use aweber to send that link your subscribers but process is not only cumbersome but also, not user friendly.

So GetResponse is better than Aweber for sending surveys.

Split Testing

Similarly, it is easier to conduct split testing with GetResponse because split testing feature is offered by GetResponse whereas Aweber doesn’t offer this.

Aweber does offer email analytics which can inform you about your email open rates and click rates.

Split testing is the key to any marketing campaign and email marketing is not an exception.

So again, getresponse is better than any aweber.

There are many other features provided by getresponse which are not offered by Aweber.

Remember, you will not have to use all of these features but features like online survey and split testing provide great boost to your email marketing campaign and online business.

I am not going to talk about deliverability because both are equally good in deliverability with more than 99 per cent deliverability rates claimed by them, at least I have never experienced any issues with them.

Image Gallery, Mutimedia Studio and Video newsletters

As mentioned earlier, there are few very critical features which you will like to use occasionally but when you need them, you cannot compromise, like royalty free images, multimedia studio to attach multimedia files in your emails and video newsletters to your subscribers for giving that extra edge to your email marketing campaign.

None of these features are available in Aweber but all of them are offered by Getresponse.

Let’s take a look at the features offered by Getresponse;

Getresponse Review Feature overview

Click here to see Aweber’s Feature

User Interface, Design and Support

Aweber’s user interface is much simpler and set up process is also fairly easy. In case of getresponse, their user interface is better designed and as there are more features, it may take slightly more time to learn it but there is nothing major to bother as far as user interface is concerned with either of them.

If you compare newsletters design, both offer great variety but i personally like Getresponse collection which has got many more designed to choose from but as stated earlier, try to avoid templates filled with graphics and images.

I have used support extensively from both of these firms and to be fair, I think both are equally good. You will get prompt response for your queries. In fact, in case of Getresponse, I had extremely positive experience with their customer support.

I had the privilege of interacting with Getresponse’s community manager Jim Ducharme who personally got in touch with me for some of the issues and helped in getting them resolved quickly. He is a super cool person who helped me in every stage and he is there to help every getresponse customers, you can be sure about high quality customer support while dealing with Getresponse.

I won’t say that Aweber is not good because whenever I had any issues, they were resolved and I received prompt responses.

So in terms of support, I will say that no hard feelings for Aweber but as I had an experience at the personal level with Getresponse team, I will prefer Getresponse.

Pricing

Getresponse is economical than Aweber, Period.

if you are a blogger or a small business or even a multinational, you need to work on to save every penny which you can. Getresponse offers better pricing structure than Aweber for all kind of customers.

Conclusion

Let me say that Aweber is not at all a bad email autoresponder service provider and at the moment, I am using them. But I have to add that, I am using them because I don’t want to go through the painful process of switching service providers which is also a pain for the subscribers. If you can or you are planning to start on email marketing, then getresponse offers everything which you could need at a better pricing.

You can create attractive newsletters, RSS To Emails, surveys, video newsletters and do whole lots of things with Getresponse. Getresponse provides comprehensive solution to your email marketing requirements.

If you are not sure then you can try them at no cost. I will suggest you to use their free trial period to understand their autoresponder software and decide yourself.

04/30/2013 update– After the series of new features from GetResponse like free landing page creator and automated email marketing tool which allow you to automate your entire email marketing campaigns in a very special and intelligent way, i couldn’t resist it anymore and i m back with getresponse. Please read updated review of GetResponse.

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