GetResponse vs MailChimp: Which Is Best to Grow Your Email List in 2024

GetResponse vs MailChimp
getresponse vs mailchimp

Both GetResponse and MailChimp offer a wide range of features and tools for creating and managing email campaigns, as well as powerful tracking and analytics capabilities. GetResponse is great if you want automation features whereas MailChimp is perfect for beginners who want a clean interface. Read our in-depth review to find more details along with their free trials.

Are you confused between GetResponse and MailChimp? You’re in the right place where all your doubts get clarified by the end of the post.

Have you ever wondered why every top marketer is giving their #1 priority to collecting more emails?

Why 90% of the professionals say, “money is in the list”?

The reason is simple: email marketing has the highest ROI when compared to any other platform. On an average, every email subscriber is worth of $40 on every $1 you spend! That’s huge returns, right?

Email-Marketing-ROI

Email marketing beats every other strategy including social media, SEO, banner ads, etc.

If you are thinking to start an online business that makes you passive income, in the long run, you shouldn’t IGNORE it. The best advice is: to start growing your email list today. But here’s the one thing that always bugs most beginners – “which is the best software to build my email list?”. That’s a fair question.

  • GetResponse?
  • AWeber?
  • MailChimp?
  • InfusionSoft? Or something else?

So which is the best email marketing software?

In this GetResponse Vs MailChimp comparison post, we’ll talk about the two incredible email marketing autoresponders that are used by millions of people worldwide.

GetResponse vs MailChimp: Which is better in 2024?

GetResponse vs MailChimp for 2024

Before diving into the details, let’s quickly talk about both email marketing software.

About GetResponse

GetResponse is used mostly by “serious people” (aka people who are serious about making money online).

People who are really serious about using their email lists to make money prefer using GetResponse. Big marketing guys like Neil Patel, Peep Laza, etc are using it to grow their email list and make sales from it.

GetResponse is offering a 30-day free trial. You don’t even have to enter your credit card information. It’s free for 30 days, if you like it, you need to pay them $15 per month afterward.


About MailChimp

MailChimp is widely used by “beginners”

Beginners to email marketing mostly use MailChimp. The reason is, that it allows you to build a list of your first 2000 subscribers for FREE. You don’t have to enter your credit card information or pay them a penny to use their service to build your email lists.

Did you know that over 9 million people are currently using MailChimp and they send over 600 million emails every single day? This stat alone can give you a better idea of how popular MailChimp is among email marketing users.

From the above comparison, you might find MailChimp is better than GetResponse.

But in reality, it’s not! Here’s why.

You can’t send email autoresponders to your subscribers. This is a serious issue if you want to build engagement with your email list. I mean, how on earth can you possibly build trust with your subscribers without sending a set of autoresponder email series?

Okay, even if you are fine with this, there’s another catch with MailChimp.

You can’t send affiliate links using their email newsletters. This is really sad!

Especially for the bloggers who are growing their email list to make sales by promoting their affiliate products. MailChimp deactivates your free account without your permission if you do so.

You simply can’t send anything related to affiliate marketing or making money online by using MailChimp’s free plan. This is the reason you either need to get their PRO account or consider using an even better choice – GetResponse.

Again, your thinking changed from using MailChimp to GetResponse, right?

Is MailChimp really that bad? Not so!


MailChimp Features

MailChimp is really good for beginners who want to start building their email list from day 1. The reason is it’s easier to create newsletters, their design is intuitive and more importantly, they don’t charge you anything until you get your first 2000 subscribers.

So if you consider that, MailChimp beats GetResponse way ahead.

Let’s now look at the features of MailChimp.

  • Subscriber profiles (you can view who clicked and opened your emails by this feature)
  • Automation and personalization (send the email to the different time zone people at the right time. Personalize your emails however you want. Want to include their names? No problem!)
  • Best time feature (MailChimp provides you the best time to send your newsletters so you can get more open rates and clicks)
  • Advanced analytics (to help you monitor sales, analytics, and what not?)
  • Provides you A/B testing
  • Mobile optimized newsletters
  • Allows you to share your newsletters on social media to get more exposure
  • And above all, they have lots of gorgeous looking newsletter templates (you can use any one of them without any coding)

Click here to sign up for MailChimp


GetResponse Features

Now, let’s talk about the other email marketing software GetResponse.

Note: I’ve been personally using GetResponse for more than a year now and I never got disappointed with their service or features.

The #1 use of GetResponse over MailChimp’s free service is the access to the email autoresponder. If you don’t know what it is, let me explain. With an email autoresponder, you can set up your email newsletter sequences in advance and they will be delivered to your email subscribers (new or existing) automatically at predetermined times.

See, how good is that? You don’t have to send newsletters every time someone subscribes to your email list. Your autoresponder takes care of it. You just have to create an autoresponder by going to your GetResponse dashboard. You can select the predetermined days to send to your email subscribers.

With an autoresponder, you can pretty much do the following.

  • Set up a welcome sequence for new email subscribers
  • Create an email course and spread the content out over several weeks
  • Send a weekly newsletter
  • Sell affiliate products
  • and many more

Here’s what it basically looks like:

Getresponse autoresponder

This is the missing (email autoresponder) thing between MailChimp and GetResponse. You can’t send automated newsletters to your subscribers by using MailChimp’s free account (but yea, you can do that by their PRO account).

Let’s now talk about the GetResponse features.

  • mobile responsive emails
  • stunning mobile apps
  • better analytics
  • great autoresponder
  • comprehensive segmentation options
  • social sharing tools
  • split testing
  • RSS / blog to-email functionality
  • lots of templates to choose
  • time machine feature

If you want to read an unbiased GetResponse review, please click this link.

When using email marketing software, here are the 3 major things you should look for.

1. Deliverability: You can’t make even a penny if your emails don’t get delivered to your subscribers.

  • GetResponse offers 99% email deliverability that’s the industry’s highest rate! So you can trust their service and from my personal experience, I sent all my newsletters using GetResponse successfully.
  • MailChimp offers 98% deliverability which is also good.

2. List segmentation: Your email marketing software should allow you to send tailor-made emails to various subscribers to your email list. This is really important when you are selling stuff. You can’t sell affiliate products in your first mail (welcome mail), but by segmenting and creating awareness, you can do that.

Both of these tools offer list segmentation.

3. Pricing: We all know the importance of this. Make sure you are not spending too much.

  • MailChimp – free (for 2000 subscribers) they also have a pro account
  • GetResponse – free (for 30 days) $15 per month after that

Here’s the most common question few people ask – what if I start building my email list with MailChimp and pay them once I reach 2000 email subscribers?

Honestly speaking, it sounds like a good idea. But in general, it’s not. The reason?

Once you decided to start paying for MailChimp (once crossing 2000 subscribers), it costs you more than GetResponse!

Overall, GetResponse costs you less than what MailChimp costs you in the long run. So if you are aiming to increase sales in the long run, I highly recommend you use GetResponse over MailChimp.

For instance, let’s consider that you have a list of 2500 email subscribers. To maintain that list, you will have to pay $30 every month to MailChimp whereas GetResponse offers the same for $25/month.

And if you have a list of 10,000 subscribers, you just need to pay $65 per month to GetResponse, and you will be paying $75/mo ($10 more than GetResponse) to MailChimp.

So decide yourself which autoresponder to go for.


3 Reasons to Choose GetResponse

Are you wondering why should you go for GetResponse instead of other options like MailChimp? Here are the 3 strongest features that make GetResponse worth every single penny.

1. Email marketing made easy

One of the major reasons to consider GetResponse over any other email marketing software is that it gives you all kinds of email marketing solutions including;

  • Deliverability
  • Autoresponders
  • Email Templates
  • Perfect Timing
  • Time Travel
  • RSS to Email

Let’s talk about each one of them briefly now so you can understand why GetResponse is best when it comes to email marketing.

Deliverability

GetResponse offers a stunning email deliverability rate of 99%. That means, 99% of your emails will get delivered, and rarely they will jump into spam folders. GetResponse monitors all of their accounts and takes appropriate action on specific threats. These actions start with sending warnings and even closing accounts when necessary. So you’re in good hands.

Autoresponders

You can easily create autoresponders (also called drip messages) no matter what industry you are in. You can send your autoresponders whenever you want (on any day). Just create an email series, choose when to send those newsletters and you’re done.

Email Templates

Whether you know it or not, GetResponse has a HUGE database of over 500 HTML templates to create professional emails that encourage engagement with your email marketing campaigns. From fitness to travel to marketing, you can find a ton of templates that you can instantly use to send beautifully looking email newsletters.

Perfect Timing

  • Unlimited messages per day
  • Advanced timing control
  • Simple cycle management
  • Day-of-the-week selection
  • Drag-and-drop message management
  • Quick message edits

Time Travel

One of the incredible features of GetResponse is that it provides “Time Travel”. Turn on Time Travel and make sure your messages are delivered at the same local time in every time zone.

time zones

If you want to increase your email open rates, you need to make sure your subscribers receive your message at the appropriate time for their time zone. Here’s where Time Travel comes into handy. Want to make sure your email hits the inbox at 10 AM no matter where in the world your subscribers are located? GetResponse Time Travel handles the logistics, automatically.

RSS to Email

GetResponse offers 30 predesigned RSS-to-email templates that you can customize however you want and your readers will see your RSS emails exactly the way you want.

You can also choose whether you want to send your blog posts instantly after you publish or aggregate them into daily, weekly, or monthly RSS to email newsletters. You can also show social sharing options to increase your readership.

2. Marketing Automation

GetResponse is popularly known as the all-in-one email marketing solution.

The best part is that marketing automation allows you to increase the relevance of your email marketing campaigns and that’s why the average open rate with marketing automation is 57.67%.

So what do you think makes GetResponse so much popular and an all-in-one toolkit for email campaigns? It is mostly due to its marketing automation tools which include;

  • Automation Templates
  • Scoring
  • Web Event Tracking
  • Cart Abandonment
  • Automation Segmentation

You can create automation events based on user behavior. For example, you can create conditions (on what kind of emails to send) when your subscribers;

  • click
  • abandon the cart or
  • purchased something

To put it simply, you can easily create a path where you can turn your email subscribers into leads into customers using GetResponse automation tools.

3. Landing pages and webinars

Whether you know it or not, GetResponse offers you a landing page builder which lets you easily create high-converting landing pages for your business.

Just within 4 steps, you can create high converting landing pages which include;

  • Select a template
  • Customize your page
  • Publish with a click
  • Test & optimize

That’s it!

Not only that, it also offers you webinars software. GetResponse is the first email marketing service to provide a complete webinar marketing solution designed to increase conversions.

Using their webinar software, you can easily customize your webinar URL with a title. Use the advanced date-and-time picker for flexible scheduling options and choose whether your webinar will be open to everyone or password-protected.

It also offers you predesigned webinar invitations and reminder templates with pre-filled webinar details.

So what are you waiting for?

Go give a try to GetResponse to use all the above features.


3 Reasons to Prefer MailChimp

So why should you go for MailChimp over other email marketing solutions like GetResponse, AWeber, etc? The #1 reason could be the “Free Plan”. Yes, MailChimp offers a “FREE” plan which allows you to send up to 12K emails to up to 2000 subscribers.

Other than their free plan, here are 3 more major reasons why you should consider MailChimp in 2024 and beyond.

1. Create almost anything from email to Instagram ads

MailChimp is known for its easy handling of email marketing solutions. You can literally create anything from email to landing pages to Instagram ads using MailChimp. Here are a few things you can do easily using MailChimp.

  • Email
  • Landing Pages
  • Google Remarketing Ads
  • Facebook Ads
  • Instagram Ads

MailChimp lets you easily create landing pages so you don’t need any other special landing page builders or plugins to create high converting pages to collect emails and leads. MailChimp currently has over 100 templates that you can use to instantly create gorgeous newsletters for your audience.

So you’re in the right hands if you really want to boost your email engagement on almost any platform including Google to social media.

2. Automate like a pro

From creating automated welcome emails to sending newsletters to those people who abandoned your shopping cart, you can automate everything using MailChimp. Here are a few incredible things you can automate on MailChimp.

  • Abandoned Cart
  • RSS to Email
  • Product Recommendations
  • Order Notifications
  • Welcome Automation

This means you can remind customers about stuff they left in their online shopping cart and also remind people to come back for stuff they saw on your site through product recommendations.

3. Optimize for better results

Do you want to test campaign subject lines, images, and more to see what gets results? You can do so easily with MailChimp automation tools which it offers a ton of tools ranging from;

  • CRM
  • Segmentation
  • Personalization
  • A/B Testing
  • Reports

One of the best ways to increase your email open rates or analyze whether your email subject lines are performing well or not is by using A/B testing. Luckily, MailChimp offers you incredible A/B testing features where you can easily analyze anything from;

  • Subject lines
  • Names
  • Send time
  • Content and so on

mail chimp testing

You can also select the percentage of participants to perform A/B tests instead of sending your email newsletters to your entire email list.

So what are you waiting for? If you like the above features, make sure to check them out and give them a try on MailChimp today.

Here’s the pricing list of both email marketing software in case you want a clear idea.


GetResponse pricing:

getresponse pricing


MailChimp pricing:

MailChimp pricing

I think, by now you got a clear idea about the pricing of both the autoresponders. If you are smart enough, you will easily understand that GetResponse is cheaper than MailChimp (as you go) in the long run.


Few Amazing GetResponse features

GetResponse amazing features help a lot in maximizing ROI, and increases sales. Its features are super easy to set things up. GetResponse features help in driving great results and also boost your marketing campaign. Here’s a quick look at their predefined templates.

getresponse themes

This comparison review will be incomplete without talking about each of its features, so let’s quickly cover them.

  1. Generate more leads. Without subscribers, there is no business. GetResponse helps in generating more leads. You can create attractive web forms in minutes. GetResponse list building program enhances your list by up to 10,000 subscribers that too within 90 days. With just one click, you can add all your contacts to your marketing list using the automated single opt-in import feature.
  2. Create professional email campaigns. If you want to increase sales then subscriber engagement is more important than anything else during an email campaign. You can send beautifully designed responsive mails through a comprehensive email campaign. GetResponse offers a suite of tools that are tailored to your subscribers
  3. You can create converting landing pages. When it comes to marketing, in addition to satisfying the present customer needs, you always need to attract new customers also. GetResponse offers responsive landing pages and web forms for this purpose. There are more than 150 ready-to-go templates to create fantastic web pages for webinars, sales, opt-ins, etc without learning a single line of code.
  4. Do campaign with real-time analytics. It is highly important to know which email converts the best if you want to maximize ROI how many people actually clicked the link inside your mail? What devices do your subscribers mostly use to see your email? What is the open rate of your autoresponder? So, with the advanced features provided by GetResponse, you can get answers to all these questions and you can give your best shot for your campaign.

Few Rocking MailChimp features

MailChimp is also a great tool for email marketing. You can build amazing email marketing campaigns with these 3 MailChimp features.

  1. Create automation funnels. Based on the behavior and preferences of the customers, its robust marketing automation makes sure that your emails go to the right people and at right time. With a single API request, you can trigger a series of emails to your audience. You can get report insights to check every automated series.
  2. Create a campaign that matches your style.  You can easily create a campaign using drag and drop designer It has many collaboration options like comments inside the editor, multi-user accounts, etc to speed up the design process.
  3. Analytics features to enhance business. Wherever you are, you can monitor sales, and website activity with revenue reports, inform your advertising content with purchase data, and much more with MailChimp’s advanced reporting features. You can optimize ad and email campaigns in one place.
  4. Create A/B testing. Well, you have sent an email to your contacts. Some messages have a higher open rate than other and it will be very hard to make sense of the stats. That’s where A/B testing features come in handy. Because of this feature, you can test three different variables namely subject line, From names, delivery dates, and times. Under the A/B split test, you can pick any of these variables and compare them to know which performs the best. The test is so easy to carry out and takes a few steps to set up.

GetResponse Pros and Cons

Let’s talk about the pros and cons of GetResponse email marketing software.

Pros:

  • It offers fantastic customer support. Most of the users rated 5/5 for this.
  • It analyzes subscriber actions and gives a comprehensive report.
  • You can directly import contacts from outlook.
  • It allows integration with Google Analytics.
  • It asks unsubscribers to fill out the feedback form.
  • Offers incredibly flexible templates, an email editor.
  • You can create an A/B test campaign
  • It suggests the best time to deliver emails to your subscribers based on your niche.
  • GetResponse pricing is contact-based. If you want to send to 1000 contacts, you need to pay $15. However, if you want to send more than one email to the same list of contacts in a month, the contract-based pricing is very useful as it allows you to send an unlimited number of emails to all the email addresses in your contact list.

Cons:

  • Its interface takes some time for beginners to get used to.
  • There are no free plans (unlike MailChimp).

MailChimp pros and cons

MailChimp succeeded in building a huge base of customers ranging from small startups to enterprise brands. Whatever the contacts list number, it’s an affordable choice.

Pros:

  • You can schedule emails to deliver at a particular time zone.
  • You can import your own email templates or customize existing templates.
  • It’s free up to 2000 contacts. However, they place their logo under your campaign.
  • It offers a wide variety of multiple integration options.
  • You can track how your email campaigns are performing. You can also see the metrics how other MailChimp users are performing to know whether you are getting the most out of your efforts.
  • Its template editor is very easy to use.
  • For every campaign, you can integrate Google Analytics.

Cons:

  • It doesn’t offer any professional templates, unlike GetResponse.
  • Your account will be suspended if you get a lot of unsubscriptions or spam complaints.
  • Not so reliable with WordPress integration and Paypal. So, having a membership-based site is difficult.
  • Autoresponders will be sent to those who subscribed through a web form.
  • The templates they offer are very basic and you have to create your own template.
  • It takes much time to design and organize the campaign as its interface is not user-friendly.

However, its absolutely good for beginner bloggers and small business owners who just starts email marketing campaigns as it offers free service. So that’s all from the GetResponse vs MailChimp review, I hope it helped you to decide on the right one for your site needs.

More Posts Worth Reading:


What’s our take about both the software

So what’s our take on these email marketing softwares? Which one do we really recommend for bloggers and marketers in 2024?

Honestly speaking, both are great email marketing solutions that are used by millions of people worldwide (MailChimp is used by even more people because of their free plan).

Here are 2 main things to take into consideration.

  • Pricing and
  • Features

As you all know, MailChimp offers a free version where you can build up 2000 email subscribers using their free plan but you can’t send promotional emails. To put it simply, you can’t make money if you’re on their free plan.

Whereas GetResponse doesn’t offer any free plans (besides their free trial) but their pricing plans start just at $15 per month where you can build up to 1K subscribers and you can send any number of emails, use their landing page builder, and so on.

Once your email list goes beyond 2k subscribers, you’ll need to pay for MailChimp which gets costlier when compared to GetResponse in the long run.

So the bottom line?

If you’re looking for a free option and just getting started with email marketing, you can go for MailChimp.

If you’re looking for an affordable yet powerful email marketing solution where you can easily create high converting emails, you should probably go for GetResponse.

Read: 6 Best ActiveCampaign Alternatives With Pros & Cons
Read: ActiveCampaign Review 2024: Is It Better Than Others?


MailChimp vs GetResponse: FAQs

Here are a few important questions about these softwares which can help you understand their features and gives you an idea about which one to choose.

1. What are some better alternatives to GetResponse?

If you’re looking for alternatives to GetResponse, here are a few you can try in 2024.

2. What are the MailChimp alternatives in 2024?

Here are a few of the better MailChimp alternatives to try in 2024.

  • ActiveCampaign
  • Maropost
  • AWeber
  • Emma
  • Get Response
  • Sparkpost

3. What is MailChimp pricing?

MailChimp offers the “Free plan” for up to 2,000 contacts and 12,000 emails per month (with ads). The Growing Business plan starts at $10 per month for 500 contacts and unlimited emails. However, you can’t send commercial email newsletters when you’re on their free plan.

4. How much does GetResponse cost?

There are currently 4 pricing options offered by GetResponse which are listed below.

  • Email plan at $15 monthly for up to 1,000 subscribers and an unlimited amount of emails.
  • Pro at $49 monthly for up to 5,000 subscribers and an unlimited amount of emails
  • Max at $165 for up to 10,000 subscribers and an unlimited amount of emails
  • Enterprise at $1199 monthly for up to 100,000+ subscribers and an unlimited amount of emails

5. Which one is the best among GetResponse and MailChimp?

GetResponse offers a 99% deliverability rate which means, most of your emails will go into the primary box of your audience and you can’t expect similar results with MailChimp (and expect high bounce rates with MailChimp).

But if you’re looking for free and easy-to-use options, MailChimp is a great choice. You just can’t send promotional emails with their free plan. If you’re looking to make money off your list, you should go for GetResponse where you can send unlimited emails with stunning features like landing page builder, time travel, and so on.

6. Should I really build an email list?

According to a 2018 study by Litmus, email marketing return on investment is 38:1 on average. It simply means that if you invest $1 in your email marketing activities, you’ll get $38 in return. That’s an awesome ROI. That’s the reason why you should start building and growing your email list no matter what industry you are in.

Read: ConvertKit vs Mailchimp: Which is Better?
Read: ActiveCampaign Pricing Plans: Which Plan is Worth Your Money?


MailChimp vs GetResponse: Final Thoughts

The best time to start your email list is NOW. So act now, choose either GetResponse or MailChimp to get started. They both are free (GetResponse is free for 30 days), so you won’t lose anything.

All in all, if I had to pick one among these, I’d go with GetResponse without thinking twice (because of the pricing, features, and deliverability rate).

Let me know if you have any questions related to choosing these email marketing tools, I’d be glad to respond.

About Author
Anil Agarwal is the Founder of Bloggerspassion. He is a full-time blogger and SEO expert who has been helping people build profitable blogs for over a decade Now. He has been featured in Over 100 Publications including Forbes, The HuffPost, HubSpot, Shopify, Semrush, Kinsta, Bluehost, Hostinger and G2.com etc. Know more about Anil Agarwal from here.

Reader Comments (5)

  1. hiiiiiiiiii
    Thanks for the comparison. I guess it’s good to try both and see what suits you best.It is the great solution

    Reply
  2. Thanks for the comparison. I guess it’s good to try both and see what suits you best. I’ve read that GetResponse also has marketing automation and it seems quite nice. Have you tried it?

    Reply
  3. Hi Anil Agarwal,

    First of all thanks for sharing this detailed and constructive post related to email marketing. I am using Getresponse and i am quite happy with its result.

    Thanks for fantastic share 🙂

    Regard’s

    M.Mairaj

    Reply
  4. Hi Anil,

    Your review is very detailed.

    In my opinion, GetResponse is way better than Mailchimp, they are not on the same level at all.

    It’s a good thing you compared the 2 tools, so people can make an informed decision.

    Cheers

    Dan

    Reply
  5. What about Aweber? Do you use it for this site? Since I think Mailchimp doesn’t like that you send affiliate offers in your email.

    Reply

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

12 Shares