Getresponse vs. Convertkit – [Which is Best for YOU] – A Comparison [2020]

Have you ever asked about Getresponse vs. Convertkit? Maybe you’re curious about the differences between the two software options, and you want to figure out which is the best fit for you? If so, you’re in the right place.

If you’re here, you probably already know email is important. You know it’s a main driver of customer retention and repeat sales, but the problem is…which platform is best? GetResponse and Convertkit are two great solutions in the small-business email marketing software market. They both have raving fans and offer lots of great features, so it can be tough to decide which is best for you.

The good news is…I’ve done my research. I’ve been a customer of Convertkit for nearly two years. After all that time, I recently made the switch to GetResponse, and I want to tell you the differences.

GetResponse vs. Convertkit – A Little Background

I know sometimes it helps to know where a brand came from and where they’re going. You might have similar visions for your companies, and seeing how a company plans to blossom may help you decide which company you align more with, so let’s talk about the background on Getresponse and Convertkit.

The Background on GetResponse

Simon Grabowski started GetResponse in 1997. It’s one of the oldest email autoresponder services in the industry. The domain www.getresponse.com was registered in 1998, and the first office was set up in Poland.

Since their launch, they’ve accomplished many notable things including:

• Expanding to have offices on every continent
• Available in 10+ languages
• More than 300k customers
• More than 200 employees
• And billions of emails sent

Now, GetResponse has been in business for 21 years and their email service has transformed into a full lead generation platform.

The Background on Convertkit

Nathan Berry started Convertkit in March 2013 as a way to create landing pages and send out email sequences. His mission was to help more people make a living online, and he knew email marketing was a key to that.

Now, Convertkit has grown into:

• A team of 48 people across 38 cities
• Serving 20,000+ creators
• And, they’re hoping to grow to:
• Help creators generate over $1 billion in sales
• 250,000 users
• $100 Million in annual revenue
• and a 100% remote team of 50 employees or fewer

Verdict: These are two Very Cool Companies

Both companies have a very interesting background. Right now, Convertkit is more of the “underdog”. They’re new to the industry and targeting online creators. GetResponse has been around longer and has features that are helpful for multi-lingual and for small businesses in general.

Getresponse vs. Convertkit – User Experience

A huge deciding factor on which email marketing service to use is user experience. You can try GetResponse and Convertkit for free. They both have free trials, but I wanted to show you a glimpse of what you see when you log onto each.

GetResponse UX

One very nice feature of GetResponse is the drag and drop dashboard. When you log on, the dashboard enables you to customize what you see by dragging and dropping. You can choose to see your list stats, webinar stats, how your funnel is working, to create new forms, pages, or emails, and more. You can also customize it to see graphs and change the dates so you can see stats going back or simply stats from today. It’s a powerful dashboard!

Convertkit UX

With Convertkit, many users love the user interface because of the simplicity. The design is created to have crisp lines, to be very minimalistic, and to make it easy to use. When you log on, you see your subscriber graph that shows the # of subscribers you have, your email open rate, your email click rate, and how many subscribers were added today.

Verdict: GetResponse Wins

The Getresponse dashboard is entirely customizable, so it wins this one. With Convertkit, it’s clean and easy to use, but you can only see the subscribers graph whereas, Getresponse has more functionality. I think both are easy to navigate and use, but GetResponse has more functionality.

Getresponse vs. Convertkit – Optins and Landing Pages

One cool feature about Getresponse and Convertkit is you have the ability to create landing pages and optin forms–this means you don’t need a separate service if you don’t want to.

GetResponse Optins and Landing Pages

GetResponse has 180 landing page templates and 700 web forms you can use to create landing pages. They also have a drag-and-drop landing page creator.

Convertkit Optins and Landing Pages

Convertkit has 25 landing pages and 4 web form templates. They also have a drag-and-drop landing page creator.

Verdict: GetResponse Wins

Both landing page creators are easy to use and both have very nice templates to choose from. Templates really help because you can use a model of what’s working and make your own version of it. GetResponse has many more templates available in addition to the ability to build landing pages and web forms from scratch.

Getresponse vs. Convertkit – Sales Funnels and Automation

Both GetResponse and Convertkit are known for their automation features. They both offer a robust solution for businesses who want to offer a customize behavior based email experience to subscribers.

GetResponse Sales Funnels and Automation

Over the last two years, GetResponse has added many nice features to their sales funnels and automations, and I want to show you a few…

AutoFunnel

With Autofunnel, you’re able to completely build a sales funnel for list-building, selling a product, or promoting a webinar. You choose what you’re goal is, and GetResponse will recommend what type of automation funnel you need including emails, landing pages, and more.

Sales Funnels and Automation Templates

Some sales funnels can be very short. For example, a listbuilding funnel may simplay be a landing page, email sequence, and thank you page. GetResponse will give you templates for the emails, the landing pages, the thank you pages, and track the conversion percentages on each step of your funnel, so you can optimize and split test for better results.

Webinars

Many businesses rave about the power of webinars for their businesses. The cool thing is GetResponse has added this into their email service. When you upgrade to the “Plus” plan, GetResponse includes webinars in addition to the other features. You can set up the landing pages, email sequences, webinar reminders, and even the product sales inside of GetResponse.

Digital Product Sales

One recent addition to GetResponse in the ability to sell digital products directly. Now, rather than connecting with another service like Thrive Cart or Kartra, you can connect GetResponse to Paypal, Stripe or another payment processor, sell your digital products, and deliver them directly. This feature alone can save thousands of dollars people are spending on other software that does this.

Ad Creator

GetResponse has also added a social ad creator, so you can create the ads to drive traffic to your sales funnel directly thru GetResponse. They even have a mobile app you can use to create ads.

CRM

If you have a business that tracks the sales pipeline, GetResponse could be a big help with this. You can create rules to include people who are tagged a certain way or who came thru a certain email form, then keep reminders to ensure they go through each phase of the customer journey.

Segmenting and Tagging

When you have an email list, it’s best to send emails based on the users’ interest–that’s where tagging and segmenting comes in. With GetResponse, they have several ways you can tag and segment your list based on the user’s interest and behavior. In fact, they have several templates you can use for lead scoring, segmenting, and tagging to better understand your email subscribers.

Convertkit Sales Funnels and Automation

Convertkit is also well-known for its contributions to moving potential customers along the buying journey online. Many of the features built into Convertkit are helpful to nurture the relationships with potential customers in an effort to close a sale.

Autofunnel (None Available)

Unlike GetResponse, Convertkit doesn’t offer any software that enables you to view analytics of the entire sales funnel: landing page, sales page, email sequence, and thank you page.

Webinars (None Available)

If you’re interested in Convertkit, but you’re looking to use webinar marketing, you’d have to also add a separate software to deliver webinars.

Sales Funnels and Automation (Would Need a Work Around to Visualize)

If you’d like to visualize your sales funnel and analyze the data for conversion optimization, you’d need to use a separate software.

Digital Product Sales (None Available)

For digital product sales, you’d have to use a separate software (like Podia or Clickfunnels) in addition to Convertkit.

Ad Creator (None Available)

Convertkit specializes in email marketing, and creating ads is a completely separate function, therefore, if you’d like a feature like this, you’d need to find a Convertkit alternative.

Segmenting and Tagging (One of it’s Most Notable Features)

One of the features that creators rave about most when discussing Convertkit is the segmenting and tagging features. You can create tags and rules inside Convertkit, so when an action is taken by the user, they can be nurtured specifically based on the action.

Verdict: GetResponse Wins

In terms of sales funnels and automations, Getresponse offers features that would benefit people with a website, without a website, proponents of primarily online or offline sales, and more. Convertkit has very nice tagging and segmenting features, but GetResponse offers that and much more.

Getresponse vs. Convertkit – Integrations

As you’re operating your business, you might also use other software and the integrations between your email service and the other software could be very efficient or a pain. Luckily, both, Convertkit and Getresponse offer lots of integrations.

Getresponse Integrations

GetResponse is an email marketing service that’s leading with the number of integrations offered. They seamlessly integrate with over 150 other software applications including Shopify, WordPress, Woocommerce, and others.

Convertkit Integrations

Convertkit has a growing number of integrations, however, it’s not like the 150 offered by GetResponse. They have major integrations like Teachable, Zapier, and Shopify, which give lots of options for selling online.

Verdict: GetResponse wins

GetResponse offers more integration options than Convertkit. They offer Zapier, Shopify, and more, however, they each have some integrations the other doesn’t have, so if you want to know about a specific integration, then make sure to check out the websites. [[Check out Convertkit here]] or [[Check out GetResponse here]].

Getresponse vs. Convertkit – Mobile app

If you’re the type that likes to handle business on-the-go, it might help to have a mobile app that helps you work on email marketing while in transit.

Does GetResponse have a mobile app?

Yes. They have a mobile app that enables you to create ads and manage your email marketing on-the-go.

Does Convertkit have a mobile app?

No. At the time of this writing, Convertkit doesn’t have a mobile app.

Getresponse vs. Convertkit – RSS-to-Email

One feature that made me decide to switch to GetResponse was the RSS-to-Email. You may want to send out your blog posts, podcasts, or Youtube content once you’ve published it. Automating that process can save alot of time. With an email RSS-to-email feature, you can update your subscribers with your new content on autopilot.

GetResponse RSS-to-Email

GetResponse offers the RSS-to-Email function. You can customize the titles, so you’re not sending the same title out on each newsletter, you can create a template that can be optimized based on performance, and you can make the template custom to your brand by using your color palettes and font.

Convertkit RSS-to-Email

Convertkit also offers RSS-to-Email, but they don’t offer all of the customization options. You can choose between three templates. Each template sends out the posts only. You can send out one title for every newsletter, but no custom titles based on the contents of the newsletter.

The RSS-to-email features is one of the main reasons I decided to switch from Convertkit to GetResponse because I really like being able to notify my subscribers about new content through email, but I want the newsletter to look very nice.

Verdict: GetResponse Wins

GetResponse has more customization options for RSS-to-Email. Convertkit’s options are very basic.

Getresponse vs. Convertkit – What Others are Saying – Good and Bad

Reviews from users and those with experience play heavily into most people’s buying decisions, so I want to make sure you know what users and 3rd party reviewers consider the advantages and disadvantages of GetResponse and Convertkit.

Common Positive GetResponse Feedback

When reading reviews across sites like Capterra, G2Crowd, PCMag, and others who rank on Google for “Getresponse reviews”, these are some common positive feedback I saw:

• Lots of features for the price
• Easy to customize nearly every part of your funnel: from landing pages and optins to product delivery
• The software is easy to use
• The training is very helpful to learn email marketing and other digital marketing topics
• The reports and analytics are very robust
• They give you plenty of time to try the software without any risk with their 30-day free trial
• Very good customer support
• I love the design and aesthetics of my emails
• The platform is very reliable
• Customers receive my emails on time every time
• Great customer support
• If anything ever happens to my social media accounts, I always have my email list to go with me wherever I go
• The spam score feature helps keep emails out of the spam folder which is very helpful

Common Negative Getresponse Reviews

• There are too many options and I only use a few
• You can outgrow the smallest plan with 1000 subscribers quickly
• I like being able to export analytics onto spreadsheets to analyze data and this function isn’t available in GetResponse
• Having one email address on several lists can move you into a higher billing tier

Common Positive Convertkit Reviews

• I love the tagging and segmenting options so I can nurture my leads based on their interests
• There are lots of tutorials to help you understand how to use the software
• I really like the UI and UX
• The interface is nicely designed
• There’s not a lot of clutter when navigating
• There’s a good mix of basic and advanced features

Common Negative Convertkit Reviews

• Some of the tagging and segmentation features can be confusing for a newbie
• I wish there were more customization options for optins
• The starting price is high compared to competitors

Getresponse vs. Convertkit – Pricing

Of course, pricing is going to be a major component of the buying decision. Every business should have a budget (if you don’t check out my article here), so it’s important to determine which software option will help you make the most of your budget.

GetResponse Pricing

GetResponse starts out at $15/mo for 1000 subscribers and adds more features and a larger list size as you select larger packages. If you decide to go annual on your email marketing package, you can save 15% which lowers the cost for services significantly.

Double-Counting Subscribers

One thing to be mindful of is GetResponse may count subscribers multiple times if you have them on more than one list. For example, I have an email list with people who go through my “All About Affiliate Marketing” free e-course and a separate list for people who go through the “Business Growth Framework” e-course. If a person signed up for both e-courses, GetResponse would count them as 2 subscribers. I don’t like this about GetResponse, but it is what it is.

GetResponse still comes out at the lower end of the pricing spectrum when comparing email marketing software.

Convertkit Pricing

Convertkit’s most basic plan starts at $29/mo for 1000 subscribers. The larger plans basically are different because of the larger list size. Convertkit is one of the higher-priced options for basic features, but one of the main features that sets them apart is the segmenting and tagging features, however, more competitors are adding this functionality nowadays–GetResponse is one of them.

Double Counting Subscribers

One feature that makes Convertkit’s pricing closer to its competitors is the fact they don’t double count subscribers. If you have one subscriber who is on multiple lists, you’ll still only be charged once for that subscriber. For this reason, I had 583 subscribers at Convertkit, but double the amount when I switched to GetResponse.

Verdict: GetResponse wins

GetResponse has more plans and features that you can upgrade into, but when you compare features for features, GetResponse is cheaper than Convertkit, so it wins in the pricing category.

Getresponse vs. Convertkit Comparison

Getresponse vs. Convertkit – Closing Comments

We each have our own buying motives. If you are looking for the software with the most customization options, longest-standing history, most features, multi-lingual support, around-the-clock support, and lowest price, then GetResponse is likely going to be the best option for you. If you’re looking to support the underdog, have more simplicity, and be a part of a community that’s targeting “online creators”, then you may like Convertkit. Both have free trials, so you can try them each for free.

If you’d like to learn more about Convertkit or GetResponse, you can check out my GetResponse review here and my Convertkit review here. For a 30-day free trial of GetResponse, visit here. For a 30-day free trial of Convertkit, visit here.