Low Pricing (weighted 11%)
Campaign Monitor
For a Maximum of 500 Subscribers:
Basic: $9/month
Basic allows you to send up to 12,500 emails per month.
Unlimited: $29/month
Send unlimited emails every month
Premier: $149/month
Send unlimited emails every month, and get other premium customer service features like email design consultants, online training, and a customer success manager.
For a Maximum of 2,500 subscribers:
Basic: $29/month
Send up to 2,500 emails per month
Unlimited: $59/month
Send unlimited emails every month
Premier: $149/month
Send unlimited emails every month, and get other premium customer service features like email design consultants, online training, and a customer success manager.
For a Maximum of 10,000 subscribers:
Basic: $89/month
Send up to 75,000 emails per month
Unlimited: $149/month
Send unlimited emails every month
Premier: $249/month
Send unlimited emails every month, and get other premium customer service features like email design consultants, online training, and a customer success manager.
Campaign Monitor will give you a custom quote for more than 50,000 subscribers.
There are no setup fees, and Campaign Monitor offers a limited free trial to test out their software.
GetResponse
$15/month
for 0-1,000 subscribers, unlimited emails, access to all features
$25/month
for 1,001-2,500 subscribers, unlimited emails, access to all features
$45/month
for 2501-5,000 subscribers, unlimited emails, access to all features
$65/month
for 5,001-10,000 subscribers,unlimited emails, access to all features
$145/month
for 10,001-25,000 subscribers, unlimited emails, access to all features
$250/month
for 25,001-50,000 subscribers, unlimited emails, access to all features
$450/month
for 50,001-100,000 subscribers, unlimited emails, access to all features
You'll have to get a custom quote for more than 100,000 subscribers.
As you can see, GetResponse has access to all of its features out of the gate. GetResponse also has a 30-day free trial, so you can try it out first to see if it fits your needs. They have unlimited image hosting for all of their plans as well.
Design (weighted 11%)
Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor doesn't have nearly as many templates as GetResponse. There are only 35 to choose from, but you can also import your own HTML file. This requires a little knowledge of coding.
That said, the templates offered are very well designed. They are very professional in appearance, responsive, and highly customizeable.
You won't have to worry about how your email will look on other devices. Campaign Monitor offers a preview of how your newsletter will look in all the major email clients.
The drag and drop editor gives you the option to add buttons, images, social share items, and dividers. This can completely change the overall look and feel of your layout and really make your email pop.
GetResponse
If you want to create a new campaign with GetResponse, you’ll get a choice between a drag and drop email editor and a HTML source editor.
GetResponse has more than 500 templates available to get you started.
If you're code savvy, the HTML editor allows you to create your own emails. You can also import a template from a zip file or a web page, create a plain text email, or have one of GetResponse's designers create one for you for an extra fee.
An extremely useful feature is the mobile device preview, which shows how the custom email will look on a mobile device, complete with interactive scrolling and landscape/portrait toggle.
The template selection is very good; templates are arranged into a wide range of categories.
The editor offers drag and drop design elements, and there are a lot of templates to choose from. However, the customization is pretty limited.
Frontend Features (weighted 11%)
Campaign Monitor
The basic plan has access to a limited set of features. They have a drag and drop editor, sign-up forms, landing pages, autoresponders, limited inbox previews, and spam testing.
With the Unlimited plan you'll have access, to deliverability experts, unlimited inbox previews, and spam testing.
The Premier plan includes all of the features in the monthly Unlimited and Basic plans plus access to online training, an email design consultant, a customer success manager, and 24h support on weekdays.
Campaign Monitor's iOs and Android apps let you manage subscribers and give you real-time access to campaign and subscriber reporting when you’re on-the-go.
GetResponse
GetResponse includes a great selection of features for all customers like email creator, landing page creator, inbox preview, A/B split testing, autoresponders, form builder, and email analytics.
GetResponse offers some very useful features that are not available in Campaign Monitor, like surveys, auto-responding campaigns that are triggered by customer behaviors, a landing page creator, and alias emails.
The iOS and Android apps have a useful number of features to help you mange your email marketing campaigns directly from your mobile device.
Backend Features (weighted 11%)
Campaign Monitor
The user interface is one of Campaign Monitor’s strongest points. With over 10 years of experience in the business, they have managed to create a user-friendly marketing tool that offers straightforward access to all its features.
Lets explore the items on the menu bar.
- Overview - Here you'll find your dashboard where you'll see an overview of your recent activity.
- Campaigns - In this section reports for every campaign you'll find reports for all of your campaigns.
- Automation The automation tab lets you streamline your workflow by automating common tasks. If you know what a macro is in computing, this is the same idea.
- Transactional - Transactional emails are treated separately in Constant Contact. The emails are triggered by your site or app when a user performs a certain action, like confirming an order or renewing their membership.
- Lists & Subscribers - Under this section you have all the necessary tools for managing your subscribers and lists.
The avatar next to you name gives you access to your account and billing settings, your integrations, and your template library.
Campaign Monster's backend is well designed and maintained, but does not have quite as many features as GetResponse.
GetResponse
GetResponse is pretty straightforward to use, and the menu covers all the basic and more advanced features very clearly:
- Contacts - This tab lets you manage your lists. (import contacts, edit custom fields)
- Messages - Create and test newsletters, setup autoresponders, and manage your RSS to email automation.
- Statistics - This is where GetResponse has all of its analytics.
- Surveys - Here you can create and manage your customer surveys. The statistics gathered from your surveys will be found under the Statistics menu.
- Forms - GetResponse has a bunch of different form templates to suit your needs. They also have blank forms if you don't find what you're looking for in their templates.
- Landing Pages - These are great for converting visitors quickly. They provide you with a visually appealing front page that lets visitors opt-in to whatever it is you need them to opt-in to.
GetResponce has a lot of features that Campaign Monitor simply doesn't have.
Reports & Statistics (weighted 11%)
Campaign Monitor
You’ll find your reports under the campaigns tab after sending out your first email campaign.
Clicking on a report will open an overview of the performance of your email marketing effort. These reports are well designed and easy to read, so you won't have to deal with arcane statistics and confusing graphs.
Campaign Monitor sticks to the basics when it comes to reports, but they still provide enough analytics to help you made good data-driven decisions.
GetResponse
Reports and statistics are a strong point for email marketing campaigns, since you need the stats in order to improve your delivery and open rates or even the efficiency of your signup forms.
GetResponse’s reporting section covers both the basics and a number of advanced statistics. The basic reports appear directly on the dashboard via a pie chart and raw numbers.
You can access the Email Analytics page for information on opens, clicks, unsubscribes, bounces, and complaints. You can view which members within your email list performed any given action and compare desktop versus mobile activity, list growth compared to prior campaigns, and find autoresponder statistics.
GetResponse's reporting tool is definitely one of the most advanced and fully featured out there. They blow Campaign Monitor out of the water.
Flexibility (weighted 11%)
Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor is not quite as flexible as GetResponce, but there are a number of ways that you can adapt it to your needs.
Importing data into Campaign Monitor is very easy, you can upload CSV, TXT or XLS files. You can also simply add subscribers manually or import data from you Outlook, Gmail or Apple contact list.
Campaign Monitor can be re-branded to look like your own product, and if you have multiple clients you can give them access while still managing all of their subscribers from a single account. There is no limit to the number of clients you can add to your account.
Campaign Monitor allows you to give your clients access to almost everything. This allows for a great deal of flexibility.
You may close your account at any time, but Campaign Monitor also allows you to switch to pay per campaign billing. This way you will pay only when you send a campaign or run a design and spam test.
GetResponse
GetResponse's design features allow it to be very flexible for a number of different uses. The open-ended drag and drop editor allows you to make custom emails that can be used for almost anything.
With GetResponse you can import your contacts from a CSV, TXT, XSL, XLSX, VCF, or ODS file (the file cannot be bigger than 10 MB) , from other web services like SalesForce, Google, Magento and many others. The option to manually add your contacts is also available.
All imports will add your subscribers to your list without sending them a confirmation email or asking them to click a link to verify their subscription. Before the list is imported GetResponse will estimate the list quality and depending on the results, the list can be approved or rejected.
GetResponse does not issue a refund for fees you’ve already paid, even if you have paid for a whole year so be careful about paying in advance!
Automation (weighted 11%)
Campaign Monitor
Setting up autoresponders is easy in Campaign Monitor. Emails triggered by your own site or app in response to a subscriber's action are treated separately and called "Transactional" emails. This lets you deal with these emails in a different environment from your other emails. Its really helpful to separate theses because it de-clutters your workflow substantially.
Campaign Monitor allows you to send automated emails when somebody joins a list, is having a birthday, or any other custom event that is associated with a specific user.
If you want to compile a newsletter based on your recent blog posts, you can set up an automated workflow for site updates, and convert your RSS feed to online content.
GetResponse
With GetResponse you have the power to schedule either time-based or action-based messages to reach your subscribers at the perfect moment.
Time-based autoresponders are sent automatically to every new subscriber who joins your list (you can specify the timing of each message). Action-based autoresponders are “trigger messages” sent to your subscribers when they perform a specific action - like, clicking a link or opening a message.
Both of these features work well, and with GetResponse's 99% deliverability you can trust that the emails made it to your customers.
Extensibility (weighted 11%)
Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor integrates with lots of survey, customer relationship management, and blogging apps.
There are 250+ integrations you can use including 3rd party apps like Salesforce, Magento and Wordpress.
Campaign Monitor has a lot more integrations than GetResponse.
GetResponse
There are just 112 add-ons and integrations available for GetResponse. This is not nearly as many as you can find for Campaign Monitor, but all the major programs are available.
Obviously, Campaign Monitor beats GetResponse here, but odds are that either of these programs will work with your existing applications.
Support (weighted 11%)
Campaign Monitor
Although Campaign Monitor does not provide phone or chat support for Basic and Unlimited plans, Premier plan customers have access to 24-hour phone support from Monday to Friday.
If not on the Premier plan, you may only contact support through the support form. Sadly, Unlimited and Premier users have priority over Basic, so if you have the Basic plan you may have to wait to get your questions answered.
They have plenty of helpful online user guides, forum discussions, and FAQs to help get you started, but GetResponse has many more options if you find yourself stuck.
All in all, Campaign Monitor's support is a bit sluggish and disappointing.
GetResponse
GetResponse has a live chat service that is 24hours a day on weekdays. They also have a phone line that is open 9 - 5 EST. Of course, they also offer email support.
They also offer a FAQ section, video tutorials, and live and pre-recorded webinars, but navigating the FAQ section can be a little frustrating.
They are also active on Social Media and will quickly respond to user comments and questions on Facebook and Twitter.
Besides the FAQ, GetResponse's support is quick and reliable. They offer a lot of options to fix whatever problem you may be having.