Aweber vs GetResponse vs SendLane – [Unbiased Reviews]

Welcome to my Aweber vs GetResponse vs Sendlane review.

When it comes to auto-responders there are so many different companies you could go to but it’s hard to know which one is really the best so I’ve put together this review.

I’ll be comparing Aweber vs GetResponse vs SendLane and giving you my unbiased review / opinion.

Aweber Review – My Experience

Aweber was launched in 1997 by Tom Kulzer.

They’ve grown into one of the biggest auto-responder companies in the world with over 100,000 customers, good reviews and they’ve even been featured in publications such as Entrepreneur.com.

When I started out online Aweber was the go-to company for auto-responder services.

I’ve actually had a few accounts over the years.

I started a couple of accounts and then ended up cancelling when I didn’t really know what I was doing in my early days as an internet marketer. This was back when I really had no clue of the importance of email marketing.

A couple of years back I grew my list to over 50,000 subscribers with Aweber and was more than impressed with their service.

At the time I didn’t really appreciate the deliverability as I had nothing to compare it to however after having more experience now with other providers I can list Aweber as one of the better ones.

Their interface is easy to use and their features are good.

They don’t overcomplicate things with too many features and that’s something I actually like!

Positives of Aweber

• Interface – Nice clean interface and easy to use
• Easy to implement followups (campaigns) and broadcasts
• Easy to share followup sequences with other people
• Good support chat / fast responses
• Fair pricing with a free trial period
• Good deliverability
• Good automation features
• Good API integrations with 3rd party tools
• Good stock photos available for use in emails
• Automatic creation of plain text emails
• No email verification for new sending emails
• Tagging features

Aweber – Things I Don’t Like

• Expensive pricing if you exceed your subscriber plan
• Deliverability not as good as it used to be (still good though)
• Sign up forms dated (although not a problem if you use 3rd party tools)
• Importing leads is difficult and requires manual review
• Unsubscribes count towards total subscribers

My Aweber Verdict

I like Aweber and can happily recommend them and still hold my account to this day with around 50,000 active subscribers. I’ve put 100,000’s of subscribers through their platform but I continually clean my list to get rid of unresponsive subs.

They’re a good all round auto-responder so regardless of what niche your in whether its business opportunity, weight loss, affiliate marketing, it really doesn’t matter.

They won’t move you onto crappy servers and your deliverability will remain good as long as you keep your spam and bounces down.

Their deliverability with followup emails is very good too.

I found them to deliver better than SendLane for automated followup emails and they have a good support team.

I like their support chat function and find it useful for getting quick replies to any issues.

GetResponse Review – My Experience

GetResponse is a big player when it comes to auto-responders.

They were founded in 1998 by Simon Grabowski and boast over 350,000 happy customers.

They have endorsements from a number of reputable companies and entrepreneurs such as Neil Patel of Quicksprout and have over 250 employees. They really are a leader when it comes to email marketing.

Their plans start from $12.75 per month for 1000 subscribers and you can also take a 30 day free trial of their service.

One of the things I really like about GetResponse is they make it extremely easy to import an existing list of subscribers.

They built a software known as Hydra which saves both their customers time and them a lot of time too.

Hydra was developed to stop spammers from getting on their platform and ruining their deliverability.

When you upload (import) and existing email list they scan your subscriber list against their database to see whether that list (or similar list) has been imported before.

This is a good thing for genuine marketers because it stops spammers from buying email lists and uploading them.

Hydra means that GetResponse doesn’t need to manually review list imports which means you can be up and running with them much faster even if you have to import a list.

Whereas most auto-responders require manual approval of list imports which often takes days of back and forth emails to provide various information about your subscribers.

If you’re not looking to import a list and you are starting from scratch then this won’t matter to you anyway, but it’s good to know that they are doing their best to keep spammers off their system whilst keeping things efficient for customers.

I personally have found GetResponse slightly more difficult to navigate than Aweber however part of that is due to having way more features on offer.

They have many features such as automation, list management, email followups, landing pages, newsletters and a bunch more.

One of my personal favourites which sets them apart from the rest is the list management.

They have a very good list management section that really allows you to segment your list properly.

You can do things such as track who opened a specific email, and you can save these searches so you can target just these people.

Positives of GetResponse

• Hydra – Makes list imports easy
• Pricing – fair pricing
• Good deliverability
• Very good list management features
• Good support chat
• Good API integration with 3rd party tools
• Good newsletter sending options
• Unsubscribes don’t count towards total subscriber count

Negatives of GetResponse

• Newsletter editor could be better
• Pricing is expensive if you exceed subscriber plan
• Sending emails require verification (no big deal but easier when no verification is required)
• Unsubscribes don’t count towards subscribe

Aweber vs GetResponse – Which Do I Recommend?

My recommendation goes to GetResponse.

Whilst Aweber has great deliverability I personally really like the list management features that GetResponse offers:

Sign up here for your free 30 day trial

If you’re not really interested in Aweber or GetResponse perhaps you should take a look at Sendlane below.

They are an up and coming auto-responder with good pricing, deliverability and features.

Here’s some more info about them in case you’re interested:

Sendlane Review – The Alternative

Sendlane is the newest out of the 3 companies.

Founded by Jimmy Kim they offer auto-responder services from $9 per month and they also have a free trial.

According to their website they now serve over 20,000 customers.

They’re much smaller than competitors Aweber & GetResponse however they are certainly growing fast and offer a very similar service but with different features and pricing.

Here is what they offer:

• Send unlimited campaigns & newsletters
• Send unlimited autoresponders
• Create unlimited landing pages, opt-in pages & squeeze pages
• Create unlimited lead forms
• Cutting edge marketing automation
• API integration

If you already have an email list they will allow you to import it too.

You’ll need to go through their compliance checks but this is normal with any good quality auto-responder as they need to do this to maintain their deliverability and stop spammers from using their platform.

A plus point for Sendlane is that they have a strong support team with an instant chat function.

Most modern companies are using instant chat now instead of the old methods of waiting for email replies and to be honest it’s much better.

Sendlane also integrates with all the top tools out there like ClickFunnels and LeadPages or you can even use their built in landing page creator.

They are definitely a strong alternative to using Aweber or GetResponse.