GetResponse
A twenty-eight-year-old bootstrapped email platform that quietly added everything else
GetResponse is an email marketing and marketing automation platform for small businesses that combines list-based email, a visual automation workflow builder, landing pages, forms and popups, web push notifications, sales funnels, webinars, and course and paid-newsletter tools, priced by contact list size from about $19 per month with unlimited monthly sends on every plan.
Overview
GetResponse has been sending email since 1998, which makes it older than almost everything else in this category and older than most of the companies buying it. Simon Grabowski founded it in Gdansk and it is still headquartered there, still run by the founder, and still bootstrapped: no venture rounds, no private equity owner, no acquisition. That is roughly 485 employees and a claimed 100,000 customers built without outside capital, and it shows up in the product as a certain unhurried breadth. Nothing here is chasing a funding narrative.
The architecture is list-driven, not event-driven, and that decides who should buy it. Contacts live on lists, automations trigger from list membership, form submissions, tags, scoring, link clicks, page visits, and ecommerce actions from a connected store. There is an API and you can push custom fields, but there is no product event stream in the Customer.io sense, no continuously recomputing real-time segment engine, and no warehouse connector. For a business whose funnel is content, forms, and a shop, that is fine. For a SaaS product whose best trigger is what a user just did in the app, it is the wrong shape.
What GetResponse has that its list-driven peers mostly do not is the surrounding apparatus. Webinars are native, not integrated. There is a website builder, a course creator with up to 500 students on the Creator plan, paid newsletter subscriptions, sales funnels with checkout, and web push notifications. For a coach, creator, or small ecommerce operator, that means one subscription replaces four, and the webinar module alone displaces a $79-a-month tool.
The pricing is bracketed by list size rather than charged per user, which is the friendlier model for small teams: Starter includes three users and Marketer and Creator include five, at no extra charge. Monthly sends are unlimited on every plan, which is unusual and genuinely valuable when competitors meter emails as well as contacts. Starter is around $19 a month at 1,000 contacts, but it allows exactly one custom automation workflow, so anybody buying GetResponse for automation is really buying Marketer.
Best for
Small businesses, creators, coaches, and small ecommerce operators who want serious list-driven email automation with unlimited sends, plus landing pages, funnels, webinars, and course tools in one subscription, at a price bracketed by list size rather than by seat.
Not the right fit for
- Product-led SaaS teams needing in-app behavioural triggers; there is no product event stream and no real-time segment engine, so the trigger you want does not exist and Customer.io, Bento, or Encharge are the correct answers instead.
- Anyone buying the $19 Starter plan expecting automation; Starter permits exactly one custom workflow and no tagging or scoring, which makes it an email sending tool rather than an automation platform.
- Teams that need a real CRM with pipelines, deals, and sales activity tracking; GetResponse has contact management but nothing that competes with EngageBay's or Keap's sales side.
- Buyers who need warehouse sync, reverse ETL, or a customer data platform underneath their messaging; none of that exists here and there is no roadmap signal that it will.
- Enterprise buyers wanting published pricing at scale; above 100,000 contacts the standard plans stop and the Enterprise tier is demo-gated and quoted, which is the one part of GetResponse that is not self-serve.
How it works
- 1
Contacts arrive through GetResponse forms, popups, landing pages, webinar registrations, imports, or the API, and are organised into lists. A contact can sit on several lists, and list membership is the primary organising concept the rest of the product hangs off.
- 2
Automations are drawn on a workflow canvas built from three block types: conditions, actions, and filters. Triggers include subscribing to a list, submitting a form, opening or clicking an email, visiting a URL, achieving a score, having a tag applied, abandoning a cart, or a date. Actions send email, apply and remove tags, adjust scores, move contacts between lists, wait, and branch.
- 3
Messages go out over GetResponse's own infrastructure with your domain authenticated, and monthly send volume is unlimited on every paid plan, so the meter you manage is list size and nothing else. A free custom sending domain is included on yearly plans.
- 4
Everything else in the platform feeds the same contact database: a webinar registration, a course enrolment, a funnel checkout, or a paid newsletter subscription all become contact events that automations can act on, which is how a single subscription ends up covering a whole small-business funnel.
Feature breakdown
28 features in 5 modulesMarketing automation
A capable list-and-tag workflow engine, gated hard between Starter and Marketer.- Visual workflow builder
- Drag-and-drop canvas assembled from condition, action, and filter blocks. Starter allows one custom workflow; Marketer and Creator allow unlimited workflows, which is the real dividing line in this product.
- Trigger library
- Workflows start from list subscription, form submission, email open or click, URL visit, score threshold, tag applied, date, abandoned cart, or purchase from a connected store.
- Conditional branching and delays
- Yes and no paths, wait blocks measured in minutes to days, and filters that narrow the audience mid-flow, so one workflow can serve several segments without duplication.
- Contact tagging and scoring
- Tags and numeric engagement scores applied and removed by automations, then used as segmentation conditions. Both are Marketer-tier features and absent from Starter.
- Abandoned cart recovery
- Native cart abandonment triggers from connected ecommerce platforms, with product data available in the recovery email. Marketer tier and above.
- Welcome and onboarding series
- Autoresponder cycles and welcome sequences available on every paid plan, including Starter, for businesses whose only need is a linear drip.
- Unlimited monthly email sends
- Every paid plan sends unlimited email; you are metered only on list size. This is materially better than the send caps EngageBay and HubSpot Starter impose and is GetResponse's quietest competitive advantage.
- Visual email editor and templates
- Drag-and-drop editor with a large template library, mobile preview, and reusable content blocks.
- AI email and subject line generation
- AI content generation for email bodies and subject lines, limited to three uses on Starter and unrestricted on higher plans.
- Advanced segmentation
- Segment on contact fields, tags, scores, engagement history, and ecommerce behaviour, available from the Marketer plan.
- A/B testing
- Subject line and content split testing on campaigns, with automatic winner selection.
- Free custom sending domain on yearly plans
- Yearly subscribers get a custom domain included, which matters for sender identity and for landing page and funnel URLs.
Capture, pages, and funnels
The front end of the funnel, included rather than integrated.- Landing page builder
- Template-based page builder with A/B testing, included on every paid plan and unlimited from the Marketer tier.
- Signup forms and popups
- Inline forms, exit-intent popups, and slide-ins that write into lists and can trigger workflows immediately.
- Sales funnels
- Prebuilt multi-step funnels combining pages, forms, emails, and checkout, aimed at operators who want the sequence assembled for them. Marketer tier and above.
- Website builder
- A full site builder on the Creator plan, so a creator business can host its whole web presence in the same subscription.
- Promo codes and revenue reports
- Discount code generation and revenue reporting tied back to campaigns, on the Marketer plan.
Beyond email
Webinars, courses, and paid newsletters, which is where GetResponse stops resembling its competitors.- Native webinars
- Webinars built into the platform rather than integrated, with 100 attendees on Creator and up to 1,000 on Enterprise. Registrants become contacts automatically and attendance is an automation trigger.
- AI course creator
- Course building with quizzes and certificates for up to 500 students on Creator, and unlimited courses for up to 250 students even on the free account.
- Premium newsletter subscriptions
- Paid newsletter monetisation on the Creator plan, competing directly with dedicated newsletter platforms.
- Web push notifications
- Unlimited browser push campaigns and automation steps from the Marketer plan, giving a second channel without a second vendor.
- SMS marketing
- SMS available on paid plans, with carrier volume billed separately from the subscription.
- Mobile push notifications
- Reserved for the Enterprise plan, alongside AI product recommendations and a dedicated IP.
Platform and administration
Multi-user access included, a real integration catalogue, and mature compliance for a European vendor.- Included user seats
- Three users on Starter and five on Marketer and Creator, at no additional charge, which is a meaningfully better deal than per-seat competitors for a small team.
- 170-plus integrations
- A published integration catalogue covering ecommerce platforms, CMSs, CRMs, analytics, and automation middleware.
- API and webhooks
- REST API for contacts, campaigns, and custom fields, plus webhooks for outbound events, adequate for syncing an application but not for streaming behavioural data.
- 24/7 multilingual support
- Support available around the clock in English, Polish, German, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian, which is unusual at this price.
- GDPR tooling
- Consent fields, double opt-in, and data request handling built by a company that has operated under European data law since before GDPR existed.
Use cases
4 documentedCourse creator monetising an audience
Paying separately for an email tool, a webinar platform, a course host, and a landing page builder, and stitching registrations between them by hand.
The Creator plan covers email, webinars, the course itself with quizzes and certificates, the website, and paid newsletter subscriptions, with every registration and enrolment landing on the same contact record as an automation trigger.
Small ecommerce store running lifecycle email
Needs a welcome series, abandoned cart recovery, post-purchase follow-up, and a win-back campaign without paying per email sent.
Marketer at 1,000 contacts costs a fraction of a contact-and-send-metered competitor, cart abandonment triggers natively from the connected store, and unlimited sends means a daily promotional cadence costs nothing extra.
Consultant running webinar-led acquisition
Monthly webinars driving a nurture list, currently split across a webinar tool at $79 a month and an email tool on top.
Native webinars mean registration, reminder sequence, attendance tracking, and post-event follow-up all run in one workflow, and the webinar subscription disappears from the stack entirely.
Small team escaping per-seat pricing
Five people need access to the marketing tool, and per-seat vendors are charging five times the headline price for it.
Marketer includes five users in the list-size bracket price, so the fifth person costs nothing, which changes the comparison against EngageBay and HubSpot considerably at small scale.
Pricing
from $19 per month at 1,000 contacts (Starter)Subscription bracketed by contact list size across 1,000, 2,500, 5,000, 10,000, 25,000, 50,000, and 100,000 contacts, with unlimited monthly sends and included user seats. Two billing periods, monthly or twelve-month prepay at an 18 percent discount.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $19 per month at 1,000 contacts |
No tagging, no contact scoring, no event-based automation. Buy this only if you want email sending, not automation. |
| Marketer | $59 per month at 1,000 contacts |
The real entry point for marketing automation and the plan most buyers should model. |
| Creator | $69 per month at 1,000 contacts |
Ten dollars more than Marketer for a webinar platform and a course host, which is the best-value jump in the whole price list if you need either. |
| Enterprise | Custom quoted |
Demo-gated, with monthly, twelve-month, and twenty-four-month billing options and a 30-day pilot programme. |
Billing notes
- Prices are bracketed by list size across seven steps from 1,000 to 100,000 contacts; the vendor confirms monthly plans start at $19 for unlimited messages to 1,000 contacts, and Starter at 10,000 contacts runs around $79 a month.
- The pricing page localises currency by visitor region, so a European visitor sees euros or zloty rather than dollars; confirm the figure in your own currency before budgeting.
- Twelve-month prepay saves 18 percent, which is a better annual discount than most of this category offers.
- Monthly email sends are unlimited on every paid plan, so the only meter you manage is contact count. That materially changes the comparison against send-metered competitors.
- User seats are included rather than charged: three on Starter, five on Marketer and Creator, unlimited on Enterprise.
- Starter's single-workflow limit is the hardest gate in the product; upgrading from Starter to Marketer roughly triples the bill and is not optional for anyone doing real automation.
- SMS carrier volume is billed outside the subscription, and Enterprise pricing above 100,000 contacts requires a demo.
Value assessment: Modelled at 5,000 contacts, Marketer sits in the low hundreds per month with unlimited sends, five users, unlimited workflows, tagging, scoring, cart recovery, funnels, and web push. Nothing else in this category bundles that at that price without either a per-seat multiplier or a send meter. At 50,000 contacts the bill climbs but still compares favourably against HubSpot Professional with contact blocks or EngageBay Pro across multiple seats. The Creator plan at ten dollars above Marketer, including a webinar platform and a course host, is the single best-value line item in the small-business marketing tool market. The counterweight is architectural rather than commercial: you are buying a very good list-driven platform, and no amount of value changes the fact that it cannot act on product events.
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- Unlimited monthly email sends on every paid plan, with list size as the only meter, which removes the send-volume anxiety that shapes behaviour on metered competitors.
- User seats are included rather than charged, so a five-person team pays the same as a solo operator on the Marketer plan.
- Native webinars, course creation, paid newsletters, and a website builder mean the Creator plan genuinely replaces three or four separate subscriptions.
- Twenty-eight years of deliverability operations and a long-standing European compliance posture, from a vendor that has never had to cut corners for an investor timeline.
- Bootstrapped, founder-run, profitable, and headquartered in the EU, which is an unusually stable ownership profile in a category full of private equity roll-ups.
- 24/7 support in seven languages on paid plans, which is far better than the category norm at this price.
- The automation builder is genuinely capable within its list-driven model, with tagging, scoring, cart recovery, and proper branching.
Limitations
- No product event stream, no real-time recomputing segments, and no warehouse or reverse ETL connector, which rules it out for product-led SaaS lifecycle messaging.
- The Starter plan's one-workflow limit makes the advertised $19 entry price misleading for anyone shopping for automation.
- No sales CRM worth the name: contact management exists but there are no pipelines, deals, or sales activity tracking.
- Pricing localises by region and the vendor does not publish a single canonical currency table, so cross-border buyers have to check their own figure.
- Above 100,000 contacts the self-serve ladder ends and Enterprise is demo-gated and quoted, which breaks the otherwise excellent transparency.
- The interface carries some of its age, and the sheer breadth of modules makes the product feel less focused than a dedicated tool.
- Mobile push notifications and dedicated IPs are Enterprise-only, so multi-channel mobile lifecycle work needs a different vendor.
Head-to-head comparisons
5 alternativesGetResponse vs EngageBay
from $0 (Free), then $14.99 per user per month (Basic)EngageBay adds a CRM, pipelines, and a helpdesk that GetResponse does not have, and charges per user with a contact cap. GetResponse charges by list size with seats included and unlimited sends, and is the better pure marketing platform on email quality, deliverability, and webinars. Pick EngageBay if you need the sales and support modules; pick GetResponse if marketing is the job and you want unlimited sending.
Full GetResponse vs EngageBay comparisonGetResponse vs Keap
from $299 per month for two usersKeap costs $299 a month plus a mandatory implementation package of around $500 and gives you quoting, invoicing, payments, and a business phone number that GetResponse has no equivalent for. GetResponse costs a fifteenth of that and does the nurture email far better. If you sell your time and need to get paid inside the same system, Keap. If you need to market to a list, GetResponse, and it is not close on price.
Full GetResponse vs Keap comparisonGetResponse vs HubSpot Marketing Hub
from $0 (free tools), then $20 per seat per month (Starter)HubSpot Starter has almost no automation and Professional costs $800 a month plus a $3,000 onboarding fee, which is where GetResponse Marketer at around $59 delivers unlimited workflows, tagging, and scoring. HubSpot wins decisively on CRM depth, attribution reporting, and its 1,500-app marketplace. If you have a sales team and need attribution, HubSpot. If you need automation on a small budget with no onboarding fee, GetResponse.
Full GetResponse vs HubSpot Marketing Hub comparisonGetResponse vs Mailmodo
from $149 per month for 500 contacts (Lite, billed annually)Mailmodo starts at $149 a month for 500 contacts and its differentiator is interactive AMP email where forms, polls, and checkouts run inside the inbox. GetResponse is far cheaper, sends unlimited volume, and covers webinars and courses Mailmodo does not touch. Take Mailmodo only if interactive email conversion is a specific, tested priority; otherwise GetResponse gives more platform for less money.
Full GetResponse vs Mailmodo comparisonGetResponse vs Drip
from $39 per month for up to 2,500 subscribersDrip is ecommerce-native with much stronger Shopify behaviour data, better looking email, and a visual builder tuned for revenue flows. GetResponse is broader and cheaper, and its unlimited sends suit high-frequency promotional calendars. If your business is a store, Drip understands your data better; if it is a mixed content, webinar, and commerce operation, GetResponse covers more of it in one subscription.
Full GetResponse vs Drip comparisonImplementation & onboarding
- Setup time
- A few hours to import a list, authenticate a domain, and send a first campaign. A week to migrate existing autoresponders and rebuild two or three workflows properly.
- Learning curve
- Low to moderate. The email side is immediately familiar, and the workflow canvas is one of the more approachable in the category. The main friction is the breadth: webinars, funnels, courses, and the website builder each have their own logic, and new users often wander through modules they will never use.
- Onboarding
- Entirely self-serve on Starter, Marketer, and Creator through a 14-day trial with no credit card required. Enterprise requires a demo and offers a 30-day pilot programme with a dedicated expert. Paid professional services are available where you want campaigns built for you.
- Migration notes
- List import is straightforward and GetResponse publishes migration guidance from the major competitors. Automations do not transfer and must be rebuilt on the canvas. Authenticate your sending domain before the first send; yearly plans include a free custom domain. If you are moving a large or lightly engaged list, warm it in stages rather than sending to everyone on day one, because GetResponse's shared reputation is one of its assets and it polices list quality accordingly.
Platform, API & security
- Platforms
- Web applicationiOS and Android appsREST APIHosted landing pages, funnels, websites, and webinar rooms
- API
- REST API covering contacts, custom fields, campaigns, and autoresponders, plus outbound webhooks. Suitable for syncing an application's user records; not an event streaming ingest and with no warehouse connector.
- Compliance
- GDPR with EU-based processingCAN-SPAM compliant unsubscribe handlingDouble opt-in and consent field toolingISO 27001 certified operations
- Data residency
- European Union hosting from a Poland-headquartered company, which is a meaningful advantage for EU buyers with residency requirements.
- SSO
- Available on the Enterprise plan.
- Security notes
- Encryption in transit and at rest, two-factor authentication, and a long operating history under European data protection law. Dedicated IP addresses are an Enterprise feature, so lower tiers send from shared pools.
Support & resources
- Channels
- 24/7 live chat on paid plansEmail supportDedicated customer experience manager on Enterprise
- Documentation
- Large help centre, GetResponse Academy with structured courses, a webinar library, template galleries, and an API reference.
- Community
- Long-running blog and academy rather than a forum culture; a broad affiliate and partner programme carries much of the third-party content.
Company
- Founded
- 1998
- Headquarters
- Gdansk, Poland
- Ownership
- Bootstrapped and founder-run
- Founders
- Simon Grabowski
- Employees
- ~485 (est. 2026)
- Funding
- No outside venture funding raised in twenty-eight years of operation; the company reports serving roughly 100,000 customers.
Timeline
- 1998Founded in Poland by Simon Grabowski as an autoresponder service, one of the first commercial email marketing products anywhere.
- 2013Adds landing pages and a visual marketing automation builder, moving from an email sender to a marketing platform.
- 2017Launches native webinars inside the platform, a differentiator no comparable email vendor has matched since.
- 2020Adds conversion funnels, ecommerce integrations, and web push notifications, targeting small online sellers directly.
- 2023Introduces AI content generation across emails, subject lines, and landing pages, and adds the website builder.
- 2025Restructures plans into Starter, Marketer, Creator, and Enterprise, adding the AI course creator and premium newsletter monetisation on the Creator tier.
Integrations
- More than 170 published integrations
- Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, PrestaShop, and BigCommerce
- WordPress
- Stripe, PayPal, and Square for funnel checkout
- Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive
- Google Analytics and Google Ads
- Facebook and Instagram lead ads
- Zapier and Make
- Slack
- REST API and webhooks
Frequently asked questions
10 questionsWhat is GetResponse?
GetResponse is an email marketing and marketing automation platform founded in Poland in 1998. It combines list-based email with unlimited monthly sends, a visual automation workflow builder, landing pages, forms and popups, sales funnels, web push notifications, native webinars, a website builder, and course and paid-newsletter tools, priced by contact list size rather than per seat.
How much does GetResponse cost?
Pricing is bracketed by list size across seven steps from 1,000 to 100,000 contacts. At 1,000 contacts, Starter is about $19 a month, Marketer about $59, and Creator about $69, with an 18 percent discount for twelve-month prepay. Starter at 10,000 contacts runs around $79 a month. Enterprise above 100,000 contacts is quoted. Note that the pricing page localises currency by visitor region, so check the figure in your own currency.
Is GetResponse event-driven or list-driven?
List-driven. Automations trigger from list subscription, form submissions, tags, scores, email engagement, URL visits, and ecommerce actions from a connected store. There is a REST API for syncing contact records but no product event stream, no continuously recomputing real-time segment engine, and no warehouse connector. If your best lifecycle trigger is something a user did inside your application, GetResponse cannot act on it.
What does GetResponse cost at 5,000 contacts versus 50,000?
At 5,000 contacts the Marketer plan sits in the low hundreds per month with unlimited sends, unlimited workflows, and five included seats. At 50,000 contacts you move four brackets up the ladder and the bill rises accordingly, but sends remain unlimited and seats remain included, so the increase is driven purely by list size. That is a simpler model than competitors who meter contacts, sends, and users simultaneously.
Can a marketer operate GetResponse without a developer?
Completely. Forms, pages, funnels, workflows, webinars, and courses are all built in the interface and no product instrumentation is required at any point. A developer is only useful if you want to sync application data in through the API. That is the practical upside of a list-driven architecture: there is no engineering prerequisite standing between buying the tool and using it.
Which channels does GetResponse cover and what costs extra?
Email is included with unlimited sends on every paid plan. Web push notifications are unlimited from the Marketer tier. Webinars are native on Creator at 100 attendees and Enterprise at 1,000. SMS is available on paid plans but carrier volume is billed outside the subscription. Mobile push notifications are Enterprise-only. There is no in-app messaging channel.
Who is responsible for deliverability on GetResponse?
GetResponse runs the sending infrastructure and you authenticate your own sending domain, with a free custom domain included on yearly plans. Dedicated IP addresses are Enterprise-only, so paid plans below that send from shared pools, which means the vendor polices list quality on your behalf and yours. Twenty-eight years of running mail is genuine institutional advantage here, but you still own list hygiene and warm-up when migrating.
Does GetResponse offer self-hosting or warehouse sync?
Neither. GetResponse is cloud-only, hosted in the European Union, with no self-hosted or private-cloud option. There is no Snowflake, BigQuery, or Redshift connector and no reverse ETL path, so warehouse-defined audiences would have to be pushed in through the API or a middleware tool as contact fields. If you want an open-source self-hosted alternative in the same list-driven shape, Mautic is the comparison to make.
Are the webinars actually good enough to replace a webinar tool?
For most small businesses, yes. They are native rather than integrated, so registrants become contacts automatically and attendance is an automation trigger with no Zapier in the middle. Creator caps attendance at 100 and Enterprise at 1,000, which covers the overwhelming majority of marketing webinars. Ten dollars a month over the Marketer plan for that capability is the best-value upgrade in this product.
Should a five-person startup choose GetResponse?
If it is a content, coaching, creator, or small ecommerce business, yes, and the Marketer plan is the one to buy because Starter allows only one workflow. Five seats are included, sends are unlimited, and there is no onboarding fee. If it is a SaaS product whose lifecycle messaging depends on in-app behaviour, no: choose an event-driven platform such as Bento, Encharge, or Customer.io instead, because no amount of GetResponse's breadth substitutes for a trigger it cannot receive.
Editorial verdict
GetResponse is the most quietly sensible platform in this category. Twenty-eight years old, bootstrapped, founder-run, EU-hosted, with unlimited sends, included seats, and a genuinely capable list-driven automation builder for around $59 a month at a thousand contacts. The Creator plan bundling native webinars, a course builder, and paid newsletters for ten dollars more than Marketer is the best value on offer to anyone monetising an audience. Two caveats decide whether it is right for you. The $19 Starter plan allows exactly one automation workflow, so the honest entry price is the Marketer tier. And the architecture is list-driven with no product event stream, no real-time segment engine, and no warehouse sync, which permanently rules it out as the lifecycle engine for a product-led SaaS company. Within its shape, it is excellent and underrated. Outside it, no discount helps.
Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.