In this Getresponse vs Mailchimp comparison, I’m going to examine both these popular email marketing solutions in depth, to see which of them best meets your business’ needs.
I’m going to look at
- pricing and value for money
- quality of templates
- key features
- ease-of-use
- the main pros and cons of both products
and more.
By the end of the comparison, you’ll have a much clearer idea of which product is for you.
But let’s start with a basic question: what do Getresponse and Mailchimp actually do?
Getresponse and Mailchimp — what do they do?
Getresponse and Mailchimp are email marketing tools that allow you to:
- create (or import) a mailing list and capture email addresses onto it
- design HTML e-newsletters (emails containing graphics, photos, branding etc.) that can be sent to your subscribers
- automate your emails to subscribers via ‘autoresponders’
- monitor statistics related to your email marketing — open rates, click-throughs, forwards and more.
Over the past couple of years, Getresponse has evolved into more of an ‘all-in-one’ marketing solution, and as such now has some features which are not to be found in Mailchimp, namely:
- webinars
- built-in e-commerce features
- ‘conversion funnels’
- chat functionality
- push notifications
Mailchimp increasingly also aims to be an all-in-one ‘marketing platform’ that offers e-commerce and website building functionality, and has changed its pricing model accordingly.
I’ll discuss both products’ new ‘all-in-one’ approach in more depth later in the comparison.
Before that however, let’s look at something that’s really integral to both Mailchimp and Getresponse, and a feature that historically they’ve been best-known for: autoresponders.
Autoresponders
Autoresponders are e-newsletters that are sent to your subscribers at pre-defined intervals – for example, you can set them up so that:
- immediately after somebody signs up to your mailing list, they receive a simple welcome message from your business
- a week later they receive a discount code for some of your products
- three weeks later they receive an encouragement to follow you on Twitter and Facebook…
And so on.
The idea is that a huge chunk of your email marketing gets automated – so that once you’ve set things up correctly, subscribers will automatically receive key messages from your business without you having to bother sending out e-newsletters manually (although you can still of course do this as and when required).
The above example of an autoresponder cycle is typically called a ‘drip’ campaign, where e-newsletters are triggered by time intervals.
However, autoresponders are increasingly being used in more sophisticated ways by businesses, with messages being triggered by opens, clicks, purchases, web page visits, abandoned orders and more.
And when set up correctly, they save a huge amount of time and have the potential to generate significant income.
So what’s the autoresponder functionality in Getresponse and Mailchimp like?
Let’s take a look at that.
Autoresponders in Getresponse vs Mailchimp
Getresponse and Mailchimp both provide extensive autoresponder functionality — some of the best in the business.
Both products offer a similar set of autoresponder triggers to choose from — subscription to a list, opens, clicks, purchase mades, URLs visited and user data changes all can be used to kickstart an autoresponder cycle.
For example, with both tools, you can trigger autoresponders by:
- e-newsletter action — for example, when somebody opens or clicks a link on an email you send, they can be automatically added to a particular set of autoresponders
- purchases — if somebody buys a product from your website, you can use this information to trigger an email broadcast in Getresponse or Mailchimp
- page visits – if a subscriber visits a particular page on your site, you can send them an email a few seconds later
- data changes — i.e., when somebody changes their details on your list
- date and time —for example, you can send automatically send messages x minutes or days after sign up, or on birthdays.
In short, both products are really strong when it comes to autoresponder functionality — the range of triggers available to you is extensive.
For a while now, Getresponse has been letting you manage email automation via a ‘flowchart’-style journey creator — it’s very sophisticated stuff, which you can get a sense of from the screenshot below — and it’s not too hard to set up.
You basically map out a set of rules for Getresponse to follow — these are based on user action. So, for example, if a user clicks a link on a particular email, they are taken down one path; if they don’t, they go down another.
Not to be outdone, Mailchimp recently added a similar ‘journey builder’ tool that also lets you create similar subscriber journeys.
This is broadly comparable in terms of features with the Getresponse automation builder — but I’d argue that Getresponse’s feature offers slightly more in the functionality department.
This is because unlike Mailchimp’s, you can use it to create ‘loops’ — so if a subscriber gets to a particular point in the journey without taking an action, you can send them back to the beginning of the journey — or somewhere else on it.
You can also use Getresponse’s journey builder to trigger ‘push notifications’ — where users see a message from you in their browser after taking a particular action.
The Mailchimp journey builder interface is ‘cleaner’ than the Getresponse one, however — and a bit easier to use.
Pricing
Mailchimp pricing
There are four plans available for Mailchimp. In order of expense, these are:
- Free — a cut-down version of the product featuring an advert for Mailchimp at the bottom of e-newsletters
- Essential — starting at $9.99 per month to send emails to a list up to 500 subscribers in size
- Standard — starting at $14.99 per month for a list up to 500 subscribers in size
- Premium — starting at $299 per month for a list up to 10,000 subscribers in size.
Getresponse pricing
With Getresponse, there are also four plans available — again, in order of expense, these are:
- Basic — starting at $15 per month to send an unlimited number of emails to up to 1,000 subscribers
- Plus — starting at $49 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers
- Professional — starting at $99 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers
- Max — custom pricing.
A free trial, lasting 30 days, is also available — you can access it via this link.
Each plan boasts different features, and rises in price with the size of your list. I’ll discuss these features shortly — but before that, it’s worth zooming in quickly on a few key limits you need to be aware of.
Send limits
In May 2026, Mailchimp introduced (controversial!) monthly limits on the number of e-newsletters you can send to your lists.
These vary according to the number of subscribers you have on your list, but for the plans and subscriber counts listed above, the limits are 10k, 500k, 1.2 million and 3 million respectively.
Now, many users will never breach these limits, but if you use autoresponders extensively or send a lot of e-newsletters, it’s conceivable that you could, particularly if you’re on one of the cheaper plans.
So, it’s an instant win for Getresponse here, because all its plans allow you to send an unlimited number of emails per month — even the entry-level one. This represents much better value for money.
List limits
In Mailchimp, the number of lists you can create depends on the type of plan you’re on (1 on ‘Free’; 3 on ‘Essentials’; 5 on ‘Standard’ and unlimited on ‘Premium’).
There’s no equivalent limits in Getresponse — this makes it a more suitable tool for any business that needs to host multiple lists for different revenue streams, clients, or sub-brands.
A key issue to watch out for: defining list size
When it comes to list sizes, you have to watch out for something rather sneaky in Mailchimp: the company charges you for both subscribed AND unsubscribed contacts on your lists (or ‘audiences’ to use Mailchimp’s new terminology).
Getresponse, by contrast, only charges you for active contacts.
So, for example, if you had 1,500 subscribers on a list, 200 of whom unsubscribed, Getresponse would consider this to be a list containing 1,300 people.
By contrast, Mailchimp would consider it to be a list containing 1,500 subscribers — and charge you accordingly.
This is pretty ridiculous in my view and, as with Mailchimp’s send limit issue, presents one of the more compelling arguments for choosing Getresponse over Mailchimp.
Users / seats
Mailchimp is slightly more generous than Getresponse when it comes to the number of users (or ‘seats’) that you can associate with an account.
Its entry-level ‘Essentials’ plan gives you 3 seats; its ‘Standard’ plan gives you 5; and its ‘Premium’ plan gives you an unlimited number.
This contrasts positively with the Getresponse limits — 1 on the ‘Basic’ plan, 3 on ‘Plus’, 5 on the Professional, and 10 by default on ‘Max’ (that said, the number of accounts on ‘Max’ is negotiable).
Free plans and trials
A very welcome feature of Mailchimp is its free plan – you can use it to send up to 10,000 emails to up to 2,000 contacts per month.
This is generous and extremely useful for users who wish to send occasional emails to a small list.
However, emails sent using this plan display Mailchimp advertising on them, which, whilst reasonably subtle, makes them look slightly less professional in appearance.
And, as you might expect, the Mailchimp free plan does not provide all the functionality that you can expect on a paid one.
Key features that are not available on a Mailchimp free plan include:
- access to most of the templates (you can only use the plain layouts)
- A/B testing
- support
- custom-coded templates
- send-time optimization (this sends your email at a time when your subscribers are most likely to open it)
- full autoresponder functionality
That said, the free plan remains pretty generous for what it is — a way to build an audience and send basic newsletters for free.
Getresponse doesn’t provide a free plan, but as mentioned above, offers a free trial — it’s limited to 30 days, but you can try out all of the Getresponse features using it (for lists that are 1,000 subscribers or less in size).
Key differences between the plans
The key differences between Mailchimp plans to watch out for are the ability to code your own templates and access to all the key features of the new journey builder (notably branching points) — these are only available on the more expensive ‘Standard’ plan or higher.
And, if comparative reporting and multivariate testing are important to you, you should note that these features are only available on the expensive $299 ‘Premium’ Mailchimp plan.
The key differences between the Getresponse tiers involve access to webinar functionality and marketing automation — arguably the two standout features of the platform.
You only get access to these on the ‘Plus’ plan or higher. And the limits that apply to how many participants can attend a webinar, or how many automation ‘workflows’ you can create vary by plan (the more you pay, the more you get, basically!).
Zooming in: the Getresponse “Basic” plan vs Mailchimp “Essential” plan
I suspect many readers of this comparison will be interested in comparing the Mailchimp “Essentials” plan against the Getresponse “Basic” plan. These are the cheapest paid-for offerings from the two companies.
You’ll find that depending on your list size, sometimes Getresponse works out cheaper, sometimes Mailchimp does.
For example, hosting 25k records on Getresponse ‘Basic’ costs $145 per month; on Mailchimp ‘Essentials’ it’s $200.
But hosting a 30k list on Mailchimp Essentials is cheaper — it’s $230 to Getresponse’s $250.
Additionally, if your list is less than 500 records in size, Mailchimp will let you get into email marketing cheaper — the ‘Essentials’ plan lets you work with a list of up to 500 subscribers for $9.99 per month.
However, Mailchimp’s sneaky approach to calculating list size — by including unsubscribed contacts on it — means that we are to a degree comparing apples to oranges here…as your list grows, and people unsubscribe from it, your costs can grow considerably with Mailchimp.
Furthermore, if you are prepared to pay upfront for your Getresponse account, there are some sizeable discounts available which make Getresponse a substantially cheaper option for you. Paying upfront for a year entitles you to an 18% discount; paying upfront for two years results in a 30% discount.
No comparable discounts are available for Mailchimp.
And finally, there are a few useful features that are available on the Getresponse ‘Basic’ plan that you won’t find on the Mailchimp ‘Essentials’ plan:
- the option to code your own templates
- comparative reporting (where you can compare the results of one campaign against another)
- send time optimization (where your email marketing solution automatically figures out when the best time to send emails to individual subscribers is).
- the ability to sell products (more on that later in the review).
So given all this, it’s hard not to conclude that in terms of ‘bang for the buck’, out of the two plans under discussion here, you get more of it with Getresponse.
Pricing, of course, is not the only factor you should be basing a Mailchimp vs Getresponse decision on.