I recently wrote an article for a freelance writing client comparing and contrasting Mailchimp and GetResponse. I’ve used Mailchimp for years to send out updates for my website, My Ebook Journey, and it’s worked well for me. However I learned a lot about GetResponse through the research I did for this article, so I decided to try it out for the 30 day trial. I’m only a few days into the trial, but I wanted to share my first impressions of GetResponse vs. Mailchimp.
Importing my contacts from Mailchimp was not automatic – I don’t know why I thought it would be, but I followed the instructions to import my contacts from Mailchimp, and it didn’t seem to happen – I still only had one person in my mailing list – me. Then I checked the next morning, and the other contacts had been imported. So I guess it can take up to a day for contacts to be imported.
It’s a bit confusing – Creating emails with GetResponse is a bit confusing. That could just be because I’m used to creating emails with Mailchimp, but it took me a while to figure out how to make images bigger in GetResponse. I’ve figured it out now, but it took me a couple of tries.
GetResponse’s Inbox Preview takes a while to generate previews – The Inbox Preview is a great way to see what your emails will look like in different mail clients, but it takes a while for the previews to generate – GetResponse says it could take up to 2 minutes, but it seems like it takes longer than that.
When you create lists and autoresponders, make sure you create them in the right campaign – If you have more than one campaign in GetResponse, you’ll need to make sure you’re in the correct campaign when you create a list, an autoresponder or a newsletter. You can change campaigns by going up to the upper right corner of the dashboard and choosing the correct campaign from the dropdown.
These are just a few of my first impressions of GetResponse. I do like that it’s a better value than Mailchimp, and that’s why I may continue using it after my 30 day trial is up. I’ll post more updates as the month goes on. If you’re interested in receiving emails when I publish new posts, please sign up for my mailing list.