GetResponse alternatives — what replaces it and what you save

GetResponse is a Polish EU provider with email, funnels and webinars in the same package. It is also one of the two tools in our comparison with no free plan at all — and it only sells a list of a thousand contacts or more. These two produce the most common reason to look for an alternative.

The short answer

• Cheapest for a small list

  EmailOctopus

  2,500 subscribers free — GetResponse bills €27 a month for the same list.

  Start free — 2,500 subscribers (ad)

• Cheapest for a large list

  Brevo

  A 10,000-contact list costs €28 a month, while GetResponse asks €69 — €492 a year.

  Start free — 300 emails/day

• If you use funnels

  Systeme.io

  Funnels, courses and email in one, and the free plan holds 2,000 contacts.

  Start free — 2,000 contacts (ad)

GetResponse and six alternatives

Prices are monthly prices excluding VAT, read from the services’ own price lists on 3 September 2026. For each we took the cheapest paid plan that supports that list size.

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Prices exclude VAT, billed monthly unless stated otherwise.(ad) = ad link

• The price is the monthly price of the cheapest paid plan at that list size. The Free plan column shows when you do not have to pay.
• EmailOctopus and ActiveCampaign: the price list only shows the monthly price on annual billing. Monthly billing costs more.
• GetResponse and ActiveCampaign: the smallest list sold is 1,000 contacts, so the 500-contact column shows that price.

How much switching saves

Below is the difference compared with GetResponse’s cheapest paid plan, per year. The smallest row is 1,000 contacts, because GetResponse sells no smaller list.

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Read from the services’ own price lists (GetResponse, EmailOctopus, Brevo) on 3 September 2026, excluding VAT. EmailOctopus’s free plan holds 2,500 subscribers, so on the two smallest rows no paid plan is needed at all — in return the emails carry the service’s branding. EmailOctopus’s figures are monthly prices on annual billing; GetResponse’s annual billing is 18 per cent cheaper, which narrows the gap on the top two rows. Brevo’s figure assumes two newsletters a month.

The lack of a free plan is the most common reason

GetResponse offers a 14-day trial, after which you have to pay. That is a different thing from a free plan: a trial ends by the calendar, a free plan by list size. For a beginner or a seasonal sender the difference is decisive.

Among the alternatives EmailOctopus gives 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, Systeme.io 2,000 contacts with no sending limit and Brevo an unlimited list but a 300-email daily limit. In practice the entire list size for which GetResponse bills €27 a month is handled by EmailOctopus for free. The real limits of the five free plans: free email marketing.

The thousand-contact minimum

The second reason concerns a small list. GetResponse’s smallest list size sold is 1,000 contacts, so a 200-name list costs the same €16 as a thousand-name list. In the comparison only ActiveCampaign has the same restriction.

At the other alternatives the price starts smaller: EmailOctopus sells a 500-subscriber list for €9, MailerLite for €11 and Brevo for €7. For a beginning sender the difference is small per month but clear per year — and above all it means you do not have to pay full price for the first hundred subscribers.

What replaces GetResponse in which situation

• The list is under 1,000 names → EmailOctopus: GetResponse only sells a list of a thousand contacts or more; here under 2,500 subscribers is free. Try it free (ad)
• Large list, newsletter once or twice a month → Brevo: the price follows sending volume: 10,000 names for €28 a month. Try it free
• You use funnels and sell courses → Systeme.io: replaces the funnels and the course platform in the same price, on the free plan too. Try it free (ad)
• You want a predictable bill and cleaning in the app → MailerLite: the contact-based price does not move with sending pace, and “Clean up inactive” removes the inactive in one view. Try it free
• The automation needs conditions and scoring → ActiveCampaign: conditional content from the Plus plan and lead scoring from the Pro plan — and at 10,000 contacts the most expensive in the comparison, €149 a month. Try it free

The counting rule is among the strictest in the comparison

The third reason does not show on the price list at all. According to GetResponse’s own help page, billing is set by two figures: the month’s highest number of active contacts and all contacts added during the month, regardless of what later happens to them.

In practice this means three things. A spike brought by one campaign shows on the whole month’s bill, even if half of those added leave immediately. The same address on several lists is counted several times. And exceeding the limit is not a one-off charge but recurs every billing period, on an annual contract too; above 100,000 contacts the charge is $4 for every thousand started.

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The rules are read from the providers’ own help pages. “Not read” means the rule could not be opened in the original source — we do not guess it in either direction.

• GetResponse. Billing is set by two figures: the month’s highest number of active contacts and the total number of contacts added during the month, regardless of what later happens to them. The same address on several lists is counted several times. Exceeding the limit is not a one-off charge but recurs every billing period, on an annual contract too, and above 100,000 contacts the charge is $4 for every thousand started.
• EmailOctopus. Unsubscribed contacts do not count toward the limit, nor do hard bounces and spam complaints, which are marked as unsubscribed automatically. Contacts awaiting double opt-in do not count either. One trap: the same address is counted separately for every list — an address on six lists is six contacts.
• MailerLite. The limit counts subscribers in Active status; unsubscribed and bounced do not count. One trap in the billing period: the period is counted cumulatively, so an address that was active at any point in the period counts toward the limit until the end of the period, even if you delete it immediately. Cleaning the list shows on the bill only in the next period.
• Brevo. The price is set by monthly sending volume rather than contact count, so the question of counting unsubscribed contacts does not apply to Brevo the way it does to the others. The flip side is that the same list costs more the more often you write to it.

For reference: at EmailOctopus and MailerLite the unsubscribed do not count toward the limit at all, and at Brevo the question does not arise, because the price does not follow contact count. The rules for all seven services: how contacts are counted. Help pages read 5 September 2026.

What you lose by switching

• Webinars. The webinar tool is included in GetResponse’s price at no extra charge, and none of the alternatives we compare includes it the same way. A separate webinar service costs its own monthly fee, so count it in before you compare the €69 price with €28.
• Unlimited sending on every paid plan. At Brevo sending volume is exactly what sets the price; at EmailOctopus the quota is ten times the subscriber count and practically never comes up.
• Funnels. Of these alternatives only Systeme.io offers sales funnels in the same package.

Deliverability is not a reason to switch. Read from the help pages, GetResponse handles the basics and offers a List hygiene page for blocking addresses; dedicated IPs and a deliverability team are only on the MAX plan, but the same things are only for large senders at MailerLite and Brevo too. As history: in Tooltester’s 2017–2024 series GetResponse’s average of 83.8% was the second-lowest of the five we compare, but the series has ended. Eight points for all: deliverability features.

How to migrate without the list suffering

1. Merge overlapping lists before exporting. This is a work step specific to leaving GetResponse: when the same address has been counted several times, merging the lists into one and using tags reduces the contact count on the very first bill in the new service.
2. Export the contacts as a CSV file including the subscription date and source — consent has to be demonstrable afterwards.
3. Clean the list before importing. Leave out the unsubscribed and hard bounces.
4. Sort out the webinars before the move, if you use them. The separate service and its connector to the list should be up before the old account is closed.
5. Authenticate the sender domain in the new service (SPF, DKIM and DMARC) before the first send: what Gmail and Yahoo require.

The data protection side of the move — the change of processor in your own policy and demonstrating consent — is covered separately: email marketing and GDPR.

For whom GetResponse is still the right choice

In two situations switching does not pay. First: you run webinars. Then the €69 price for 10,000 contacts is not comparable with Brevo’s €28, because the latter gets a separate webinar service’s bill on top. Second: you send to the whole list often and want sending volume not to show on the bill at all.

In other cases the question is list size. A list under 2,500 subscribers is handled for free elsewhere, and at a 10,000-name list the difference is €492 a year.