AWeber Review — Is it the Best Email Marketing Software for You?

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Are you searching for the best email marketing software? Have you come across AWeber and want to know more about it?


If so, you’ve made it to the right post!


We will not only review AWeber as a whole, dive into its features and use cases, and determine who it is best for . . .


But we’ll also take a look at the best AWeber alternatives out there. Let’s get started.

1. What is AWeber?

AWeber’s homepage

AWeber’s homepage

AWeber is a complete email marketing software package that gives you all the email tools to manage your email marketing campaigns.


Founded in 1998, the platform’s mission was to help businesses generate lead acquisition and customer retention using permission-based email marketing.


With more than 120,000 users, it’s safe to say, AWeber is a pioneer in the email marketing space.


It’s appealing to both individuals and businesses alike — especially for those who are just starting out.


That’s partly because of the amount of value AWeber packs into their free plan, and how convenient it is to use.


But is it right for you?

1.1. AWeber’s pros and cons

If you haven’t got time to go through the post, here’s a high-level overview of what makes AWeber a solid email marketing software, as well as some drawbacks:

Pros

  • Extensive resources for those just starting out
  • Easy and efficient drag-and-drop builder for emails and landing pages
  • Lots of integrations available
  • Superb email marketing features and management tools
  • A free trial and a free plan are available

Cons

  • Their analytics could be more advanced
  • Unreliable email deliverability
  • You’ll need to remove unsubscribers manually or they’d still count as normal subscribers
  • There’s a small transaction fee on all plans

Want to discover the nitty-gritty details? Stick around because this Aweber review is just getting started.

2. AWeber’s features

Aweber provides a host of tools built for a seamless user experience.


They continuously update their arsenal, and as it stands right now, it’s looking darn impressive.

2.1. Landing pages

A landing page is where all your traffic “lands”, and that includes both paid and organic traffic.


Landing pages are essential for the following reasons:

  • One of the first impressions, if not the first, about your website or brand
  • They are the first step in any sales funnel
  • Offer high conversion rates compared to normal webpages
  • They’re optimized for targeted traffic

And you need them because landing pages are:

  • Excellent stages to build social proof and brand awareness
  • Have predetermined objectives with measurable results
  • Great lead generators for products, services, events, etc.

In fact, an optimized landing page can skyrocket your conversion rates by up to 300%.


Pair that with an ROI of email marketing that goes up to $45-$1, AWeber just couldn’t resist adding a landing page creator to its email marketing solutions.


The landing page builder features a drag-and-drop editor style, and comes with all kinds of templates in an intuitive user interface.

AWeber’s landing page builder

AWeber’s landing page builder

AWeber lets you add custom domains for better personalization and improves your brand name recognition.


You can also easily integrate Google analytics or the Meta pixel (formerly known as the Facebook pixel) for better tracking and performance measurement.


Promote and sell products and services on your landing page while having it integrated with the rest of AWeber’s features as a part of their email marketing automation efforts.

2.2. Email designer

One of the centerpieces of AWeber's efforts to make email marketing easily accessible to all targeted demographics.


The email designer features a similar drag-and-drop email builder that AWeber uses for landing pages — but optimized for email building.


You have access to a library of templates, simply choose one and start making it your own with unique branding and content, it’s very user-friendly.

AWeber’s email templates

AWeber’s email templates

However, the templates could use an update to make them more modernized and eye-catching.


If you want to craft a unique template for your business, AWeber’s team will jump on a free consultation call to assess your needs and then recommend 1 of 2 options:

1. Template modification — $29

This would mean you’d modify an existing email template with the ability to change the layout, color, fonts, background, and a few other options.

2. Custom template design — $229

This would get you to work 1-on-1 with a designer to have a customized email template built to fit your website or brand


If you’re the technical type, AWeber offers an HTML editor and a plain email editor for you to build emails from the ground up.


Also don’t discount AWeber’s smart designer, which is an AI-powered tool designed to automatically create email templates by scanning a website:

AWeber's Smart Designer

AWeber's Smart Designer

2.3. Canva integration

You’ve probably heard of Canva, but for the uninformed, Canva is for people and teams wanting to design absolutely anything.


AWeber users have access to all those Canva resources right into the email builder and the integration is seamless.

Canva integration with AWeber

Canva integration with AWeber

2.4. Tagging

Tags are a method provided by AWeber for customer relationship management (CRM).


They are essentially keywords or phrases that you can assign to certain groups of your subscribers to quickly identify key aspects about them at a glance.


You can also use tags to assign certain actions for subscribers like different email marketing campaigns.

Tags in AWeber

Tags in AWeber

For example, you can assign a “New Lead” tag to users who sign up to your landing page form, and all users holding that tag would automatically enter a welcome email campaign.


Tags serve an important goal of personalizing the emails your subscribers receive.


They also cut down the amount of manual effort you have to do for management.

2.5. Segmentation

This is AWeber’s way of saying: Every subscriber is unique, treat them that way!


Segments for your subscriber list differentiate groups based on certain activities and information:

  • Tags — Subscribers with certain tags can be assigned to dynamic subscriber segments (automatically or manually)
  • Opens — Subscribers enter different segments if they opened certain emails in email campaigns
  • Clicks — Subscribers who clicked on a specific link in a certain email
  • Purchases — Subscribers who bought products and how much they spent
  • Visits — Subscribers who visit certain pages on your website
  • Location — Region based on IP address subscribers
  • Sign-up forms — Information gathered at sign-up like age and gender

Segmentation would allow you to send curated emails to distinct subscribers at the right time — AWeber’s autoresponder functionality shines here.


What’s cool is that you can create segments on your own other than just sticking to the default ones that AWeber provides:

Saving segments in AWeber

Saving segments in AWeber

In other words, segments take your email marketing personalization efforts to a whole new level.

2.6. Web push notifications

Web push notifications

Ever had alert-style messages from websites that slide in at the corner of your desktop screen?


Those are web push notifications or browser push notifications, and they are messages sent via browsers to visitors of a website to encourage certain actions.


AWeber makes it easy to send web push notifications right from the control panel.


Simply follow these steps:

1. Select “Web Push” in your control panel.

2. Enter website URL and logo — Only HTTPS secured websites are accepted.

3. After clicking “Save”, AWeber will generate a code snippet.

4. Copy and paste the snippet on your website.

5. Click on “Verify” in your dashboard to make sure it’s working properly.

6. And that’s it, you can now send web push notifications to new subscribers on your website through AWeber.

Be careful though, people are really divided about web push notifications and they can come across as annoying.


It’s understandable, some people dislike pushy marketing and we all hate feeling invaded.


Weigh your options on this one, and if you ended up going through with it, just make sure you’re as subtle and easygoing as possible in your messages.

2.7. Automation

AWeber is an email autoresponder at the core but has grown so much over the years and developed a lot of tools.

2.7.1. AWeber RSS to email

Sending RSS feeds in AWeber

Sending RSS feeds in AWeber

Really simple syndication or RSS is a summarized web feed that updates users on changes in a website in a computer-readable format.


RSS to email is an RSS feed that takes the form of an email template that has a select amount of content from a website or blog.


For example, you can have an RSS to email feed that updates subscribers on all the new products you just dropped on a certain page of your website or store.


AWeber recognized early on that RSS to email is great in email newsletters, and integrated it for users.


This means users are able to update pre-selected segments of their subscribers with automated messages that are actually RSS to email feeds.


What’s neat is that you can use that same formula to send snippets of broadcast messages to social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter — automatically of course.

2.7.2. AWeber email automation

Email campaigns in AWeber

Email campaigns in AWeber

AWeber is straightforward with its email marketing automation features, nothing crazy but everything you need to start is there.


You can create fully automated email campaigns, which means automating sending emails to certain segments, sending emails at a specific time and date, and everything in between.


AWeber really utilizes its tagging feature here, and guides users to use tags to differentiate subscribers, and based on that, they can be put into different future campaigns for personalized email marketing.


You can also integrate Stripe, and PayPal, in case you’re selling right through your emails, although there’s a small transaction fee.


As it stands right now, AWeber has a 1% transaction fee on the Free plan and a 0.6% transaction fee on the Pro plan.


You can set abandoned cart emails, as well as upsell emails for users after purchasing.


Still, AWeber email automation lacks advanced features like automation rules, exit and entrance conditions, email funnels, and more.

2.8. Other features

We have covered all the main features that AWeber advertises, but there are still more that deserve some time in the spotlight.

2.8.1. Split testing

Split testing in AWeber

Split testing in AWeber

Commonly known as A/B testing, split testing is a proven marketing tactic that’s considered standard in today’s digital marketing.


In its simplest form, split testing is comparing two variants (usually 2 web pages or emails) that have one or more differences to see which one gets better results.


For example, say you’re sending two emails for the same product and you only changed the headline for one.


If a certain email performs better than the other, you’ll know for sure that the headline was the culprit in keeping your results down.


Although not available on the Free plan, AWeber does offer a good-looking split testing feature on their paid plans.


What differentiates AWeber’s split testing from the others is that you can choose your segments and segment percentages when testing.


You can split test up to 3 variants of an email and select distinct variables to monitor like subject lines, preview text, body content, send times, and a few more.

2.8.2. Blog broadcast

Using the RSS feeds mentioned earlier, AWeber lets you automatically email messages containing highlights of content on your blog to subscribers.


This is called blog broadcasting, and it helps build social proof between your brand and customers.


It also increases customer retention and customer lifetime value (CLV).


AWeber achieves this via integrating blog broadcasting into your newsletter, and you can control it through your messages’ control panel.

2.8.3. Integrations

Since AWeber is targeting individuals and small businesses, it cuts out on a lot of high-end features that other complete email marketing software provides.


But, the platform’s way around that is by playing nice with others, and by nice we mean that AWeber integrates with 750+ platforms and apps.


And if you count the number of options that Zapier opens out, that number reaches well over 1,000 integrations.


Now, is that optimal? Depends on who you ask.


Does it count as a positive that AWeber doesn’t leave you in the dust for certain features? Absolutely.

2.8.4. Importing an email list

Adding new subscribers in AWeber

Adding new subscribers in AWeber

If you already have an email or a subscriber list, AWeber lets you import it easily.


Simply:

1. Go to your “Add Subscribers” section in your list tab.

2. Select “Import Multiple”.

3. Upload your list in a supported file type.

4. Go through the importing process and questions.

And you’re done, that’s how easy it is to import a subscribers list in AWeber.

3. AWeber’s pricing

AWeber’s pricing plans

AWeber’s pricing plans

At the time of researching this post, AWeber offers 2 plans:

  • AWeber Free plan — $0/month

Perfect for those starting out looking for a risk-free option.

  • AWeber Pro plan — $19.99 to $149.99/month

For small businesses and entrepreneurs, the price varies based on the number of subscribers you have.


Here are the main features included in the AWeber Pro plan:

  • Unlimited email lists, email sending, landing pages, and up to unlimited subscribers — Based on the price
  • Advanced email automation
  • Detailed insights and analytics, and webpage and sales tracking
  • Split testing
  • Drag-and-drop editor and templates
  • Signup forms
  • Remove AWeber branding

And more.


Here are the main differences with the Free plan:

  • Limited to 500 subscribers, sending emails is up to 3000/month, and you can’t add multiple lists, just 1
  • No split testing
  • No advanced automation
  • AWeber branding
  • No Facebook/Meta pixel tracking
  • Can’t create segments
  • Basic email and audience/account analytics
  • No email sales tracking

Both plans give you access to 24/7 customer support that includes phone, email, and live chat support.

4. AWeber FAQs

When researching this detailed AWeber review, these questions were repeated a lot.


So, let’s find their answers.

4.1. Can you launch email marketing campaigns with AWeber?

Yes, you can launch full email marketing campaigns with AWeber.

4.2. Can AWeber be used for affiliate marketing?

To run your own affiliate program to your email list like on systeme.io? No.


To join their affiliate program and market their platform or send affiliate links through emails? Yes.

4.3. How many customers does AWeber have?

According to Markletic, AWeber has more than 1 million customers worldwide.


But that total includes paying customers and their subscribers’ lists. The more accurate figure is around 120,000 paying customers — which is still very large.

4.4. Can you pause an AWeber account?

Yes, you can pause an AWeber account at a reduced rate that the platform has set. Currently at $4.99/month.


This will help store all of your customer data with AWeber until you’re ready to start working with them again.

4.5. How do you get subscribers on AWeber’s email marketing software?

You can:

1. Bring your own list of subscribers from other platforms

2. Grow your list through signup forms — The standard marketing strategy

3. Use integrations to bring in leads and grow your subscriber list

5. AWeber alternatives

No software is perfect.


That’s why we’ve got a list for you to expand your reach and make an informed decision when choosing an email marketing software for you and your brand.

5.1. Systeme.io — The best AWeber alternative

systeme.io logo

systeme.io logo

Systeme.io is an all-in-one digital marketing platform that’s designed to take your business from zero to hero at the fastest speed possible.


The platform realizes how powerful email marketing is and gives you all the tools that AWeber provides, and more.


Here are a few main features we provide:

  • Email marketing

All the advanced email marketing tools you could possibly want, like automated campaigns, split testing, templates, different types of builders, funnels, and more.

  • Online courses

If you’re looking to launch your online course, systeme.io has got you covered. You can build a course site with no technical knowledge required.

  • Website builder

A modern and beautiful drag-and-drop editor with lots of templates that will get your website and blog up in no time.

  • Affiliate program management

Turn your loyal customers into a unit of specialized marketers that work for bringing you conversions around the clock.

  • Marketing automation

Tap into cutting-edge tools like advanced marketing automation rules, advanced analytics, visual builders, automatic lead capturing, assigning auto access to prospects, and more


But the best part about systeme.io is our competitive pricing.

5.1.1. Systeme.io’s pricing

systeme.io’s pricing options

systeme.io’s pricing options

We don’t break the bank.


Here are our plans:

  • Free — $0/month (for up to 2,000 contacts)
  • Startup — $27/month (for up to 5,000 contacts)
  • Webinar — $47/month (for up to 10,000 contacts)
  • Unlimited — $97/month (for up to unlimited contacts)

We don’t cut important features like split testing from our Free plan; you can send unlimited emails and unlimited blog posts.


In fact, your free account has all the features you need to fully launch and scale your email marketing efforts — And it’s free forever.


If you want help, our customer support team with an average response time of under 2 hours, is there for you every step of the way.

5.2. Mailchimp

Mailchimp logo

Mailchimp logo

Mailchimp is an established platform that’s considered by many to be the go-to software for an email marketing solution.


In recent years, Mailchimp has started to focus on being an all-in-one marketing platform for businesses.


For the number of tools Mailchimp offers, it has the potential to completely run your email marketing efforts with very advanced features.


But their user interface could be better and pricing is . . . somewhat confusing.

5.2.1. Mailchimp’s pricing

Mailchimp’s pricing options

Mailchimp’s pricing options

As it stands right now, Mailchimp has 3 sections on its pricing page:

  • Websites & Commerce
  • Marketing Platform
  • Transactional Emails

We’ll be focusing on the last two. Mailchimp offers 4 marketing plans:

1. Free — $0/month

2. Essentials — $9.99/month

3. Standard — $14.99/month

4. Premium — $299/month

Mailchimp’s pricing scales depending on your subscriber count. The above prices were for a total of 500 subscribers.


For transactional emails, Mailchimp uses a simple calculator to determine the price:

Mailchimp’s pricing for transactional emails

Mailchimp’s pricing for transactional emails

Transactional emails are emails sent to users after purchasing as receipts.


The pricing is simple, you add the number of expected transactional emails and the calculator spits out a price you have to pay for sending receipts.

5.3. GetResponse

GetResponse logo

GetResponse logo

GetResponse is a complete email marketing solution that is now specializing in inbound marketing.


In many ways, the platform offerings are similar to systeme.io:

  • All email marketing tools that you may need
  • Website builder
  • Marketing automation functionality and detailed analytics
  • Conversion funnels
  • Pre-made templates

They do offer a free plan but it’s very limited and user experience (UX) can be better.

5.3.1. GetResponse’s pricing

GetResponse’s pricing options

GetResponse’s pricing options

GetResponse offers 4 plans:

  • Free — $0/month
  • Basic — $19/month
  • Plus — $59/month
  • Professional — $119/month

Similar to Mailchimp, the price for each plan varies based on how many subscribers you have in your list.


And the higher the price, the higher the number of features you unlock.

6. Conclusion

For the skim readers out there, here are some key takeaways from this review:

  • AWeber is one of the oldest players in the email marketing game and still competes for the value it offers
  • AWeber’s features are targeted at entrepreneurs and small businesses who are just starting out
  • AWeber has made a ton of integrations available to allow third-party apps to compensate for the lack of advanced features

AWeber is a great platform for email marketing, but if you want to take your emailing efforts to the next level, choose systeme.io.


We offer the most advanced features for the best price — everything you need all wrapped up in one package.


Simply sign up and watch your emails fly!


Cheerio!

Other posts about email marketing software:

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