One vendor blocks the send, the other only names the law
ActiveCampaign holds a non-compliant campaign for review: an invalid address or unsubscribe link stops the send outright, and third-party links are refused — a technical block built into the platform itself. GetResponse instead names CAN-SPAM’s three core requirements, prior consent, a postal address, and an unsubscribe link, without describing any comparable mechanism that would stop a non-compliant email from going out in the first place.
A ten-day deadline that lives only in a glossary
ActiveCampaign’s ten-day unsubscribe deadline appears only inside its own glossary, not as an enforced platform rule, and no US state law is named anywhere in its documentation. GetResponse’s unsubscribe process is automatic but carries no numeric deadline either, and its CAN-SPAM page names no state law and shows no date for when it was last updated.
Consent looks the same on both sides, and is not
ActiveCampaign turns on double opt-in by default for signup forms, but its own data processing agreement binds nothing until it has been executed from inside the account. GetResponse’s data processing agreement is accepted electronically and stays unsigned, names four sub-processors, and holds data for one hundred twenty days plus another one hundred twenty days of encrypted backups, with a copy available within sixty days of a request.
An entry price of nineteen dollars, published in US dollars
GetResponse’s published entry price, nineteen dollars a month for Starter at one thousand contacts with unlimited sends, or fifteen dollars and fifty-eight cents a month billed annually, is the figure shown in US dollars on the page checked; GetResponse displays a different currency to a visitor browsing from outside the United States, so this exact figure will not match what someone sees from elsewhere. ActiveCampaign’s own entry price, fifteen dollars a month for a thousand contacts on Starter, is capped at twenty-five thousand contacts and five actions per automation.
The overage that moves the bill, on each side
ActiveCampaign’s overage runs on send volume, not contacts: past ten times the plan’s contact count, each extra email costs half a cent, and sending is switched off entirely at three times that same cap. GetResponse’s overage instead comes from a “list extension fee,” the price gap between tiers, charged every month even on an annual plan, plus a per-thousand-contact charge once past one hundred thousand contacts.
Neither vendor names a regulated cloud, and neither hides that fact
ActiveCampaign auto-assigns a data region by the visitor’s IP address without naming a location or a host, ships “HIPAA features” on its top tier, and leaves FedRAMP, StateRAMP, GovCloud and a signed BAA all absent with no tier named for any of them. GetResponse names only the United States as its own region, plus Canada and Poland as sub-processor locations, and lists the same four absences — FedRAMP, StateRAMP, GovCloud, and HIPAA with a BAA — alongside a missing SOC two.
