AWeber vs GetResponse (2026): What a Quiet Month Costs

"Can I place my account on hold multiple times each year?" AWeber's help center asks itself that question and answers in one word: "No."

That one word confirms something none of the eight AWeber vs GetResponse comparisons I read for this page mentions. AWeber sells a pause. It's called the Hold Package, it costs $4.99 a month, and you get one a year. GetResponse has no hold plan to buy. What it has instead sits inside its cancel button and its Terms of Service, and on paper it can cost less than AWeber's.

So this comparison prices the months you don't send. If your list has a slow season (a course you launch twice a year, a shop that sells in November and December, a newsletter that breaks for summer), the busy-month price leaves out part of the bill.

In two lines: In months you send, GetResponse Starter costs $6 a month less than AWeber Lite at 1,000 to 5,000 contacts and $21 less at 10,000. Once you have two to four quiet months in one stretch (the number depends on list size), AWeber's Hold makes AWeber the cheaper of the two, unless you're willing to close your GetResponse account and restore it within 120 days, which is cheaper still and comes with a clause that lets GetResponse refuse.

Months you send: GetResponse costs less

Both price by list size. These are the monthly prices on each vendor's own pages on October 8, 2026, for the entry plans and the plans one step up.

GetResponse's own comparison post says "GetResponse Starter is the more affordable option across all subscriber tiers," and on the entry plans that's true. Over 12 sending months, Starter costs $228 against Lite's $300 at 1,000, $348 against $420 at 2,500, $648 against $720 at 5,000, and $948 against $1,200 at 10,000.

Two notes on the table. GetResponse's paid ladder starts at 1,000 contacts, while AWeber's starts at 500 ($15 for Lite), so a list under 500 has no GetResponse row. And AWeber caps sends on each tier (10 times the tier's subscriber count on Lite, 12 times on Plus), while GetResponse lists Starter with "unlimited monthly sends." Go past AWeber's sends and it moves you to the next tier on its own; what that costs at different sending habits is priced on its own page.

Months you don't: what each lets you do

Here the two documents stop looking alike.

AWeber: three ways to stop paying the full tier

The Hold Package, $4.99 a month. AWeber's help center says it will "store all your account information, including subscribers, broadcasts, workflow automations, landing pages, and web push notifications." In exchange, broadcasts and workflow automations are switched off, and the page states it flatly: "New subscribers will not be collected." You can't start it from a button. You contact Customer Solutions to go on Hold and again to come off it, with your login email, an invoice number and the plan you want back. Any unpaid balance has to be settled first. There's no time limit on a Hold, and the answer to whether you can do it several times a year is the "No" this page opened with.

Closing the account. It keeps working until the current billing cycle ends. After that, AWeber's cancellation article says your data "will be permanently removed within 30 days of closing if you do not choose to switch to a Hold package." So a closed AWeber account is a 30-day window, not storage.

Dropping to Free. Only for lists of 500 or fewer, since Free stops at 500 subscribers and 3,000 sends a month. AWeber's downgrade article says "Your email list and landing page will be retained," with features cut back to the Free set.

One more rule shapes all three. Upgrades happen on their own when you pass a tier, but moving down doesn't. AWeber's pricing FAQ says that when you delete subscribers, "your billing tier does not automatically adjust," and you have to ask Customer Solutions to move you.

GetResponse: no pause plan, four other routes

Keep paying. The plain route, at the prices above.

Drop to Free. Not possible. GetResponse's change-plan article rules out moving a paid account back to Free, and any move to a smaller plan is made by its support team on request.

Take the freeze. When a monthly payer starts cancelling, GetResponse offers "a one-time opportunity" to pick one of three things instead: a month free (credited to the account balance), a lower plan, or "freezing your account for 60 days." Yearly payers get two free months or a lower plan, and no freeze. The help article doesn't say what the freeze costs or what the account does while frozen, and it's one-time, so it can't cover a slow season every year.

Close it and restore it. None of the comparisons I read prices this route. GetResponse's Terms let a paid account be restored "along with all data and Contacts List" within 120 days of being deactivated, "regardless of the reasons for the deactivation." To restore, you pay for the next period first. The same paragraph ends: "We reserve the right to refuse to restore any Account without reason." While it's closed, you pay nothing.

GetResponse bills monthly plans every 30 days, so 120 days is four billing cycles. That's the length of quiet that this route covers. Past it, the Terms no longer promise your data back.

A year with quiet months, priced

To compare them, I count a year as 12 billing cycles, put the quiet months in one stretch, and charge each tool's cheapest documented route for that stretch. AWeber gets Lite for the sending months and the Hold for the quiet ones. GetResponse gets Starter, two ways: paid straight through, and closed for the quiet stretch, then restored.

Three quiet months:

Every month on Hold saves the Lite price minus $4.99: $20.01 at 1,000, $30.01 at 2,500, $55.01 at 5,000 and $95.01 at 10,000. Set that against GetResponse's head start ($6 a month at the first three sizes, $21 at 10,000, over a full year) and you get the point where the Hold catches up.

Where AWeber's Hold becomes the cheaper year:

The paying-all-year column compares two accounts that never close, so it's the fair test if you won't close one. The close-and-restore column is cheaper in dollars and riskier in practice. In dollars, closing GetResponse costs nothing for up to four cycles, so AWeber can only win once the quiet stretch runs past what the restore window covers. At 5,000 contacts with six quiet months, AWeber with a Hold comes to $389.94 for the year, GetResponse closed for four cycles and paid for two comes to $432, and GetResponse paid straight through comes to $648.

What the tables leave out

Nobody joins during a pause. AWeber's Hold stops collecting subscribers. GetResponse's documents don't say what a closed account's forms do, and I'd assume they stop too. Of the routes priced here, only paying GetResponse through is sure to keep a signup form taking names in the quiet months. If your slow season is when people find you (a shop's off-season blog traffic, say), the cheap routes cost you the list growth.

A long silence costs more than the bill. The breaks priced here run for months. An agency in r/Emailmarketing on Reddit described what a gap of years did to one client's return: "We used GetResponse, and it was a really good solution. But our client just restarted their newsletter after years of neglect, and their hard bounce rate was high enough to get them permanently banned (ouch) on their first email." So I treat a planned pause and an open-ended gap differently. A pause has an end date, and the first send back goes to people who signed up recently enough to expect it.

AWeber's Hold is once a year. One slow stretch fits. A list with two separate breaks, say one in summer and one in January, gets one Hold and pays the tier for the other.

Somebody has to answer your ticket. Both of AWeber's switches go through Customer Solutions (phone Monday to Friday, 8 AM to 8 PM ET, plus email and chat). Ask a few days before your first send back.

GetResponse won't let you cancel over the limit. The cancellation article says an account that's already over its plan's list size can't be cancelled until the extra fee is paid, and an account with an unpaid balance can't be cancelled either. Clean the list before the quiet stretch, not during it.

GetResponse doesn't refund. Its refund page calls the service "pay-as-you-go" and says amounts already charged stay charged. The quiet stretch starts when the paid cycle ends, not the day you click cancel.

Before closing an account you mean to restore, save the list export on your own drive. A refusal clause plus a 120-day window is a promise you'd rather not need.

Coming back after a long gap is AWeber's worry too. The Hold article warns that if subscribers "have not heard from you in over 6 months," addresses may have gone bad and people may not remember signing up, and for longer holds it asks you to remove subscribers not contacted in over 12 months before you reactivate. That's AWeber's guidance. I haven't tested what a return send does on either platform.

Plus against Marketer

If you'd pay for the upper plans, the comparison changes before any pause. AWeber Plus costs less than GetResponse Marketer at 1,000 ($45 against $59), 2,500 ($55 against $69) and 5,000 ($90 against $95). A Hold only widens that. At 10,000, Marketer is $21 a month cheaper ($114 against $135), and two quiet months on Hold close that gap. The plans aren't twins: GetResponse aims Marketer at businesses that "promote and sell across channels," and Plus removes AWeber's branding and Lite's caps. Compare features before prices here.

Paying for a year up front

Yearly billing makes the pause question mostly moot, because you've paid for the quiet months already. On yearly terms GetResponse is cheaper at every size I priced:

GetResponse shows those as $15.58, $23.78, $44.28 and $64.78 a month, paid annually. Two things to know before you choose a year. GetResponse's freeze offer isn't available on yearly billing, and its refund policy keeps the whole year's charge once it's taken. AWeber's documents don't say whether a yearly plan can go on Hold, so I'd ask before buying a year if a slow season is likely.

How far AWeber's prices moved since 2023

Two AWeber users on X describe a price rise. One wrote in January 2025, "Doubling your price sent me to Flodesk," in a post that also carries a Flodesk discount link. Another, in May 2025, said AWeber was "decent but recently got expensive." Neither says which plan or list size.

The Internet Archive kept a copy of AWeber's pricing page from June 15, 2023, including the script that fed its price slider. In 2023 the tiers were bands (501 to 2,500, 2,501 to 5,000, 5,001 to 10,000), so a 1,000-subscriber list paid the 2,500 price. The same capture lists email sends as "Unlimited" on Lite and Plus; today each tier carries a send allowance, and how that allowance moves the price has its own page. Against today's docs:

That isn't a doubling at any of the four sizes I checked; the largest rise is Plus at 10,000, at 69%. The archive shows only the public page, so I can't see what older or grandfathered accounts were paying before they moved.

In February 2023, a post in r/Emailmarketing started from the opposite assumption to this page: "aweber is a bit cheaper compared to get response." After AWeber's rises, that no longer holds in sending months at any size in my first table.

Some comparison pages still carry prices from neither table. Email Software Insights' comparison, last modified June 22, 2026, lists AWeber at "From $49.99/month" for 5,000 subscribers and "From $69.99/month" for 10,000. Sequenzy's comparison, updated September 28, 2026, has GetResponse at $59 and AWeber Plus at $70 for a 10,000 list; today's pages say $79 for Starter, $114 for Marketer and $135 for Plus. Style Factory's October 2025 comparison is current on prices but sets GetResponse Starter against AWeber Plus, which is how it reaches "a $6 to $56 monthly saving"; against Lite the gap is $6 to $21 at the sizes above.

What AWeber and GetResponse users wrote

In the X searches I ran, nobody mentioned AWeber's Hold or GetResponse's freeze. The posts I found are about the moment before a pause, when an unused list keeps billing.

In February 2026, one AWeber user described a list that earned nothing: "So I made zero money on said list." Then: "had to cancel my Aweber account. Because I couldn’t afford the $120/mo fee." The post doesn't name the plan; on today's page, $120 is Plus at 7,500 subscribers. A list in that state is what the Hold is for, at $4.99, with the catch that it stops growing while it waits.

In September 2026, another user wrote: "Already moved away from $120 Aweber to $40 Resend." Resend is an email API built for developers, a different kind of tool.

The same month, an AWeber customer replying to a thread about switching said: "Im stuck for a year to aweber." That reads like a yearly plan, the trade from the section above.

In December 2025 a user wrote: "Thought I cancelled my @AWeber account only to realize I'm still getting billed." AWeber's cancellation article says the account stays active through the end of the current billing cycle and tells you to check the Billing page to confirm the cancellation went through. The post doesn't say which of those applied.

On the GetResponse side, a February 2025 reply to GetResponse's account asked: "Why are you billing clients after you lock accounts?" There's no detail in the post about the lock or the plan, so I can only report the question.

Holes in the paperwork

• The freeze price. GetResponse's cancellation article lists the 60-day freeze but not its cost or what a frozen account can do.
• Hold on a yearly plan. AWeber's Hold articles don't say whether a yearly subscriber can use it.
• Repeat restores. GetResponse's Terms give the 120-day window but don't say whether it can be used year after year.
• Signup forms during a pause. AWeber says new subscribers won't be collected; neither vendor says what a visitor sees on the form.
• Legacy AWeber prices. The 2023 archive is the public page only.
• Inbox placement. I haven't tested sending on either platform, before or after a pause.

Count your quiet months, then choose

• Quiet months below the break-even for your size: GetResponse Starter. It's $6 to $21 a month cheaper while you send, and yearly billing widens the gap.
• One quiet stretch at or past the break-even, and the account stays open: AWeber Lite with a Hold. The break-even is 2 months at 5,000 contacts, 3 at 2,500 and 10,000, and 4 at 1,000. Remember the Hold stops new signups and takes two support contacts.
• Up to four quiet cycles, and you'll export and close: GetResponse closed and restored within 120 days is the cheapest year I could price at every size, if GetResponse honours the restore.
• A long quiet stretch: AWeber's Hold has no time limit. It beats every priced GetResponse route from 6 quiet months at 5,000 and 10,000, 7 at 2,500 and 8 at 1,000, and it's the only route here that keeps the list past 120 days without paying the full tier. Read AWeber's own six-month warning first.
• Under 500 subscribers: AWeber. GetResponse's paid plans start at 1,000 contacts, and AWeber lets you move down to Free and keep your list.
• You'd buy the upper plans: AWeber Plus costs less than Marketer up to 5,000 contacts, pause or not.

If AWeber fits, AWeber's pricing table shows the Lite and Plus tiers by list size. If GetResponse fits, start from GetResponse's plan picker and see every GetResponse tier with its yearly price. If neither fits a seasonal list, my GetResponse alternatives and free plans ranked by their exit bill cover the rest.

FAQ

Does GetResponse have a pause option? Not as a plan. Monthly payers who start cancelling are offered a one-time 60-day freeze, and the Terms allow a closed paid account to come back, data included, for 120 days, once you pay for the next period. GetResponse reserves the right to refuse a restore.

How much does AWeber's Hold cost, and what stops? $4.99 a month. Broadcasts and workflow automations stop, and new subscribers aren't collected. Subscribers, broadcasts, automations and landing pages are stored. You switch it on and off through Customer Solutions.

Can I move a paid GetResponse account back to Free? No. GetResponse's help center rules that out. Moving to a lower paid plan goes through support.

What happens to my AWeber data if I cancel? The account runs until the cycle you've paid for ends, and AWeber says the data is removed within 30 days of closing unless you switch to Hold. AWeber can reactivate within those 30 days.

Is AWeber cheaper than GetResponse? In months you send, no, on the entry plans: Starter is $6 to $21 cheaper. AWeber Plus costs less than GetResponse Marketer up to 5,000 contacts. Once your quiet months reach the break-even for your list size (two to four, in one stretch) and you won't close accounts, AWeber Lite with a Hold comes out cheaper.

Does GetResponse refund the months I don't use? No. Its refund page calls the service "pay-as-you-go" and keeps amounts already charged, so a quiet stretch only saves money from the end of the cycle you've paid for.

Does yearly billing settle it for a seasonal list? Mostly. Once you've prepaid a year, the quiet months are already paid for, and on yearly terms GetResponse Starter is cheaper than AWeber Lite at every list size priced here.