GetResponse Pricing 2026: What the 18% Discount Assumes

The most careful GetResponse pricing guide I read this week puts its main assumption in one line under the savings table: "All examples assume the same plan and contact bracket for the entire year." That's a sensible way to build a table. It's also the exact condition GetResponse's discounts are written for. The guide notes that a growing list changes the comparison and leaves it there. I kept going, through the pricing page, the help center, the nonprofit page and the terms of service dated June 9, 2026.

Each of GetResponse's three discounts (18% for paying yearly, 10% for finishing a setup checklist, 50% for nonprofits) is priced for an account that doesn't move for a year. Grow past your contact bracket and the growth is billed every month on top of the yearly plan, or you upgrade and a new 12-month term starts that day. Shrink, and the downgrade is a support ticket with no refund attached. Change plan type and the checklist discount ends. Take the nonprofit discount and you can't have the yearly one. Each of them is, in effect, a standing-still discount: the price assumes nothing happens, and each change takes back part of it.

Prices first, then what each change costs.

GetResponse prices in October 2026

GetResponse sells three standard plans priced by contact count, plus Enterprise on a custom quote. These are the list prices from the pricing slider, in US dollars before tax. The yearly column is the per-month equivalent of a 12-month plan, which you pay upfront.

The yearly price is the monthly price minus 18%, at every cell. The "save up to" figures on the page are that 18% over twelve months: $41 a year on Starter at 1,000 contacts, $246 on Marketer at 10,000, $1,490 on Creator at 100,000. A year of Starter at 10,000 contacts is $948 paid monthly or $777.36 paid upfront.

Billing periods are monthly or 12 months. The pricing FAQ offers 24-month billing only on Enterprise. Above 100,000 contacts, the help center adds $4 for every 1,000 contacts you start, billed monthly even on a yearly plan: 120,000 contacts on Starter is $619 a month, or $441.98 plus $80 if you're on yearly billing.

There's also a Free plan for up to 500 contacts, with a GetResponse badge on every email and, according to the help center, landing page visits capped at 1,000 unique visitors a month. The terms disable a free account after 90 days without use. Every new account gets 14 days of premium features first.

What the three plans add

All three include what the pricing page calls "unlimited monthly email sends", a welcome email series, landing pages and signup forms. The differences that matter for the price:

• Starter gets "1 custom automation workflow" and no contact tagging. If that sounds like a small difference, my systeme.io vs GetResponse comparison prices exactly what the first tag costs.
• Marketer gets automation workflows with no cap listed, plus advanced segmentation, abandoned cart recovery, sales funnels and web push. Whether you need it comes down mostly to how many automations you run; the GetResponse vs Kit comparison works through that line. A Shopify or WooCommerce store has a second reason, the cart and purchase emails; my store setup guide covers that side.
• Creator adds webinars, a website builder, a course creator and premium newsletter subscriptions. Its card on the pricing page lists "Up to 500 students", and the comparison table gives Creator a students limit of "Up to 40,000". The help center's rules for going over a list limit name Creator alongside Starter and Marketer.

The rest of this page is about billing, which works the same way on all three.

Every discount, and what switches it off

GetResponse lists four ways to pay less than the monthly price. Each one is written with a condition, and the conditions all point the same way.

Read down the last column. Growing, upgrading, downgrading, pausing, cancelling, switching plan type and stacking a second discount each end or reduce a discount. An account that stays on the same plan, at the same size, for twelve months gets every dollar the table promises. That's the standing-still discount, and it's worth knowing which side of it you're on before you prepay.

The checklist discount does stack with yearly billing, which the help center says outright: it "can be combined with annual and biennial discounts". Together they take 26.2% off the first year. Starter at 10,000 contacts comes to $58.30 a month instead of $79. GetResponse doesn't define "plan type". I read it as Starter, Marketer or Creator rather than list size, but I can't confirm that from the documents.

Crossing a contact line on a yearly plan

This is where most of the money moves, so it gets the most space.

On a yearly plan you've paid for one contact bracket. When the list grows past it, GetResponse bills a List Extension Fee once the cycle in which you went over closes, and again every cycle until you're back under. The help center then adds the line that matters for yearly customers: "The charges are applied every month, even if you've signed up for an annual subscription plan."

Not every new contact triggers the fee. On a paid account, contacts you import or add by hand past the limit wait in a contact queue, and GetResponse deletes them from the queue after 32 days if you don't upgrade. Contacts who join any other way, through a signup form for example, are added and the fee applies. If your list grows through signup forms, the fee is the case to plan for. (For how GetResponse counts contacts, and why a person on two lists counts twice, see my GetResponse vs Brevo comparison. This page takes the count as given.)

How big the fee is: two readings

GetResponse describes the fee in two places, and they don't do the same subtraction for a yearly customer.

The help center says the fee "is the difference between the price of your current plan and the plan that accommodates your actual list size," and its worked example uses monthly prices on both sides. Read that way, a yearly Starter account at 5,000 contacts that grows past 5,000 pays $25 a month extra: $79 minus $54. That's the help reading.

The terms of service define the fee as "the monthly Subscription fee for the Subscription Plan that you chose, at the List Size tier sufficient to cover the number of Contacts for that month, minus (ii) the Subscription Plan and Pricing Option that you chose, at your initial List Size tier." The first half is a monthly price. The second half is your own pricing option, which for a yearly customer is the yearly price. Read literally, the same Starter account pays $79 minus $44.28, or $34.72 a month. That's the terms reading.

Neither document works an example on a yearly plan, and I can't see an invoice from here. So every figure below comes in both versions. Added back to the plan, they work out like this.

• Help reading: you pay $44.28 plus $25, or $69.28 a month, for a list that would cost $64.78 on the yearly 10,000 plan and $79 on the monthly one. You keep the $9.72 a month you were already saving at 5,000 contacts. The growth itself is billed at the full monthly price.
• Terms reading: you pay $44.28 plus $34.72, which is $79. That's the monthly price for 10,000 contacts. From the crossing on, the yearly discount is worth nothing.

Three ways to handle the crossing

You have three moves when the list approaches a line on a yearly plan: pay the fee, upgrade when you cross, or buy the bigger bracket from the start. The table follows Starter from 5,000 to 10,000 contacts, with the year's cost depending on the month the list crosses.

The "monthly payments" column assumes you move from the $54 tier to the $79 tier in the crossing month. Every column covers the same 12 months.

Upgrading on the crossing is the cheapest column in every row, and the column that hides the most. On the upgrade, the help center says "your billing cycle always starts anew", and GetResponse credits the unused part of the old plan against the new one. My table counts only the months inside the first year. An upgrade in month 4 starts a new 12-month term that runs to month 15 of the original calendar, so you've also prepaid three months beyond the first year: $194.34 more. An upgrade in month 9 runs to month 20 and prepays $518.24 beyond it. Per month after the crossing, the upgraded plan costs $64.78, against $69.28 or $79 on the fee. It is also a fresh commitment to a list that just grew, made on the day it grew. (The table assumes the upgraded plan stays on yearly billing and the credit is pro-rata, which is how the help page describes it. You see the exact amount before you confirm.)

Buying the bigger bracket on day one beats the fee only if the crossing comes early. Under the help reading, prepaying 10,000 contacts wins if you cross in month 3 or earlier. Under the terms reading it wins up to month 5. The help-reading cut-off isn't specific to this step: it sits just past month 3 at every tier on every plan, because the fee and the yearly premium are both fixed shares of the same price gap. Under the terms reading the last winning month is month 4 for Starter 10,000 to 25,000 and Marketer 10,000 to 25,000, and month 5 for Marketer 50,000 to 100,000.

Paying monthly loses to the fee and to the upgrade in every row, and to the prepaid bracket when the crossing comes by month 7. It's also the only column where the next change costs nothing to make. Which brings up the second half of the bill.

What growth leaves of the 18%

On the pricing page the yearly saving looks fixed: $116.64 a year at 5,000 contacts on Starter. That figure holds only for a list that stays at 5,000. The table below runs the comparison for an account that crosses one line in month 4 or month 7, against what it would have paid monthly over the same year.

Under the help reading, the dollar saving is the starting bracket's saving, to the cent, whatever the list does afterward. The percentage falls because the bill grows and the saving doesn't. Under the terms reading, the saving stops in the crossing month, so an early crossing leaves almost nothing. A Starter list that grows from 10,000 into the 25,000 bracket by month 4 ends the year 9.5% or 2.4% below the monthly price, not 18%.

So the 18% is a discount on the bracket you start in, earned month by month while you stay there.

When 'just pay yearly' stops being good advice

'Take the yearly plan once you're sure about the tool' sounds like safe advice, because the 18% is large and the monthly plan buys the same features for more. It holds only for a list with a plan for its next line. Before choosing yearly billing, write down the next line the list will cross and the month you expect it to.

If you leave a yearly plan alone while signups push it over the line, GetResponse bills the fee; nothing upgrades on its own. In the table that route loses to the upgrade in every row, and under the terms reading it costs the full monthly price from the crossing on. For a list that grows in bursts and gets cleaned back down, a launch list for example, I wouldn't suggest yearly billing at all: the growth gets billed and the cleanup earns nothing back.

Shrinking, refunds and leaving

The standing-still discount has a second edge. A yearly plan that grows is billed. A yearly plan that shrinks is just paid for.

Downgrades go through Support. The help center says a downgrade happens "by Support Team as per your request", with no button for it. That covers moving to a smaller bracket and moving "from annual/biannual payments to monthly payments", both by ticket or live chat. There's "no option to perform a downgrade from a paid account to a free one." The page doesn't say whether a mid-term downgrade returns any money.

The refund policy says no. The terms: "we do not issue refunds, even if you cancel your Account immediately after your credit card is charged for a new Billing Period." A list cleaned from 10,000 to 4,000 contacts in month 3 of a yearly Starter plan has already paid $777.36 for the 10,000 bracket.

Renewals are automatic. GetResponse's own reply to a one-star review in November 2025 put it plainly: "annual subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled beforehand, and refunds aren't typically available once the renewal has been processed." The sharpest recent review I found is about that. In August 2026 a reviewer who said they weren't using the account wrote that GetResponse "charged me upfront 2 years of membership (>300 Euros)," and that they cancelled the day the invoice arrived but were "too late." The current pricing FAQ offers 24-month billing only on Enterprise, and the review doesn't say which plan it was. The terms do say that customers on the older plan families have their limits, prices and "auto-renewal rules" shown "only in the Customer Account", so nothing public tells those customers when they renew.

You can't cancel while you're over the limit. The terms let you cancel a paid account at any time "provided that, at the time you submit the cancellation request, you have not exceeded the List Size limit for the selected Subscription Plan," with no outstanding balance. After you cancel, the account stays active to the end of the paid period, but you can't go over the limit in that time, and upgrading, downgrading or buying an add-on revokes the cancellation.

What happens to the rest of your year has changed. Under the current terms, "A Paid Account remains active until the end of the paid Billing Period." Reviews from before those terms describe something else. In October 2025 a yearly customer wrote: "I purchased a one-year subscription and contacted them halfway through the year to explain that I hadn't used my account... I politely asked for even a partial refund, but they refused," and that cancelling "would require closing my account entirely." In December 2025 another wrote that "GetResponse shuts down your service as soon as you cancel." I'd treat the June 2026 terms as the rule now. A cancelled paid account can be restored within 120 days, after paying for the next period.

Nonprofits: take the monthly plan

GetResponse's pricing page offers charities and NGOs "50% off every monthly plan", and the nonprofit page says the discount can't be combined with annual or biennial discounts. So a nonprofit doesn't choose between monthly and yearly. It chooses between 50% off monthly and 18% off yearly, and the monthly plan wins at every tier.

The nonprofit offer has its own condition: GetResponse's logo on your website within 4 weeks, or "we will remove your discount starting from the next billing cycle." It covers up to 100,000 contacts, and the List Extension Fee still applies if you go over. It doesn't combine with the checklist discount either.

I wouldn't put a nonprofit on yearly billing at all. The monthly plan is cheaper and it's the one where a change in list size costs nothing extra to make.

Old plan names, biennial prices and other things you'll see

$119 Ecommerce Marketing and biennial columns. Some pricing articles still show GetResponse's previous plan family (Email Marketing at $19, Marketing Automation at $59, Ecommerce Marketing from $119) with a biennial price column. New accounts see Starter, Marketer and Creator, billed monthly or yearly. The older plans still exist for customers who have them, and the terms exempt those customers from price-list changes. The help center's rule for leaving one: "the upgrade can only be made to packages from the new (current) offer." So an old plan's price lasts as long as the account doesn't upgrade, which is the standing-still discount in its longest form.

Nonprofit discounts of 30% to 50%. One ranking guide gives that range. GetResponse's page today offers one figure, 50% on monthly plans.

An extra 10% through an affiliate link. At least one ranking guide offers this. The help center describes a 10% checklist discount open to any account that completes the Get Started Checklist. The pricing page that GetResponse's affiliate links open, fetched on October 9, 2026, shows the same prices as the regular one, and none of its order links carries a discount or coupon code. So an affiliate link alone doesn't lower the price; the only documented 10% is the checklist discount, and any account can claim it. If a guide promises more, check what your checkout shows before you pay.

Free custom domain. All three plans list a "free custom domain on yearly plan". It's a real perk of yearly billing, and it's tied to the same 12-month term.

Choosing a billing period

1. Find your next line before choosing a billing period. If the list won't cross into the next bracket within 12 months, take yearly billing and claim the checklist discount first: 26.2% off the first year.
2. If it will cross and stay above the line, take yearly at today's size and upgrade on the crossing. It's the cheapest route for the first year in every row of the table, under both fee readings. The price is a new 12-month term starting that day.
3. If you won't touch billing mid-year, prepay the bigger bracket only for an early crossing. That means month 3 or earlier under the help reading, and by month 4 or 5 under the terms reading, depending on the step. Later than that, the fee costs less than paying for room you don't use yet.
4. If the list could grow and then shrink, or you can't predict it, pay monthly. The 18% is a payment for predictability.
5. Nonprofits: monthly, with the 50% discount. Never yearly.

If your list will sit in one bracket for a year, GetResponse's yearly plan is a good price: Starter at 1,000 contacts for $15.58 a month, Marketer at 10,000 for $93.48. You can start a 14-day trial of GetResponse and claim the checklist discount before choosing. If it won't, the cheapest bill comes from planning around the month the list grows.

FAQ

How much does GetResponse cost per month? Starter is $19 a month at 1,000 contacts, Marketer $59 and Creator $69, billed monthly. At 10,000 contacts they're $79, $114 and $134. Yearly billing takes 18% off: $15.58, $48.38 and $56.58 at 1,000 contacts.

Is GetResponse's yearly plan worth it? For a list that will stay inside one contact bracket for the year, yes: 18% off, or 26.2% for the first year with the checklist discount. For a list that will cross a line and stay there, it can still be, if you upgrade on the day you cross; that starts a new 12-month term. Left alone, the saving shrinks: depending on how GetResponse calculates the List Extension Fee on a yearly plan, crossing in month 4 leaves between 3.3% and 13.4% on Starter from 5,000 to 10,000 contacts.

What happens if I go over my contact limit on a yearly plan? Contacts who join through forms are added and a List Extension Fee is billed every month until you're back under the limit or upgrade. Contacts you import or add by hand wait in a contact queue for up to 32 days. Upgrading starts a new 12-month term with credit for the unused part of the old plan.

Can I switch from yearly to monthly billing? Yes, through a support ticket or live chat; the help center says downgrades, including from annual to monthly payments, are done only by Support. The terms rule out refunds, so ask before the renewal date.

How do I cancel GetResponse without problems? Get the contact count under your plan's limit and settle any balance first, because the terms don't accept a cancellation from an account over its limit. The account then runs to the end of the paid period; don't upgrade or buy an add-on in that window, since either revokes the cancellation. Save the confirmation. For a downgrade or a switch to monthly billing, write to Support before the renewal date rather than after the charge.

Does GetResponse give refunds? Its terms say no, "even if you cancel your Account immediately after your credit card is charged for a new Billing Period." Under the current terms a cancelled paid account stays active until the end of the period you've paid for.

Does GetResponse have a nonprofit discount? Yes, 50% off monthly plans up to 100,000 contacts. Put the GetResponse logo on your site early: GetResponse needs to confirm it within 4 weeks. It can't be combined with yearly billing or the checklist discount, and the monthly plan with it is cheaper than yearly billing without it.

Is there a free plan? Yes, up to 500 contacts, with GetResponse branding on emails and limits on landing page traffic, webinars and automation. It's disabled after 90 days without use, and the help center says a paid account can't be downgraded to free.