systeme.io vs GetResponse: What Your Eleventh Tag Costs

In August 2026 a systeme.io customer left a one-star review on Trustpilot: "Won't refund even though on the wrong plan and explained my circumstances."

systeme.io's support team answered four days later, and the answer is more useful than the review. "Your account was upgraded from the Startup plan because it had 11 tags, while the Startup plan allows up to 10. Before the automatic upgrade, an email was sent to your account advising you to remove the additional tag to remain on the Startup plan." The reply says support offered a refund if the customer removed the extra tag and got back to them, that it heard nothing, and that "the account remained on the Webinar plan until the next renewal." When the customer came back, systeme.io refunded that renewal as "a further goodwill exception."

I can't judge the dispute from one review and one reply. What I can do is read the mechanism, because systeme.io wrote it down for anyone to see: one tag moved an account from the $17 plan to the $47 plan.

GetResponse would never have upgraded that account over a tag. On its cheapest paid plan, Starter, the account couldn't have created one. GetResponse's own plan comparison marks contact tagging, tagging inside automations and tag-based segments as not included on Starter.

On GetResponse, the first tag is the one that costs you. On systeme.io it's the eleventh, and then the 101st. Tagging on GetResponse starts at Marketer, which runs $35 to $60 a month more than Starter depending on your list size. systeme.io includes tags on every plan but counts them: 1 on Free, 10 on Startup, 100 on Webinar, no cap on Unlimited. Cross a line and the account moves up a plan by itself after three days. The eleventh tag takes you from $17 to $47 a month; the 101st, from $47 to $97.

Several comparisons for this search quote $27 as systeme.io's cheapest paid plan. The pricing page said $17 when I checked. Either way, the entry price is the wrong number to compare, because the plan you end up on is set by your tags.

The tag structure is worth drawing before a single email is written, and for these two tools that drawing is also the price quote.

Where the tag sits on each price list

On systeme.io a tag isn't an optional extra. Its help center says that "without tags, you won't be able to segment your audience or send targeted newsletters," and the newsletter article spells it out: "Newsletters are based on tags," and "To receive the newsletter, contacts must have the selected tags assigned to them." Email sequences, which systeme.io calls campaigns, are started by automation rules, and "Tag added" is one of the triggers.

Built the way systeme.io's help center describes, a freebie is four counted items: a funnel, a tag, a rule and a campaign. On Startup, tags, rules and campaigns all stop at 10. In a build with one tag per freebie they run out together. The tag count is the one I watch, because it's the one that grows without a new freebie: a buyer tag per product, a tag for everyone who registered for a replay, a tag for a link someone clicked.

GetResponse Starter works without tags. It includes autoresponder series, drip campaigns, and segments built on contact details and contact actions. What it doesn't let you do is label a contact. The usual way to keep two freebie audiences apart on Starter is two lists, and lists are where GetResponse's counting bites. Its terms of service say: "If one Contact is on multiple lists it counts per each list to the total number of your Contacts." The duplicate math is in GetResponse vs Brevo. Starter also allows one custom automation workflow next to its welcome series, which I priced against Kit in GetResponse vs Kit.

Tags versus lists is partly a matter of how you think. Back in 2019, one Hacker News commenter argued for tags: "It's so much easier to manage your list of emails when it's a single list and then you add tags to specific users like "purchased X". This way the email address only exists in 1 spot and you can segment on the tags." Earlier that year, another said Mailchimp's move the same way had confused them: "it seems they want me to segment my audience using tags instead of having separate lists which just makes things more confusing for me." If you think in lists, GetResponse Starter fits you, and you'll pay in duplicate contacts instead of tags.

What the first, eleventh and 101st tag cost

Here are both ladders with tags as the second axis. GetResponse rows are its tier ceilings: "2,500" means 1,001 to 2,500 contacts. Monthly billing, October 8, 2026.

A single tag at 2,000 contacts or fewer fits systeme.io's Free plan; I come back to that below. The 10,000 row costs $47 on systeme.io even with two tags because Startup stops at 5,000 contacts.

Three things come out of the table.

The first tag on GetResponse costs more than systeme.io's eleventh at every list size. Moving from Starter to Marketer costs $40 a month at 1,000 and 2,500 contacts, $41 at 5,000 and 25,000, $35 at 10,000 and $60 at 50,000 and 100,000. On yearly billing, which takes 18% off, the step is $28.70 to $49.20 a month.

The eleventh tag on systeme.io costs $30 a month. That's $360 a year on monthly billing. Annual billing is ten times the monthly price ($170 for Startup, $470 for Webinar), so there the eleventh tag costs $300 a year. The 101st costs another $50 a month, or $500 a year on annual billing ($470 to $970).

Up to 100 tags, systeme.io is the cheaper of the two at every list size. With 11 to 100 tags at 1,000 contacts, systeme.io Webinar is $47 against GetResponse Marketer's $59. Past 100 tags the order flips at small list sizes: GetResponse Marketer is cheaper by $38 a month at 1,000 contacts, $28 at 2,500 and $2 at 5,000. On annual billing that's $389.44, $291.04 and $35.20 a year in GetResponse's favor. From 10,000 contacts systeme.io's Unlimited plan wins again, by $17 a month at 10,000, $118 at 25,000, $262 at 50,000 and $502 at 100,000.

Who has 101 tags? A shop that tags every buyer by product, a course creator with a tag per module completed, anyone who tags clicks on individual links. If that's your build and your list is under 5,000, the comparison above is the only place in this article where GetResponse wins on price alone.

One account, six states

Lists don't sit still, so I walked one hypothetical account forward. The numbers are round on purpose; the prices are the ones in the table above.

At A, GetResponse's free plan isn't an option: it holds 500 contacts, and its help center says contacts above that wait in a queue and are removed after 32 days. At B, GetResponse Starter means three lists, and a contact who grabbed two freebies counts twice. C is the August review in table form.

D is the state people don't expect. Deleting three tags doesn't take this account back to Startup, because it passed 5,000 contacts. systeme.io prices on two lines at once, contacts (2,000, 5,000 and 10,000) and features (tags, campaigns, rules and the rest of its table), and whichever you cross first sets the plan. GetResponse prices on one line, list size, plus the one-time step to Marketer for tags.

E is where systeme.io's flat top plan pays off: $97 a month, while GetResponse wants $174 for Starter and $215 for Marketer at 12,000 contacts. At 100,000 contacts, the Unlimited plan works out to $0.97 per 1,000 contacts. Startup at its 5,000 ceiling is $3.40 per 1,000, and Webinar at 10,000 is $4.70.

F is the heavy tagger from the last section, and it's the one state where GetResponse Marketer comes in under systeme.io.

The walk changes again if the account also needs a website and a course. GetResponse's website builder and course creator are on Creator only: $69 a month at 1,000 contacts, $109 at 5,000, $134 at 10,000 and $690 at 100,000. systeme.io's Startup includes 5 websites and 5 courses, so the same job costs $17 up to 5,000 contacts, $47 at 10,000 and $97 beyond. That's $52 to $593 a month less. A five-star systeme.io reviewer this October put it as "I love having my website, funnels, email campaigns, and CRM all in one place for a very reasonable price." A one-star GetResponse reviewer in March 2025 described the other side: "Rated as a free website builder - they don't tell you it costs over $60 a month to keep a basic site live after the 30 day trial."

When you cross a line

Both tools will charge you more when you grow. The difference is in what triggers it and how hard it is to undo.

On systeme.io, the sequence is in its help center and terms:

1. You go over a limit: contacts, tags or another item in the plan table. systeme.io sends three warning emails, one a day, and shows an alert on the dashboard.
2. On day four, according to its help article on restrictions, "The system will automatically upgrade the subscription to the next available tier." The terms of service add: "By continuing to use the Service with usage levels that exceed your current plan's limits, you explicitly consent to this automatic upgrade."
3. To go back, you remove the excess and contact support. The help center's downgrade instruction is "please contact support," and support sends a custom order form. The pricing FAQ says something else: "You can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time from your account settings." I'd plan on the help center's version.
4. Money already paid stays paid by default. The terms say "our subscription plans are not refundable." In the August case, refunds came as an offer conditional on removing the tag and later as a goodwill exception.

The free plan is handled differently. Over its limits, systeme.io restricts the account instead of upgrading it: opt-ins and payments stop, campaigns pause, and a newsletter whose scheduled date arrives during the restriction loses that date for good. Its lifetime sales cap works the same way, as my systeme.io and Kit comparison sets out: "Your account will not be automatically upgraded or charged."

GetResponse handles the two kinds of growth separately. A missing feature on Starter is a gate, not a bill; there's no tag button to press by accident. Contacts are billed. If you go over your tier, imports bring up an upgrade prompt; otherwise GetResponse charges a List Extension Fee at the end of the billing cycle, and keeps charging it "at the end of each billing cycle until you remove excess contacts." Its example is a $95 plan whose list grew into the $114 tier: a $19 fee. The fee reverses itself: "If you go below the limit in the next billing cycles, the fee will no longer be charged." That's kinder on paper than an automatic upgrade, but one GetResponse reviewer in February 2026 described how it feels in practice: "our account exceeded 1,000 contacts and an extra fee was automatically applied… For several months, we did not send a single email, yet the extra charges continued…"

On both, the self-service route only goes up. GetResponse's help center says "Downgrades can only be performed by Support Team," and you can't downgrade from a paid account to the free one. Upgrades are immediate, and unused time on the old plan is credited against the new one.

Why "start on the free plan" breaks for email

Start on systeme.io's free plan and upgrade when you need to: that's the standard advice. For a funnel or a course it holds. For email it breaks at the first segment.

The free plan gives you 2,000 contacts, 1 tag, 1 email campaign, 1 automation rule and 1 workflow. Newsletters go to tags, so one tag means one audience: everyone gets every newsletter, and there's room for one freebie sequence. The second freebie needs a second tag and a second campaign, which is Startup. systeme.io's pricing FAQ says that on the free plan "The only meaningful limits are on funnels and courses." Its own comparison table disagrees, and if you run email, the table is the part that applies to you.

There's more fine print on Free. An inactivity rule in the help center also applies to every account, free ones included: a warning after five months without activity, the customer role and dashboard removed at six, and customer data deleted after a further one-month grace period.

So my advice now has a condition attached. Start free if your email is one list and one sequence. If you already know you'll have a second freebie or a product, budget $17 from the first month and count your tags against 10 from the first day.

The bigger pattern I see in these two price lists is that the contact is becoming the cheap part of all-in-one pricing. systeme.io charges $0.97 per 1,000 contacts at 100,000 on Unlimited, less than any GetResponse tier, and $30 a month for an eleventh tag. The meters have moved to the decisions that make a list worth having: who gets which sequence, who bought what. MailerLite went a similar way in June, when it started counting live forms and pages on its cheaper plan (GetResponse vs MailerLite). For any all-in-one, I'd now price the tag structure before the contact count.

What GetResponse includes that systeme.io's table doesn't list

The price story favors systeme.io for most lists, so this is what the money buys on the other side. GetResponse's comparison lists these from Marketer up: contact scoring, event-based and visited-URL automation, an abandoned-cart trigger, purchase automation, web push notifications and chats. Creator adds live, on-demand and paid webinars. systeme.io's plan table lists evergreen webinars only: none on Free and Startup, 10 on Webinar, no cap on Unlimited. I'm going by what each table lists; a feature missing from systeme.io's table may exist elsewhere in the product, and I'd ask before buying for it.

One September reviewer, who gave systeme.io five stars and said they'd give ten if they could, still named the trade-off: "It's a bit more basic than what I was used to, and it's missing some of the finer email tracking features, but there's always a workaround."

Neither lists a send cap on any plan, and both qualify that with a fair usage policy in their terms. As for deliverability, a one-star GetResponse reviewer in March 2026 wrote: "I switched from Systeme.io because I was told the email deliverability would be better, but since I started using GetResponse, it has been nothing but problems." I don't test inbox placement, so I'm not going to tell you which one lands better.

What I can't check from here

I don't measure deliverability. The August exchange is one customer's review and the vendor's reply; I quoted the reply because it describes systeme.io's own rule, not because it settles who was right. On October 8, 2026, systeme.io's Trustpilot profile showed a 4.9 TrustScore from 8,629 reviews, 94% of them five-star, and one January one-star review describes sending blocked after an import. systeme.io's reply called the check a "standard email list verification procedure" and said sending was restored once the contact source was confirmed. I can't tell from outside how often that happens.

Where I land

• One list, one freebie, 2,000 contacts or fewer: systeme.io's free plan, $0. Mind the $10,000 sales cap.
• Up to 10 tags and 5,000 contacts: systeme.io Startup, $17. The GetResponse plan that can tag costs $59 to $95 at that size.
• 11 to 100 tags, or 5,001 to 10,000 contacts: systeme.io Webinar, $47.
• More than 100 tags and 5,000 contacts or fewer: GetResponse Marketer, $59 to $95. This is the one place it's cheaper.
• More than 10,000 contacts: systeme.io Unlimited, $97, against $215 to $599 for Marketer.
• You need scoring, abandoned-cart flows or live webinars: GetResponse, Marketer or Creator.
• You think in lists and will never tag: GetResponse Starter works, but systeme.io Startup is still $2 to $37 a month cheaper up to 5,000 contacts.

I wouldn't put two kinds of reader on systeme.io. One is the heavy tagger with a small list, for the price reason above. The other is anyone who wants email kept apart from their site and courses. On systeme.io those live in one account, so leaving means moving all of them at once, and a four-star reviewer this October, full of praise for the systeme.io staffer who ran it, said a migration into systeme.io that was quoted at four weeks "ended up taking more than eight weeks." Their website and email were down for part of that time. If you're moving in regardless, size the systeme.io plan before the migration team starts.

I also wouldn't start anyone on GetResponse Starter who expects to want tags within the year. The workaround is lists, and lists are counted per contact per list.

Up to 100 tags, systeme.io is the cheaper of the two at every list size I priced. Past 100 tags with 5,000 contacts or fewer, GetResponse Marketer is.

FAQ

Does GetResponse Starter have tags?

No. GetResponse's plan comparison lists contact tagging, tagging in automations and tag-based segments from Marketer up. Starter segments by contact details and contact actions.

What happens if I go over a systeme.io limit?

You get three warning emails, one a day, and a dashboard alert, and on day four the account moves up to the next plan. To stay where you are, remove the excess before day four. In the August case, systeme.io says its warning email told the customer to remove the extra tag. A running tag count helps (for example, 8 of 10 used, 2 kept back for buyer tags), and so does merging or deleting tags you've stopped using. If the upgrade has already happened, remove the excess first, then contact support and ask for the downgrade and any refund in the same message. The terms say plans aren't refundable, so a refund is at support's discretion. Contacts work the same way as tags: Startup stops at 5,000, so check the contact count before an import.

Can I separate audiences on GetResponse Starter without tags?

Yes, with segments. Starter includes segments built on contact details and contact actions. I'd keep everyone on one list and build the freebie audiences as segments, because a second list counts the same person twice.

Is systeme.io's free plan free forever?

The pricing FAQ says "The free plan never expires," and it doesn't ask for a card. The limits are 2,000 contacts and $10,000 in lifetime sales. The help center's inactivity rule still applies: after six months without activity the customer role is removed, and customer data is deleted after a further one-month grace period.

Does systeme.io have webinars like GetResponse?

Its plan table lists evergreen webinars: none on Free or Startup, 10 on Webinar, no cap on Unlimited. GetResponse lists live, on-demand and paid webinars on Creator, from $69 a month at 1,000 contacts.

Which is cheaper on annual billing?

systeme.io's annual price is ten times the monthly one: $170, $470 or $970 a year. GetResponse takes 18% off. The order in the tag table doesn't change; past 100 tags, GetResponse Marketer stays cheaper up to 5,000 contacts, by $35.20 a year at 5,000.