On this page, I’m going to be doing a direct Drip vs Aweber comparison to see which service is right for you. You can go here for a more comprehensive Drip review and here for our Aweber review.
Intro
Drip vs Aweber
First Published on: Sep 6, 2017
Last updated: Sep 6, 2017
Aweber used to be the hands down most popular email service provider used by bloggers. And while it’s still fairly popular today, it has been surpassed feature wise by many other ESPs.
Drip, on the other hand, is a relative newcomer in the email marketing space and is known for its powerful automation capabilities. The company was purchased in 2016 by Leadpages and is now under their umbrella.
Why You Should Pick Drip over Aweber
We are using Drip extensively for our businesses and there are few main reasons why I feel you should pick Drip over Aweber.
Tags & Events versus Lists
The first is that Aweber’s list centric approach is completely outdated.
With Aweber, everyone is on a separate list.
Your blog subscribers are on one list. Your buyers are on another list. And your lead magnet subscribers are on yet another list.
As the amount of email segmentation you want to do grows, this becomes more and more unmanageable. Whenever you want to send out an email, you have to switch to that specific list.
To make matters worse, if the same subscriber is on multiple lists, Aweber makes you pay for any duplicate subscribers.
Contrast this with Drip where you have a single database of contacts. Whenever you need to send a broadcast or follow up email, you just segment them using tags and events.
Tags are one or more text descriptions that you can attach to any contact that helps you describe them. For example, you might have a tag like “paying-customer” or “downloaded-ebook”.
Events are even more powerful. They’re similar to tags except that they record the date and keep track of how many times an event occurred.
With events, you can do things like send emails to contacts who “downloaded your lead magnet within the last 60 days”.
Drip allows you to add tags or events via a number of different triggers including visiting a page on your website or clicking a link in an email.
Aweber only just recently added tags to their platform. However, at this time, they can only be applied manually to individual subscribers or as part of one of Aweber’s campaigns. This is much more limiting compared to Drip.
Automation support
Aweber now has a visual automation builder. Although it works ok, it is very limited. You can only perform 3 actions.
- Send a message
- Wait
- Apply Tag
Everything is sequential with Aweber and there is no conditional support (ie. if/then branches).
Drip, on the other hand, has a very powerful automation editor that enables you to create both simple and complex workflows. It currently supports 18 triggers and 16 actions which give you a ton of freedom and creativity to streamline your email workflows.
Other Drip Advantages
Here’s a quick rundown of some other features of Drip that Aweber doesn’t have or do.
- Start from 12 ready to use Email Blueprints to use as a template for your own email campaigns.
- One click, resend emails to contacts who did not open your original email.
- Ability to add conditional logic inside emails so you can show some content to one set of subscribers and other content to another set.
- Track subscribers behavior on your website and use them as a trigger for your automations.
- Doesn’t charge for duplicate subscribers and people who have unsubscribed.
Why You Should Pick Aweber over Drip
Should you always pick Drip over Aweber? Not necessarily. While it seems like Drip completely beats Aweber over features, there are still cases where Aweber might make more sense for you.
Maybe You Just Don’t Need It…
Creating complex email workflows can be complicated. There’s a lot of different concepts to wrap your head around, and it might be overwhelming for some. Especially if you are not very technical.
And maybe your business does not need the power of automation. Perhaps your only requirements are that you need to setup a sequential autoresponder series and send out the occasional broadcast.
In this situation, you probably would be better off going with Aweber. It has a lower learning curve and it doesn’t cost as much compared with Drip.
Customer Support
The other advantage that Aweber has over Drip is their excellent support. From my own experience and from what I’ve heard from others, Aweber has some of the best support in the business.
They offer telephone support Monday through Friday, for 12 hours a day. In contrast, Drip doesn’t offer phone support at all.
Aweber also has Live Chat support 7 days a week, 8 hours a day. Drip only has Live Chat support for 5 days a week, and they are not active on weekends.
Finally, Aweber also has email support 7 days a week while Drip has limited email support on weekends.
Which Should You Pick?
If you are on a budget: Aweber
If you don’t have the need for marketing automation: Aweber
If you hate the idea of paying for duplicate contacts and unsubscribes: Drip
If you want the ability to send more personalized emails: Drip
If you want to create sophisticated email workflows: Drip
If you want to track your contacts’ behavior on your website: Drip
If you need lead scoring: Drip
Aweber vs Drip Pricing
Drip offers a completely free plan if you have under 100 subscribers. This is an excellent way to test out the service, but any serious Drip user will soon outgrow this plan.
At every other price point, Aweber is much cheaper than Drip, although Drip does offer 2 months free if you pay yearly vs monthly.
Drip has a 21-day free trial while Aweber has a 30-day free trial.
| Subscribers | 500 | 1,000 | 2,500 | 5,000 | 10,000 | 15,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWeber | $19.00 | $29.00 | $29.00 | $49.00 | $69.00 | $149.00 |
| Drip | $49.00 | $49.00 | $49.00 | $99.00 | $149.00 | $254.00 |
Final Thoughts
Automations can really help you segment your emails and provide much more targeted messaging to your subscribers.
So if you want to leverage the power of automation in your email marketing, then Drip is the definite winner when compared with Aweber.
Aweber has been very slow to embrace the market trend towards marketing automation and features wise it feels quite outdated.
However, if you don’t plan on taking advantage of marketing automation, then Aweber becomes a more viable alternative.
It’s easier to learn, reliable, and is much cheaper than comparable the comparable Drip plan.
Try the Drip 21-Day Free Trial
Try the Aweber 30-Day Free Trial