This article has been written and researched by our expert tooltesters through a precise methodology. LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR METHODOLOGY 

Charlotte Evans

Author

Roberta Phillips

Researcher

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Pennsylvania-based AWeber have been in the email marketing business for over 20 years. One of their biggest claims is that they invented the autoresponder, which is no small thing.

However, as we’ve seen with other email marketing tools that have been around for a while (such as Constant Contact and Mailchimp), it can be harder for them to evolve. Which might lead you to wonder: is this the case with AWeber?

AWeber’s homepage promotes some pretty modern features, including landing pages, automations that integrate with channels such as Etsy and Youtube, and the ability to sell products and subscriptions.

They also offer a smart email designer that gathers logos, images, brand colors, and text from websites and social media channels to create “ready-to-send” email templates. I’ll dive more into the email templates and builder's side of things later.

So, a handful of interesting features in there – but let’s have a closer look and see if being the first also means being the best choice for your email marketing strategy in 2024. This review of AWeber is based on a methodical approach and uses our practical experience and knowledge of dozens of other email marketing automation tools.

AWeber Review Summary

AWeber offers some interesting features for content creators, ecommerce owners, and other digital businesses. These include landing pages, social media integrations, an AI content generator, and the ability to sell directly through the platform. It also connects with 750+ third-party applications.

The biggest drawback, however, is the premium it charges. Although there’s a free plan, this is limited to 500 subscribers, a single email list, and no custom segments. The lowest-tier Lite plan starts at $19.99 per month, and only allows for 1 custom segment, 3 landing pages, and doesn’t include sales tracking or advanced landing page features.

In my view, email marketing platforms like ConvertKit or Mailerlite that are targeted at similar audiences offer much better value for money.

• AWeber Review

Try AWeber for free

AWeber Screenshots

AWeber Pricing

$ 0

500 Subscribers

3,000 Emails

Comes with limitations

$ 19.99

500 Subscribers

unlimited emails

Annual discounts available

$ 29.99

2,500 Subscribers

unlimited emails

Annual discounts available

$ 49.99

5,000 Subscribers

unlimited emails

Annual discounts available

$ 69.99

10,000 Subscribers

unlimited emails

Annual discounts available

SHOW MORE

For more information about AWeber’s prices and plans check out our guide.

> Compare prices with our email marketing cost calculator

Pros and Cons

•  Pros
•  Cons

Pros

• List management toolsKeeping lists organized is simple with AWeber, as you create automation rules to manage your subscribers. Be aware, though, that you have a separate dashboard for each list, and this can be confusing.
• Sales trackingNot always an option, even with advanced marketing automation, yet AWeber allows this via their email web analytics feature (you just need to insert some JavaScript code into your website). With the PayPal integration, you can see all your sales in your AWeber account and perform marketing actions on these customers.
• SupportApart from a fast and friendly customer support, they also have great education tools for first-time users including articles, videos, and podcasts.
• Landing page templatesAWeber offers loads of really nicely designed landing page templates. There are also tons of categories, so you’re bound to find something you like, whatever the industry.

Is AWeber the right newsletter service for you?

•  Recommended if:
•  Not recommended if:

• You need phone supportNot a lot of the email newsletter services provide this, but as a company that’s been around for two decades, it’s not surprising that AWeber would invest a lot into customer service. Live chat support and email support is also available.
• You want to sellThanks to AWeber’s integration with PayPal, you can sell your services and products via emails and on your sales page. You can also automatically add those who buy from you to a list and send them ultra-targeted emails. You’ll be able to track all PayPal sales in AWeber.

Rating Details

EASE OF USE

The interface design is not the most inspiring, but at least it’s easy to find everything. There’s also a Getting Started checklist which helps you through the first key steps. One thing to note: their terminology could be confusing for experienced users, as marketing automations are called ‘Campaigns’ and regular emails are called ‘Broadcasts’.

EDITOR i

The editor is easy to use and offers a good range of content blocks. Content creation is sped up by the fact you can drag images, buttons, and other elements to where you’d like.

They also now offer AMP for Email, meaning you can add an image carousel, polls, dynamic content, and more. And the built-in AI assistant helps you come up with content ideas and copy with just a simple prompt.

One great feature is that when you paste a link in your emails and hit Enter, it will automatically expand into a preview card, so featuring your content couldn’t be easier!

PERSONALIZATION i

Similar to other tools, If/Then/Else logic is available in a fairly standard format. You can also add personalization via custom fields.

EMAIL TYPES i

Classic newsletters, autoresponders, automations, RSS and A/B testing. You can also create paid newsletters by connecting your Stripe account.

CHOICE AND FLEXIBILITY OF TEMPLATE DESIGNS i

There’s quite a good selection of responsive templates available (some offer multiple color schemes to choose from). A new partnership with design tool Canva brings added flexibility to email design, as well as the thousands of stock photos available to you through their recent integration with Unsplash. And there’s also the Smart Designer, which creates automatically-branded templates based on your website.

EMAIL MARKETING AUTOMATION i

There are a few drawbacks when it comes to automation. First, if you’re on the Free or Lite plan, you’re very limited in the number of automations you can set up. Secondly, the email automations are very basic – you can only trigger campaigns based on a tag or list signup, and follow-on actions are limited to sending a message, applying/removing a tag, or removing the subscriber from a campaign.

While you can set up more advanced email automation campaigns by importing them from AWeber’s marketplace, it’s a shame these aren’t integrated directly into the platform like they are with other email marketing tools.

LIST MANAGEMENT i

AWeber allows you to manage new subscribers via their automation features. You can easily set up a rule, for example, that unsubscribes someone from a particular list after leaving another, or adds a tag based on list signup, email opens or link clicks.

The main disadvantage is the way it restricts segment creation to higher-level plans. For example, the Lite plan only allows you to create a maximum of 3 segments, which won’t get you very far at all.

REGISTRATION FORMS/ OPT-IN & OPT-OUT- PROCESS i

You’re given style options for pop-up, in-line and lightbox, and it offers a number of basic form template designs. You can add tags to contacts that sign up, and set up integrations that allow you to sign up contacts from WordPress, Facebook, Wix, Paypal, etc. You can also set up forms directly on any landing pages you build in their editor.

DELIVERABILITY i

AWeber’s deliverability hasn’t always had the best track record in our deliverability tests, but we’ve seen some improvements in more recent rounds.

REPORTS AND ANALYSIS

For emails, you can get names of openers and clickers, web visits, and also conversion and ecommerce tracking info. You also get some pretty impressive overall reports (account and list-based), including clicks over time, subscriber growth, sales over time and more. However, reports aren’t available on the free plan, and there isn’t a direct Google Analytics integration available.

LANGUAGES i

The site is only available in English.

SPAM- AND DESIGN-TESTING i

AWeber used to show you the spam score of your messages, but they no longer offer this feature. Find out how to avoid spam filters here.

BOUNCE MANAGEMENT i

Soft bounces are counted as hard bounces after three times, then they are unsubscribed.

BLOCKLIST i

This is available.

STORAGE AVAILABLE FOR DATA AND IMAGES

Unlimited

AUTHENTICATION i

SPF and DKIM are supported.

OWN DOMAIN i

It’s possible to use your own tracking domain via AWeber Web Analytics.

DIFFERENT LEVELS OF ACCOUNT ACCESS i

There are three roles that you can assign to your users, with varying levels of account access.

INTEGRATIONS

There are quite a few integrations available, and many big names are there such as Zapier, PayPal, WordPress, Shopify, Salesforce and more.

LANDING PAGE BUILDER i

The templates provided are plentiful and really modern-looking. It’s also easy to customize them as you wish. SEO options are available. You can accept payments in 100+ currencies, and AWeber’s ecommerce element will let you pull in products you have already created in Stripe. A recent addition is a “Link in Bio” page for Instagram and TikTok users. This LinkTree-style feature is available on all AWeber accounts.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

Support is fast and friendly, via all mediums. Their knowledge base is good, though I’d recommend email and online chat over the knowledge base.

OVERALL RATING

3.5

All in all, AWeber has the essentials, it just doesn’t provide enough advanced features or a strong enough user experience for the asking price. Their deliverability is also something to keep an eye on. You can get more for your money with other email tools. That said, we do like their landing page templates and sales tracking options.

A More Detailed Look Into AWeber's Main Features

As you can see from this AWeber review, it offers some good features, but it is on the pricey side. Let’s take a closer look at the pros and cons of its key features to see if it’s worth the price tag:

Drag and Drop Email Builder

Aweber’s drag-and-drop email builder offers an extensive selection of HTML email templates, and by extensive we mean a whopping 700 fully customizable email templates. What’s more, they are all responsive, automatically resizing their email design based on your device.

Building an email campaign on Aweber is particularly easy thanks to their user-friendly platform and the design options and integrations available. Compared to the email marketing competition, this is particularly appealing, but as we mentioned, it comes at a considerable cost.

Within the drag-and-drop builder, you can easily change color schemes and design layouts, add your logo, and even add free stock photos to your email templates thanks to their handy integration with Unsplash.

Their integration with Canva is also extremely useful, allowing you to stay within one platform when both designing your email marketing banners and building your campaigns. If you aren’t familiar with Canva, it’s really easy to create highly professional-looking marketing material thanks to its broad content library.

For the more advanced user, Aweber recently added a new tool to their email editor to help speed up your writing process. Markdown allows you to format your email text through symbols, scaling writing time right down. For example, you can type ** before your copy to make it bold.

Smart Designer Email Builder

The Smart Designer Email tool seems like an extremely powerful tool from the outside. Let’s see how it works in 4 easy steps:

1. First of all, you select the Smart Designer once you click on “create message”
2. Next, you’ll be asked to submit your website and will be asked for your email editing skill level. You can select Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced.
3. From here, you are asked to define your business goal- you can choose from the following: Sell a Product Online, Build an Audience, Sell a Service, and Others.
4. Then you’ll be presented with a selection of templates to choose from, in our case, there were 7 templates. Each template featured our logo, the general color scheme, and some imagery from our website. The quality of these templates and their relevance to your brand probably depends on how well-structured your website is, but I was quite happy with the result.

The email designs generated for us by AWeber’s Smart Designer

And if the drag and drop email builder, smart designer, and plain text email marketing tools aren’t enough, there’s also the option of coding your own template.

Note: Once your campaign is ready to send, one thing that could be slightly confusing is the scheduling part, as the option for this is not very obvious. Sending your campaign out immediately, on the other hand, is much more straightforward, so I can see some people going for this option by mistake.

Landing page builder

Aweber’s landing page builder gives you a solid starting point with over 160 templates catering to different industries. While some designs might seem a bit outdated, you can still find some real winners that suit your style.

Customizing your pages is made easy with the drag-and-drop editor, although it could be a bit more flexible for those wanting more advanced options. It’s also a breeze to tweak form fields, though it would be nicer if you could do it without jumping between sections.

One standout feature is the ability to tag subscribers right from your forms, making it simple to set up automated campaigns. You can also spruce up your pages with multimedia content like images, videos, and product blocks. There’s also a handy ‘Smart Content’ feature that pulls in content from URLs, allowing you to display Facebook posts, Google Map locations, Shopify product listings, and more.

For those looking to keep things professional, you can connect your own domain to your landing pages. And if you’re a WordPress user, Aweber’s also lets you use your existing URL thanks to a seamless integration.

Overall, Aweber offers a more comprehensive landing page solution compared to most email marketing platforms. While there’s room for improvement, it’s definitely a handy tool for marketers looking to enhance their email campaigns.

Aweber Deliverability

Aweber has not had a great track record in our deliverability tests. Especially, in our most recent test they saw quite a decrease, they were one of the providers who saw the highest percentage of emails go missing.

Conclusion

It’s fair to say, AWeber has all the basics you need for a small business and does quite a good job at educating first-time users with its range of customer support articles, videos, and podcasts. The issue is that, apart from customer service and landing page solution, there isn’t a particular area where Aweber really excel in when it comes to its features.

With all things considered, this wouldn’t be a problem if it was priced for budget-conscious beginners, yet the costs are on par with other email tools like GetResponse, which offer much more for the same price. One positive thing about Aweber is that, no matter how many subscribers you have, you always have full access to their features (unless you’re on their free plan). But these features still might not be enough for the asking price.

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FAQ

What is AWeber used for?

Is AWeber a CRM?

Is AWeber better than Mailchimp?

Is AWeber legit?

AWeber deliverability – is it any good?

AWeber Alternatives

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ActiveCampaign comes with a very flexible and powerful automation approach and modern-looking and flexible registration forms – something AWeber should really work on. Additionally, ActiveCampaign’s deliverability is outstanding. If you need further information, check out our AWeber and ActiveCampaign comparison.

MailerLite is a cheap solution with excellent designs and a solid email marketing system. It also comes with a couple of perks (like a landing page editor) and we find their interface very easy to use.

GetResponse is an interesting alternative. It has many advanced features (e.g. sales funnel), and comes with excellent automations and advanced design and testing tools.