When it comes to email marketing software, Drip and AWeber are two of the most well-known platforms available today.
Both provide comprehensive solutions to help businesses of all sizes build their email lists, craft engaging campaigns, and analyze results over time. But depending on your specific needs and goals, one platform may end up being a better fit.
In this comprehensive Drip vs Aweber comparison article, we’ll examine key aspects to consider when choosing between the two email marketing platforms for your business. Specifically, we will compare criteria such as market position, ease of use, features and functionality, performance, customer support, pricing, and reviews.
Our goal is to help small business owners and entrepreneurs select the right email marketing platform based on their unique requirements and priorities.
1. Understanding the Basics
Drip was founded in 2013 by Rob Walling and Mike Perham as a simpler, more affordable alternative to complex email service providers. Led by visionary entrepreneur Rob Walling, Drip has become a favorite among small businesses and startups. With over 50,000 customers, Drip is not as widely used as some competitors but does have an engaged following (see their 9,200-member Facebook group).
AWeber was founded back in 1998 by Tom Kulzer and Vladas Usovas, making it one of the pioneers in email marketing. Now led by CEO Tom Kulzer, AWeber serves over 120,000 customers across more than 120 countries. Given its long history and focus on small to medium businesses, AWeber enjoys enormous popularity. It has an industry-leading Facebook group with over 16,000 members.
Both companies serve SMBs well but AWeber has greater market share and brand recognition on its side. However, Drip’s vocal fanbase is extremely loyal, drawn to its simple pricing and straightforward tools for small, growing businesses. Drip also appeals to marketers from a technical background while AWeber wins fans wanting lots of templates, integrations, and education.
2. Features and Functionality
Automation
Drip
Drip provides robust email automation for sequencing drip campaigns, workflows, and RSS-to-email. You can easily set up triggers and create custom paths to nurture subscribers based on their behaviors.
It’s one of the best automation tools with a visual workflow builder that makes it simple to set up multi-step campaigns with no coding or advanced tools needed. You can segment your lists, set delays, create conditional logic, and more. Workflows can also integrate with landing pages, custom fields, RSS, and more.
While there are pre-made templates to choose from, you’ll largely be building automation from scratch. Drip gives you the flexibility to customize but that also means workflows take more initial setup.
AWeber
AWeber also has strong automation features through its Autoresponder series and Follow-Up series tools. Choose from pre-made templates or create sequences from scratch using an intuitive drag-and-drop builder.
Define triggers based on subscriber actions, schedule delays between messages, and leverage list segmentation for hyper-targeted campaigns. You can craft multi-step drip campaigns with ease. AWeber also offers RSS-to-email automation.
While not as open-ended for advanced users, AWeber makes it very simple to get started with automation fast. The many pre-built email series and templates inspire. And you can always customize from there.
Winner: Tie
Both AWeber and Drip are powerful email marketing tools with advanced automation features. However, when it comes to the ease of building and managing email automation, AWeber offers simpler pre-made solutions for those wanting to hit the ground running quickly. But Drip gives advanced users more customization potential from the start.
Each email marketing tool is an excellent choice that can provide the needed automation capabilities to drive results. So we have declared this category a tie between these two impressive competitors.
Email Templates
Drip
Drip provides professionally designed email templates that make it fast and simple to create great-looking emails. While their selection is not as vast as some competitors, the 30+ responsive templates span categories like welcome series, product launches, events, holidays, and more.
All templates are mobile-optimized and easy to customize with your images, colors, and branding via the drag-and-drop editor. You can tweak templates or start from scratch if needed. Drip also allows HTML access for coding custom emails.
As Drip primarily serves small businesses, its templates are best suited to startups, e-commerce, coaches, influencers, and similar. Those wanting templates for more complex business use cases may feel limited. But for most basic email campaigns, Drip templates offer ample options.
AWeber
With over 250 professionally designed email templates, AWeber offers one of the largest template libraries in the industry. The modern, mobile-friendly templates are sorted across categories like lead nurturing, promotions, events, holidays, and more.
Easy customization tools allow you to quickly swap images, customize colors and fonts, add/remove sections, and more. For even more advanced edits, you can directly access and edit the HTML source. Hundreds of template options guarantee you’ll find designs suited to any communication goal.
From yoga instructors to enterprise-level teams, AWeber has templates suited to any industry and need. The vast design variety coupled with robust editing tools helps any business create stunning, effective emails quickly.
Winner: AWeber
While Drip does offer quality email templates, AWeber is the best email marketing tool in this category thanks to providing over 250 designer templates spanning far more categories, specialties, and use cases. From beautiful welcome series to holiday promos and product announcements, AWeber simply offers greater variety and flexibility through its templates.
Coupled with strong customization abilities, it strikes an ideal balance of design choice and DIY control for any small business or startup. So when it comes to email templates for saving time while crafting professional communications, AWeber edges out Drip.
Segmentation
Drip
Drip enables you to segment your subscriber lists based on custom fields, email activity, tags, and other data. You can create granular segments to target subscribers with tailored content.
Leverage behavioral filtering to segment by open and click activity. Or create segments based on custom fields like location, purchase history, age, interests, and more. Complex boolean logic lets you combine multiple criteria to hyper-target specific groups.
While Drip covers the basics well, some competing platforms do offer more advanced segmentation options. But for most use cases of small business marketers, Drip should provide the necessary subset tools.
AWeber
AWeber also provides robust list segmentation capabilities, enabling sends targeted to specific subscriber groups. Options to segment via email opens/clicks, demographic data, multiple custom fields, social profiles, purchase history, scored leads, and more.
Easily set up segments with drag-and-drop tools, applying AND/OR logic between filters as needed. Leverage real-time dynamic segments that automatically update based on subscriber criteria. You can also see segment overlap stats to optimize your approach.
For premium-level marketers, AWeber also offers predictive segments powered by machine learning. This detects patterns in your subscribers to automatically predict which segments they should belong to just based on past behaviors
Winner: AWeber
Both Drip and AWeber offer email list segmentation, essential for sending hyper-targeted communications. But AWeber edges out Drip when it comes to flexibility and advanced options. Features like dynamic real-time segments, segment overlap insights, and AI-powered predictive segments give AWeber a competitive advantage. Marketers who leverage advanced segmentation strategies will find more robust targeting options in AWeber over Drip. So for segmentation flexibility and intelligence, AWeber emerges as the winner. But Drip still provides ample basics that will suit many small business needs.
Analytics
Drip
Drip provides robust email analytics to track open rates, clicks, unsubscribes, shares, link clicks, timestamps, locations, and more. Charts and visualizations make it easy to monitor metrics for individual campaigns or your entire account.
Dive deeper via custom reporting with flexible filters. Access API-level event data for building custom dashboards. Drip also integrates smoothly with Google Analytics and other business intelligence tools for wider-scope reporting.
While Drip covers core analytics well, some competing platforms do offer more advanced insights. But for most small business use cases, Drip provides the crucial email and conversion tracking needed.
AWeber
AWeber lets you monitor email analytics including open, click-through, and bounce rates, click heatmaps, links clicked, unsubscribe tracking, and more. Visual reports display campaign metrics beautifully.
Take a wider view by integrating AWeber data into platforms like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics, and others. AWeber also offers an open API for developers and custom reporting needs.
Segment your subscriber lists for more targeted analytics. View real-time analytics as campaigns are sent. And leverage predictive analytics capabilities powered by machine learning algorithms underneath.
Winner: AWeber
It’s a close race, but AWeber emerges as a winner for its wider range of email and conversion analytics. While Drip covers basics very well, AWeber goes a level deeper with predictive analytics, real-time tracking, and slightly more robust integrations with business intelligence platforms.
For those that rely heavily on data-driven optimization and maximizing campaign efficiency over time, AWeber’s analytics offer an edge. But for most basic email metrics, Drip has you covered too. So AWeber takes the trophy but power users with more advanced requirements may appreciate its scaled-up analytics options even more.
Unique Features
Drip
One of Drip’s most unique features is its close integration with e-commerce platforms. Specifically, it offers deep connectivity with popular platforms like WooCommerce. This allows for highly customized automation based on purchase activity.
Drip also provides Landing Page Builder – eliminating the need for a third-party solution. Create beautiful landing pages and integrate their performance directly into your Drip workflow and analytics.
Competitors may offer more features overall, but Drip focuses on doing a few things extremely well. It keeps the interface intuitive rather than packed with tons of functionality that novice users won’t leverage. For many small e-commerce brands, Drip provides the right combo of email marketing, automation, and landing pages.
AWeber
Unique to AWeber is its breadth and depth of features for sophisticated marketers. From hundreds of template options to advanced analytics and segmentation, AWeber is equipped to power complex marketing approaches.
Another exclusive capability is Multi-Account Control. This allows larger teams and agencies to access and manage all client accounts from a centralized dashboard with tiered permissions. Competitors may facilitate agency collaborations via APIs but AWeber’s first-party tools are incredibly robust.
For those who want to scale their marketing efforts over time without changing platforms, AWeber delivers an unmatched feature set capable of handling sophisticated needs. You’ll stay within one solution rather than piecing together multiple vendors.
Winner: Tie
Drip and AWeber both offer unique advantages. Drip provides a narrow but deep solution specialized for streamlined e-commerce automation. AWeber delivers an unparalleled range of functionality for expanded requirements over time. Both platforms have excellent merits with standout capabilities tailored to their target customers. Declaring a single winner is difficult as the “best” choice depends largely on the use case. For these reasons, we declare this category a tie.
3. Ease of Use
Drip
Drip has a clean and intuitive user interface that makes it easy for beginners to get started. The platform uses simple terminology that is easy for those without a technical background to understand. New users are guided through setting up their first campaign in a step-by-step process with tips and definitions along the way.
The Drip dashboard allows you to access key information and actions with just a click or two. Core functions like adding subscribers, creating broadcasts, and tracking revenue are simple to locate. The left sidebar menu stays consistent throughout so you always know where to access important tools regardless of what page you’re on.
Complex actions in Drip utilize wizards that walk you through each step. These step-by-step wizards simplify complicated tasks so you don’t get lost along the way. From setting up an automation workflow to installing code on your website for tracking, Drip makes easy-to-follow blueprints so anyone can pull them off.
With its intuitive interface and abundance of visual guides, knowledge bases, and tooltips, Drip’s learning curve is gentler than most email marketing platforms. The time investment to master its wide range of capabilities is minimal compared to more complex or cluttered solutions.
AWeber
AWeber’s interface feels a bit dated but streamlined menus still allow you to access key features easily. The basic layout and workflows for core functions like creating broadcasts have remained largely unchanged over the years, making them very familiar to its long-term users.
For brand-new AWeber users, there can be a bit of a learning curve. Some terminology and options may feel outdated or unintuitive, so some ramp-up time is required. AWeber tries to assist new users with various onboarding checklists and getting started guides when you initially set up an account. But they lack the more modern step-by-step wizards and tooltips that other platforms use today.
While AWeber doesn’t look as polished, once you get comfortable with where everything lives, workflows do become second nature. Creating emails, building lists, managing subscribers, and viewing reports work as you’d expect without too many surprises. The platform just lacks some of the visual clarities and assistants that make today’s solutions feel simpler and faster for newcomers.
Winner: Drip
Drip wins for its smooth, guided user experience tailored to any skill level. Their visually intuitive interface and abundance of built-in educational tools flatten the platform’s learning curve substantially compared to AWeber’s dated interface. For the modern user, Drip offers superior usability.
4. Email Deliverability
Drip
Drip utilizes a proprietary deliverability system called Drip Delivers to optimize email delivery and inbox placement. Their advanced deliverability features allow customers to achieve inbox rates consistently above 90%.
Spam filters pose one of the biggest threats to email marketing deliverability. Drip Delivers profiles each subscriber and updates deliverability scores in real-time based on factors like location, device, inbox provider, and more. This intelligence allows Drip to route emails dynamically to avoid triggers like leaks or blacklists.
Additionally, Drip checks the content of every send. Their algorithms analyze factors like language, links, and imagery and give guidance if adjustments may improve deliverability. Subscribers who become less engaged over time are sent through re-engagement workflows to keep them active.
Drip also handles ISP monitoring and reputation management automatically. If IPs encounter issues with major ISPs, traffic is dynamically re-routed through new IPs to protect sender score and inbox placement.
AWeber
AWeber utilizes proprietary deliverability technology powered by over a decade’s worth of aggregated data on subscribers and their behaviors. Their systems profile contacts and route emails accordingly to optimize deliverability.
AWeber also dynamically categorizes new subscribers based on risk-level to inbox placement. Higher-risk contacts go through more rigorous re-engagement flows while trusted subscribers get fast-tracked for regular broadcasts.
Their algorithms do content checks as well for factors that influence deliverability like link frequency, image-to-text ratio, and sentiment. Any sender score fluctuations cause alerts for the internal deliverability team to investigate and resolve issues manually with ISPs.
While deliverability technology and protocols are in place, AWeber lacks some of the robust automated, self-healing capabilities you see in more modern solutions. Reliance on manual checks slows reaction time compared to platforms that handle threats in real time.
Winner: Drip
Drip wins for its fully automated, self-learning deliverability systems. Their real-time subscriber and content analysis paired with instant, protocol-based reactions to threats outperforms AWeber’s dated deliverability capabilities. For optimal email deliverability, Drip is the superior choice.
5. Customer Support and Community
Drip
Drip provides email and chat support with real people without the headache of getting lost in a convoluted ticket system. Average first response times are under 30 minutes across all channels.
For quick assistance, users can access an extensive searchable knowledge base with articles, tutorials, and how-to guides on everything from basic platform setup to complex use cases like API implementations.
Drip’s community isn’t overly expansive, but engaged users do interact in places like the Drip Facebook Group, subreddit, and TrustRadius reviews. These channels have active discussions and advice from customers and Drip employees alike.
Overall, Drip’s stellar email and chat support compensate for the smaller community resources. Their fast, exceptionally knowledgeable support staff’s guidance adds immense value for customers of all sizes and technical capabilities.
AWeber
AWeber offers email support, web tickets, and phone support. But response times from the support team have slowed as the company has aged. Simpler issues see resolutions within 24 hours, while complex account or deliverability issues can take 3-5 days via tickets.
Self-service help resources include knowledge base articles, videos, webinars, and AWeber University e-learning courses. While extensive, content is blatantly sales-focused and lacks the objective how-to users truly need when issues arise.
As one of the early pioneers in email marketing, AWeber enjoys an expansive community across sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. The sheer number of engaged users in these networks makes them valuable for advice and best practice sharing absent in official documentation. Several devoted agencies also provide specialized consulting services to AWeber users.
Winner: Tie
For speed and quality of support itself, Drip is the clear winner. However, AWeber’s support is vastly superior with robust community resources to fill gaps that arise from dealing with dated software and elongated support processes. Both tools offer unique support benefits that cater to different user preferences and expectations.
6. Integrations
Drip
Drip integrates with over 750+ common small business platforms across categories like email, payments, webinars, marketing automation, and more.
Native support includes seamless connections for tools like Zapier, Shopify, Stripe, Zendesk, and Intercom. Drip utilizes bi-directional syncing that allows you to send subscriber data to these platforms and vice versa.
For platforms lacking turnkey integration, Drip offers customizable API and webhook connections. You can build custom integrations pulling data from virtually any platform. Pre-built recipes exist on Zapier and Workato to accelerate connecting hundreds of additional tools if desired.
Between native integrations and APIs, Drip unlocks connectivity potential unmatched in the email marketing automation space. It truly integrates deeply with nearly any tool a modern small business would leverage.
AWeber
AWeber has over 750 native integrations enabling connections to popular small business platforms. Categories span email, e-commerce, webinars, marketing, sales, analytics and more.
In terms of native support, AWeber offers comparability by connecting to tools like MailChimp, ClickFunnels, PayPal, Facebook, and Network Solutions. Their integration capabilities primarily center around the most universally used solutions across their decades-old customer base.
For less common connections, AWeber does provide API and webhook development options. But you either need an engineer or a third-party consultant to leverage custom capabilities. DIY integration on Zapier also exists for broader connectivity beyond what AWeber natively supports.
Winner: Drip
Drip wins the battle on integrations with both higher volume native support and more accessible custom connection capabilities usable by non-technical users. Their blend of pre-built integrations spanning traditional and cutting-edge tools paired with easy self-serve API access leaves nothing to be desired.
7. Pricing
Drip
Drip has a simple pricing structure based on the number of contacts in your list. The lowest plan costs $39/month for up to 2,500 people. You can sign up for a free trial on the platform to test out the software before committing to a paid plan.
All plans include unlimited emails, and access to core features like automation, analytics, and integrations. Higher tiers offer more contacts, additional CRM and e-commerce integrations, and priority support.
Overall, Drip is competitively priced and its free tier provides excellent capabilities for early-stage businesses.
AWeber
AWeber pricing is based on the number of subscribers on your list. There’s a free plan that lets you get started sending emails to up to 500 subscribers.
Paid plans start at $12.50 per month for the Lite plan which comes with unlimited subscribers. The cost per subscriber goes down as the list size increases. The Plus plan costs $20/month and includes unlimited email lists and landing pages.
Advanced features like split testing, segmented broadcasts, and API access are included in all plans. The Unlimited plan costs $899/month and is ideal for lists over 100,000 subscribers.
Overall, Aweber’s pricing is competitive for smaller lists but becomes more expensive at higher subscriber tiers.
Winner: Drip
Drip takes the win with pricing more fairly aligned with true business needs as they scale. Their tiers intelligently unlock more premium capabilities the larger you grow vs just increasing contacts and emails. Additionally, Drip offers more reasonable plans for early-stage businesses over AWeber’s limited free plan model with vital parts disabled.
8. Reviews and Reputation
Drip
Drip enjoys positive reviews across sites like G2Crowd (4.7/5 rating) and Capterra (4.5/5). Users praise the platform’s simplicity, automation capabilities, and top-notch support.
Positive callouts focus heavily on Drip’s clean, easy-to-use interface requiring a minimal learning curve. Their guided onboarding and intuitive workflow builders also draw attention as great for non-technical users.
Less favorable critiques of Drip cite occasional slow loading times on large data sets. Some also feel the platform lacks some advanced segmentation and reporting capabilities compared to tools designed for enterprise brands.
But for Drip’s core small business audience, reviewers confirm it provides exactly the right blend of simplicity and sophistication at reasonable prices.
AWeber
AWeber earns mixed sentiment across the web with a 3.9/5 on G2 Crowd and 4.2/5 on Capterra. Reviewers point to its dated interface and support delays as areas needing improvement. But many still consider it a “tried and true” solution.
The most common positive callouts focus on AWeber’s reliability and deliverability. The platform has delivered billions of emails over decades earning trust in its core email marketing foundations. Its extensive integration ecosystem also appeals to long-time customers ingrained in the AWeber community.
Less favorable feedback centers primarily around an outdated user interface paired with slowing support. Reviewers encourage more modernization and customer service enhancements for improved usability.
Winner: Drip
Backed by stellar ratings and glowing reviews highlighting intuitive design, Drip emerges as the clear reputation winner. While AWeber earns loyalty from legacy users, poor interface and support negativity drag down sentiment and new customer conversion. For best-in-class reputational standards, Drip stands out as the superior choice.
9. FAQ’s
Drip FAQs
- Does Drip offer free trials or a free plan?
Drip offers a free plan called Drip Free that allows 100 subscribers with limits on some features. They do not have traditional time-based trials that provide full platform access. - Can Drip help me with CAN-SPAM compliance?
Yes, Drip has built-in opt-in capabilities and subscription management tools to help customers maintain compliance with CAN-SPAM regulations around permission-based emailing. - Is there a limit to how many contacts I can have on Drip?
On Drip’s highest-paid plan, you can have up to 25,000 contacts. Volume limits increase with each pricing tier.
AWeber FAQs
- Does AWeber have a free trial?
Yes, AWeber offers a 30-day free trial on all paid plans to test the platform. They also have a free plan for up to 500 subscribers indefinitely. - How quickly does AWeber deliver emails?
AWeber aims to deliver all emails in under 5 minutes of pressing send. Over 90% reach inboxes within 1 minute for fast, reliable delivery. - Can I remove the AWeber branding from my emails?
You can remove the small footer AWeber branding by upgrading to a paid account. Their free plan requires keeping AWeber attribution.
Final Thoughts
Choose Drip if…
You want an intuitive, visually guided platform enabling automation through workflows and campaigns tailored to small business needs. Drip’s simplified interfaces help non-technical users easily create powerful marketing without coding skills. Their pricing also scales reasonably with advanced features unlocking as you grow rather than arbitrary constraints to push bigger plans.
However, if you’re having second thoughts about this email marketing platform, check out my Drip alternatives article to find other great options.
Choose AWeber if…
You appreciate tried and true email marketing fundamentals backed by decades of deliverability success. While AWeber lacks the modern sheen of newer competitors, it retains loyal customers through reliable infrastructure and community resources earning trust over a significant time in the market. Avoid if you need cutting edge. But it gets the basics right.
Ultimately the right email marketing platform for your unique business needs may differ from generalized assessments. Take time to scrutinize options aligned to your budget, feature must-haves, integrations, and scalability requirements. And never hesitate to ask questions to clarify capabilities that best suit your goals. Choosing the right technology partner goes a long way in enabling marketing success.