AWeber vs. Bigin by Zoho CRM vs. Ontraport

AWeber is an excellent email marketing solution for small to mid-sized businesses, especially those that are just starting with email marketing campaigns. AWeber is also good for bloggers. But it's not perfect for an affiliate marketer who wants to make a landing page on AWeber. Businesses that require advanced segmentation options may need to consider other email marketing platforms.

- Multiple pipelines let me organize processes like sales, marketing, customer support, and assets clearly. - The forms builder allows me to gather leads, sign-ups, and customer requests from my website directly into the Bigin by Zoho CRM. - Integrations with Zapier and Make connect website orders and data from other sources smoothly. - Email templates make it easy to send professional, branded communications. - Automations handle repetitive tasks like managing customers, orders, and team tasks, saving me time.

Here are some cases where Ontraport is well suited : - When writing emails, you can easily access to preview, manage the changes and go back to what you did before - When using automations, if there's an error, you can go back to a previous version of it. There are also some super tools that allows to see where a clients is on an automation without having to go through the all automation. It is less appropriate when you are several colleague that are addressing an issue on an email/automation as it doesn't allows you to be multiple person on the item.

Incentivized

• List building: AWeber makes it easy to grow opt-in subscribers through customizable signup forms as well an integration with tools like Sumo and Hustle Pro.
• List segmentation: with a little more information about each subscriber, it's easy to create custom segmented lists based on different criteria.
• Deliverability: AWeber enforces opt-in rules to keep spammers out of its system and improve deliverability rates for reputable users. We rarely have issues with our messages from AWeber being routed to spam folders.
• Double opt-in: AWeber makes it easy to set up double opt-in to make extra certain you have a high-quality mailing list.

Incentivized

• Manage big databases. We have a large database of contacts and partners (more than 5,000 contacts), which are updated day by day, as a result of our participation in conferences, webinars, etc. For this reason, we needed a platform that would allow us to always have our database up to date, and accessible and editable by any member of the company.
• Pipelines. Pipelines are very necessary in our daily lives, since we present many service proposals to different clients, and until now we control the status very manually. With Bigin by Zoho CRM, we can have all this information centralized in a single place, and know at all times the status of the service proposals we present (sent, pending decision, lost, won...).
• Product definition. The product definition block has allowed us to further structure our typologies of products and services. At least, it has allowed us to reflect on them and what is the best way to package the service offered.
• Control panel. The control panel has been very useful for us to be able to quickly see the main indicators (offers presented, next actions to be taken, etc.).

• Dashboards for our daily stats.
• The email follows up and broadcasts are simple and easy.
• Sales and marketing can now see the impact they have working together. Nobody can point finger anymore.
• They have the best customer support. I can't tell you how many times they have walked me through the problems that I created.
• Amazing email inboxing.

Incentivized

• Aweber would be even better if it had the ability to host landing pages. I have to use a tool like landingpages.net to do this if I don't want to create the landing pages as part of my client's website. If I manage their site, it isn't a problem, but it keeps me from using Aweber for clients who manage their own sites or dont' have one.
• Aweber would greatly benefit from a more robust reseller program. Firms like mine have multiple clients and, with each client needing an individual Aweber account, it would be nice to have access to margin so that we could resell the services.
• Along the lines of a reseller program, it would be great of Aweber allowed resellers to white label the interface and administrate multiple accounts from one agency account.

Incentivized

• The interface is clean, but I can see how, as we get into more complex workflows, it may be limited, whereas a heavier CRM may be necessary at that point.
• Mobile app works pretty well, it isn't quite as smooth as the web app.
• Reporting could be a little more robust, but it does what we need.

• Wish they had more options for their forms. Would really like to use multi-step forms.
• A lot of times their forms load slowly on the website. Would like to see them speed up their services.
• Their broadcasting options are legacy. There are better options out there for sending broadcast messages.

Incentivized

AWeber is easy and intuitive for me use. I really like the simplicity and the structure of the work flow as it saves me time. AWeber also integrates with all the other programs, systems and gateways that I use on a daily basis (WordPress, Paypal, LeadPages, Facebook and more) and if I have any questions or have trouble the AWeber customer service technicians are very helpful.

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Incentivized

My client was already using Ontraport and had a decent investment in the tool. As soon as we turn around the revenue situation with my client's products, we will be ditching OAP immediately, despite the significant re-implementation cost we are going to face moving to a new system. I am part of a high-end, professional marketing group, and the overwhelming sentiment with these other professionals is that one should run away from this as fast as humanly possible. I thought their words were just ungrounded opinion, and I deeply regret that I did not heed them more closely before sinking still more time and effort into OAP.

See previous answers ... the design / customization interface could be more intuitive and elegant .. for example, for me it has been difficult to easily figure out how to place pictures / images to the right, left or center of text.

Incentivized

The overall usability has been great! From a team that was outright rejecting CRMs to giving Bigin a chance to adopting it - it has been amazing. It is easy to use - easy to train and the support has been great!

The software is just easy to use. The UI is fairly intuitive. The help system is pretty good. I find it is pretty quick to get my work completed and if I don't document my things well, I can always figure out how I did something when I need to make changes. When I have a problem the tech support is easy to deal with and when things need to get escalated they are resolved quickly.

Most of the time OP runs fine. But I've had to submit more support tickets this year do to messages, seq.'s or rules not running correctly. Also experienced slow response times moving in and around OP.

I have always received prompt phone or live chat support that has resolved my issues on the first call in a competent, knowledgeable and friendly manner. By contrast MailChimp offers no live chat or phone support; they only offer email support and the response time for MailChimp is slow by comparison to AWeber.

Incentivized

The support is all international and it takes a while to get support as you have to go through chats and set up times, not as easy to just call and get the support you need. They are very nice when you do finally connect with someone and they are knowledgeable, just challenging being international sometimes.

Incentivized

The techs are reasonably savvy, highly courteous and want to do right by their customers. Unfortunately, the product they are supporting is so deeply flawed that there's only so much they can do when your legitimate business requirements are simply not supported.

I went to their Ontrapalooza event, and it opened my mind as to how the software can be used.

If you know your business, ONTRAPORT is easy

We often use Canva to design our content and then export it as an image to upload into Aweber, as Aweber designs and limitations are too much of a hindrance to our needs. Canva is a brilliant tool for marketing and saves you a lot of time being able to adapt or change an existing template you create.

Simplicity Without Sacrificing Core Features
Unlike full-scale CRMs that often feel overwhelming, Bigin by Zoho CRM provides a focused set of features that are perfect for managing deals, contacts, and activities. It’s not bloated, and that was exactly what we needed for a lean, fast-moving team.

Task management was the main thing that separated ONTRAPORT for me. Keeping things accountable. As well, I felt the campaign builder was slicker, and that the contact management was more robust. Custom fields are very customizable.

With the new lower priced options, it's now easier for newer businesses to start with a more basic version and upgrade as they need more features.

• Aweber delivers my email fast and reliably, never had a problem tech support could not handle (by the way, their support is great!)
• Since I have been with Aweber for so many years, I have an unlimited plan for a very affordable rate
• Aweber may not be a sexy as some of the new kids on the block, but it is a solid offering you should consider when choosing an autoresponder

Incentivized

• Zero deals closed yet – earliest expected close is +6 weeks away.
• No marketing-source conversion data – will need 2-3 months of traffic to quote real CAC or ROMI
• No paid automation – manual follow-ups still dominate, so time-saving metrics are anecdotal, not measured.

Incentivized

• We are providing better customer service as a direct result of Ontraport. We can track where all of our customers are, what pages/sites/modules they are visiting with ease and tailor our communication accordingly.
• Our marketing funnel has become vastly improved, meaning that our ROI for marketing has gone up. Sales this April are double what they were last year.
• Our team works better together because we all have a better idea of what the other needs and when. The tasks that we can assign in Ontraport mean nothing gets missed, creating a better customer and employee experience.