AWeber Pricing [2024] – Helpful Tips Before You Sign Up

From email marketing to landing pages, AWeber offers a full set of digital marketing tools. But although the choice of plans seems pretty simple – there are only two AWeber plans, after all – it’s not as easy to figure out whether either plan delivers the value your business deserves.

Whether you’re starting to build your list or you already have tons of subscribers, you need an email marketing service with the right balance of features and pricing.

AWeber’s Free plan comes with a wide array of basic tools, but you’re likely to outgrow them pretty quickly as you build your list. The paid Pro plan is better suited for advanced marketers, but costs can add up more quickly than you might expect.

To help you pick the right option for your needs, I tested out AWeber and reviewed the available pricing and plans.

AWeber Features & Pricing Overview

Good Value, but Only If You Need an All-in-One Solution

If you don’t want the hassle of navigating a long list of options, you’ll appreciate this platform’s deliberately limited choices. AWeber has just two plans – Free and Pro – which is half of what many other email marketing services offer. Both plans go beyond simply email marketing, also providing landing pages, e-commerce, and web push notifications.

While some email marketing services charge based on sending capacity, AWeber has a subscriber-based pricing model. AWeber subscriber pricing counts contacts every time they sign up to one of your lists. That means you may have to pay for some contacts multiple times – especially if you have a lot of targeted lists.

On the plus side, AWeber offers more payment plans than most other services. You can pay the monthly rate, which is full price. Otherwise, you can choose from quarterly or annual plans, both of which save you about $4 each month. I appreciated being able to get a discount without needing to commit to a full year of the plan.

If you represent a nonprofit organization, you can also get three months for free, followed by a 25% discount each month.

Free Plan

The Free plan’s full list of features makes it a big draw for budget-minded marketers and small business owners who are new to email.

On this plan, you can access hundreds of mobile-responsive email templates, making it easy to begin sending emails right away. But don’t get too excited. I found that many of the available templates looked incredibly out of date.

The drag-and-drop editor wasn’t particularly intuitive, either, making it tough to design a great-looking email.

That said, AWeber’s Free plan does have some nice perks. If you want to save money on stock images, you’ll like the platform’s massive image gallery. AWeber also lets you add dynamic content – like subscriber names – to emails, even with the Free plan.

If you want a marketing platform that you can also use to create landing pages and sell products, you’ll appreciate AWeber’s Free plan even more. You can create unlimited landing pages, access e-commerce tools, and set up web push notifications – as long as you can navigate AWeber’s clunky interface, that is.

It’s also important to note that the Free plan has serious limitations that are likely to slow you down sooner rather than later.

AWeber caps Free plan subscribers at 500 and monthly email sends at 3,000. If your list is still small, or you haven’t started building it yet, this might not sound like a problem. But if you plan to grow your list and send a variety of marketing emails, you’ll quickly hit those limits.

Plus, when you compare AWeber’s Free plan to Sendinblue’s Free plan – which allows you 300 emails per day (around 9,000 a month) and unlimited subscribers – you start to realize it’s not the most generous option around.

In addition, the Free plan only offers basic segmentation, automations, and analytics. To access more high-level insights, create more intuitive workflows, or fine-tune segmentation, you’ll need to sign up for a paid AWeber plan.

Pro Plan

The Pro plan includes advanced versions of the Free plan’s features and removes AWeber branding from emails – a must for giving your marketing a more professional look. With the Pro plan’s advanced features, you can create automations based on subscriber behaviors, send abandoned cart emails, and build custom subscriber segments.

In addition, the Pro plan removes many of the restrictions that come with the Free plan. There’s no limit on the number of subscriber lists you can create or emails you can send – although you do have to upgrade to the next paid tier once you reach each subscriber threshold.

Analytics are pretty impressive with the Pro plan, too. In fact, it’s one of the reasons it scored a 4.6* out of 5 in our AWeber review. This plan offers access to advanced audience and campaign analytics and lets you track e-commerce sales via email.

I was also glad to see that you can split-test emails and landing pages to improve performance and results, as the Free plan doesn’t allow any split testing at all.

Do you spot anything unusual in this AWeber pricing chart? That’s right: Pro plan pricing jumps significantly when you reach 25,000 subscribers. Once you reach this threshold, AWeber pricing over 25,000 increases by $8 per month for every additional 1,000 subscribers.

Still, although AWeber’s pricing structure looks a little strange, the cost for bigger lists isn’t too far off other platforms. For example, if you compare AWeber vs. Mailchimp pricing, you’ll find that AWeber is cheaper for 50,000 subscribers, while Mailchimp charges slightly less for 100,000 subscribers.

AWeber Plans Comparison Table

AWeber Cancellation & Refund Policy

Straightforward Cancellation Process With a Surprising Refund Policy

Before signing up for an email marketing service, it’s essential to get familiar with the cancellation and refund policy. Interestingly, you won’t find any details about AWeber’s refund policy in the platform’s terms and conditions.

But after chatting with support and testing out the process myself, I can confirm that AWeber does offer a 30-day money-back policy. It applies to new accounts only, essentially allowing you to test out the Pro plan with no obligation.

So, what’s the deal? It only includes the initial 500 subscribers you enroll, and there’s no assurance that it is valid for annual plans. Therefore, if you opt for an annual plan with over 1,000 subscribers, you shouldn’t anticipate receiving a complete refund.

If you do try out AWeber and want a refund, note that you have to request one via chat support, as it won’t happen automatically. If you simply want to cancel your account, you can do that online, too. Just be prepared to spend some time on the cancellation, as the process is a bit lengthy.

To cancel your AWeber plan, go to the main account screen and navigate to the billing page. Click the Change my plan button at the bottom of the page and progress through the prompts. You’ll need to provide a reason for cancellation and decline a retention offer or two. At the end of the process, you’ll receive an email confirming that the cancellation is complete.

If you want to see the process in more detail, I’ve also put together a detailed guide on how to cancel your AWeber account and get a refund.

Alternatives to AWeber

AWeber offers a decent set of digital and email marketing features, but it isn’t the right choice for every business. If you want a more robust free plan or if you need more complex tools, I recommend considering these email marketing services instead:

• Sendinblue’s Free plan: If you want a free plan without the limitations that AWeber has, it’s worth looking into Sendinblue’s Free plan. It supports unlimited contacts, and I like that it includes pro-level tools like advanced segmentation and a sales customer relationship management tool (CRM).
• Benchmark’s Pro plan: If you want more functionality for a similar price point, I’d recommend Benchmark’s Pro plan. The cost is roughly what you’d pay for AWeber, but Benchmark offers 1,500 app integrations along with extras like real-time reports, list verification, and email delivery management.
• GetResponse’s Plus plan: If you really want to invest in marketing automation, GetResponse’s Plus plan is a great choice. In addition to powerful email automations, it comes with sales and conversion funnels, webinars, social ads, and a website builder, which are all helpful for streamlining marketing efforts.
• ActiveCampaign’s Professional plan: With more than 500 automation templates, automation maps, and a CRM with sales automation features, ActiveCampaign’s Professional plan is my top pick for advanced marketers. I like that this plan also includes attribution reporting, which makes it easier to optimize your efforts.

AWeber Has Plenty of Features – but Doesn’t Always Offer the Best Value

If you want an all-in-one platform that provides email marketing, e-commerce, and landing pages and integrates with over 100 apps, AWeber could be a smart choice. Although you’ll outgrow the Free plan before you know it, the Pro plan offers a reasonable array of tools for competitive prices.

If you’re not ready to pay for email marketing yet, consider getting started with a better free plan instead. After testing tons of platforms, I’ve found that the Sendinblue Free plan is by far my favorite. Compared to AWeber, Sendinblue has much more advanced automations and lets you send three times more emails every month.

However, if you care about advanced automations, segmentation, and split-testing, you’re probably better off going with a platform like ActiveCampaign, which is miles ahead of AWeber and offers more than 500 automation workflows with every plan.

FAQ

Is AWeber free to use?

Yes, AWeber offers a free plan that’s available at no cost. It includes basic email marketing features and unlimited landing pages. If you want to add more than 500 subscribers or send more than 3,000 emails per month, however, the Free plan won’t work for you. You’d need to sign up for a paid plan instead. Remember that you can save money with one of our AWeber coupons too.

How long is the AWeber free trial?

Technically, AWeber doesn’t offer a free trial. You can either sign up for the Free plan or purchase the Pro plan. However, if you cancel a new account within 30 days, you should qualify for a refund. Although there’s no mention of a refund policy in the platform’s terms and conditions, AWeber does offer a 30-day money-back guarantee that covers base pricing for up to 500 subscribers.

Is AWeber autoresponder function free?

Yes, you can create basic autoresponders with AWeber’s Free plan, but you need a paid Pro plan for more advanced functionality. If you want to create behavioral automations or send abandoned shopping cart emails, for example, you have to pay for AWeber’s Pro plan.

Which is better, AWeber or ConvertKit?

Whether you care about cost or features, AWeber is better than ConvertKit. AWeber’s paid plan includes a longer list of features and costs about a third less than ConvertKit’s cheapest paid plan. For a more complete comparison, take a look at our list of the best email marketing services in 2024 to find the most cost-effective option for your business.