Email marketing is one of the best-performing channels for marketers globally in recent years, from small businesses to large corporations. With a solid email marketing list, any business can turn emails into cold hard revenue.
But how do you create your first email and get started with monetizing your lists? Say goodbye to complex interfaces and hello to straightforward success with Verticalresponse as your next email tool.
Today, we take a look at Verticalresponse’s top features, pricing and alternatives to consider for email marketing.
What is Verticalresponse?
VerticalResponse is an email marketing tool that lets busy entrepreneurs create beautiful emails easily and connect with their target audiences without knowledge of HTML.
Top Vertical Response features
Whether you want to create a beautiful email or a custom landing page, Verticalresponse has your back. Here are some of the best features for big and small businesses:
- Easy to use WYSIWYG editor
- AI content assistant for writing
- Automated follow-up emails
- Auto-responders and email series
- Advanced email campaign reporting so you can monitor your campaign’s performance in real time
- Landing page builder to send visitors to a custom presentation with your offer
- A/B testing, surveys, and more to help you send at the perfect time.
Verticalresponse pricing
There are just two plans available: Basic and Pro.
The Basic plan costs $13 per user per month. This gives you access to all core email features, unlimited landing pages, unlimited emails, live customer support, and automated follow-up emails, among other things.
The Pro plan costs $19 per user per month, unlocking customizable pop-up forms, advanced reporting, subject line A/B testing, and more.
What are VerticalResponse users saying?
Users report that some features are not as intuitive as the vendor promises and that it can take a while to figure out how everything works.
“Some process flows were not as intuitive as I would have liked. Automation can be confusing at times for a beginner, and the website builder comes with a limited set of features. I don’t really like that, in their effort to make things easier, they have sacrificed a lot of features that designers could use to make their newsletter designs really stand out. I’m not sure I’d dislike it, although better integration with WordPress forms to collect data would be helpful.” – Source
The website landing page builder sounds like a great idea, but in reality, it’s anything but easy to use.
There are quite a few complaints about emails going to spam, too, and for anyone using email marketing to communicate with customers, this is a huge red flag.
“I wish they had more preset templates. This would be great. my emails go into spam very often, even though we tried using all the hacks and methods to avoid it.” – Source
Perhaps the worst of all is that the customer support team at VerticalResponse is just not that phenomenal:
“They haven’t updated their technology, the editor is the worst out there, I’ve used a lot of different companies. And Vertical Response customer service is even worse; they just don’t respond to emails at all. They eliminated their phone service as well.” – Source
The best VerticalResponse alternatives for email marketing campaigns
There are countless email marketing platforms out there, and settling for VerticalResponse without checking what others have to offer might be a bit irresponsible.
Here are some of the best alternatives to VerticalResponse for your email marketing efforts.
Woodpecker
Woodpecker is a cold email automation platform designed for outbound sales teams, agencies, and B2B companies. Unlike VerticalResponse, which is centered around general email marketing, Woodpecker specializes in personalized outreach with strong deliverability features, making it ideal for those prioritizing cold outreach over newsletters.
Key features:
- Cold email automation: Send personalized emails and follow-ups triggered by recipient behavior.
- Deliverability monitor: Track deliverability performance to stay out of the spam folder.
- A/B testing: Experiment with subject lines and messaging to see what resonates most.
- Condition-based workflows: Build custom sequences that react to opens, replies, or link clicks.
- Email warm-up & recovery: Keep sending reputation healthy with built-in warm-up tools.
- Timezone detection: Automatically sends emails when recipients are most likely to read them.
- AI-powered video personalization: Add custom videos to boost engagement.
- Integrations: Works with Hubspot, Salesforce, Zoho, and lead-sourcing tools like Hunter.
Pricing:
Starts at $20/month. Pricing scales with usage (number of contacted leads) and includes unlimited team members and email warm-up. A 7-day free trial is available.
Downsides:
Woodpecker doesn’t include newsletter functionality or visual campaign editors like VerticalResponse. It also lacks native LinkedIn automation, but integrations with tools like Hunter or LinkedIn Sales Navigator help fill that gap.
User reviews:
🟢 “Delivers what it promises for cold email outreach—easy to use and keeps emails out of spam.”
🟢 “Excellent support and reliable deliverability tracking.”
🔴 “Would be great if there was a built-in LinkedIn module.”
🟡 “Interface is clean, but can take a bit of exploring to master advanced workflows.”
Gist (GetGist)
Gist is an all-in-one customer communication and automation platform that blends live chat, marketing automation, email campaigns, CRM tools, and customer support features. It’s built to centralize conversations and automate tasks across your sales and support teams.
Key features:
- Business Messenger: Qualify and route leads through automated chat on your website.
- Collaborative inbox: Manage all conversations from email, chat, social media, and more in one place.
- Outbound automation: Trigger emails and messages based on user behavior across multiple channels.
- Drip campaigns: Nurture leads with sequenced emails and create email funnels for upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
- Live view and meeting scheduler: See what users are doing on your site in real time and allow them to book meetings on the fly.
Pricing:
- Free – $0/month: Live chat, team inbox, meeting/calendar integrations, mobile app
- Professional – $29/month: 5 seats, email forwarding, in-app messages, knowledge base, chat triggers, lead bots, integrations
- Premium – $99/month: All of the above plus 1:1 messaging, custom chatbots, surveys, product tours, advanced analytics, and CRM integrations (Salesforce, Hubspot)
Downsides:
The platform offers a wide range of features, but new users face a steep learning curve. The mobile app needs major improvement, as users report frequent bugs and delays. Deliverability and reporting aren’t always reliable, and some key features are difficult to find without guidance.
User reviews:
🟢 “Powerful all-in-one suite for startups looking to consolidate tools.”
🔴 “Mobile experience is frustrating. Chat responses disappear or fail to send.”
🔴 “Upgrading plans and using migration services is too complicated, and support is slow to respond.”
🟡 “Learning curve is steep for advanced automations, and UI could use clearer onboarding tutorials.”
MailModo
Mailmodo is a conversion-focused email marketing platform designed around interactive AMP emails. It’s especially useful for marketers looking to boost engagement directly within the inbox—without redirecting users to landing pages. Automation tools and a strong visual editor make it a go-to for teams that want more than static emails.
Key features:
- Drag and drop editor: Build beautiful, mobile-ready emails quickly with a no-code interface.
- AMP email builder: Create interactive elements like forms, calendars, and polls inside your emails.
- AI content generation: Speed up content creation with built-in tools for subject lines, body copy, and CTAs.
- Journey automation and segmentation: Set up trigger-based workflows and target recipients based on behavior.
- Deliverability tools and reporting: Monitor email performance and keep your sending reputation in check.
Pricing:
Pricing depends on your contact list size. For 500 contacts:
- Lite – $39/month: 4,000 emails, 20,000 custom events, 1 user, 5 journeys
- Pro – $79/month: 5,000 emails, 35,000 custom events, 3 users, 10 journeys
- Max – $159/month: 7,500 emails, 50,000 custom events, 5 users, unlimited journeys
Each plan also includes different limits for API usage, domains, and contacts per journey.
Downsides:
Some users report occasional AMP compatibility issues and email delivery hiccups. The dashboard can sometimes show inconsistent metrics, and users would like more out-of-the-box templates to work with.
User reviews:
🟢 “Easy to use and the AMP features really improve engagement. Great if you want to go beyond traditional emails.”
🟢 “Support is responsive and the UI is pretty intuitive for building automations.”
🔴 “There are moments when email delivery or AMP reliability can dip slightly.”
🔴 “Would love more pre-made email templates and more accurate reporting dashboards.”
Conclusion
VerticalResponse has a lot going for it as it helps you communicate with your customers for a relatively low price. It packs a decent feature set, but as the reviews have shown, it’s far from ideal. From dodgy customer support to general bugs and issues, you’ll face problems every step of the way.
Not with us, though. Woodpecker does cold email and it does it well. We’ll help you create emails, launch and monitor campaigns and turn cold email from something that is nice-to-have into a tool that delivers real revenue.
Get a free trial to see it in action today.