Flodesk vs Convertkit: A review from someone who’s used both
Let’s start with my hot tea about choosing an email service provider
People make it way harder than it actually needs to be
There are a lot of email providers. They will do a lot of different stuff and the reality is unless you are a decent-size business or you have a pretty large following or list, a lot of the features that people fight over are not necessarily gonna matter to you
So if you’re a corporation or you’re an enterprise, you might want to be looking at one of the services that has like crazy features and analytics
But if you are a service provider or a small business or a founder or a solopreneur, you probably don’t need a lot of the features that are on offer with most ESPs
The other issue is you also probably don’t have the knowledge or the capacity to measure the analytics so unless you are hiring an email marketer who is going to go through like the analytics or the different features for you, a lot of the stuff that you are being sold is probably not that helpful
Which is why if you are a service provider, a solopreneur, a founder, a coach, someone with a small business who just doesn’t have time or doesn’t want to hire an email marketer to do something crazy, you will probably wanna start with a pretty simple and a free or low-cost ESP.
Hi, I’m Elle…
Website Copywriter, Unapologetic Girls’ Girl, And (According To Clients) An “Absolute Dream.”
ConvertKit and Flodesk are both of those things
They also, along with MailerLite, which is another post in itself, are the ESPs that I usually recommend for smaller businesses
And just to give a bit of context to this, I actually am a copywriter who used to work as an email marketer for small to mid-size businesses so I know what I’m talking about
So in today’s post I’m gonna talk about both of them. I’ve used both of them personally for my business. There are definitely pros and cons to each. There are definitely situations where one is better than the other so let’s dive in and talk about which one you actually need for your business and specifically in terms of the metrics that you as a small business owner are probably gonna wanna look at
I’m also an ambassador for romanticizing business and making it fun, an expert in non-toxic conversion copy, a Miranda Priestley apologist, and my actual job description should really be ‘matchmaker for you and your dream clients“
If you liked reading this blog post – I would love to hang out more with you 🙂
And these, IMO, are the best ways for us to that:
Quick Verdict (For Skimmers)
if you’re a skimmer and you really don’t wanna read the entire blog post, don’t worry, I’ve got you.
I know you’re busy. This is a TL;DR of the post
Best for design → Flodesk
Best for flexibility/power → ConvertKit
And in terms of affordability it depends on what you wanna do with it but if you literally just want to send emails, it’s ConvertKit, and if you want to add on extra features it’s Flodesk
I will go into a breakdown in this post explaining to you which one is better and why for those things but if you are looking for something that will be super easy and fast to set up and that you can add your branding into and that will be very design-led, choose Flodesk
If you wanna keep it really simple and just have something to send out newsletters and archive them, choose ConvertKit
My Experience Using Both
So like I said, I’ve used both ConvertKit and Flodesk in my business. I started off using ConvertKit for about six months and then I switched to Flodesk, which I’ve been using for almost a year.
For both of them I’ve used them essentially for the same reason, so I have used them to create welcome sequences, email my list, and run a newsletter.
However, I also use Flodesk for checkouts and workflows for those checkouts, which is one of the reasons I ended up switching to Flodesk, and I’ll get into that more in detail later.
So if you didn’t know this about me, although now I specialise as a website copywriter and brand messaging, I used to be an email marketer, and I actually used to run email marketing for mid to small size businesses, so I’ve used pretty much all of the different email platforms.
I started using ConvertKit because it was free and super easy to set up, and I’ll go into that in the review.
I honestly switched to Flodesk because everyone I knew was using it and I wanted to have something a bit more branded, and I thought it would be interesting to try it out. I have ended up using a lot of different features that it has, which is why I’m still with it.
However, I will say that both of them have their flaws. Neither of them are perfect, and it really is a case-by-case basis of which one you should or shouldn’t use depending on what you are trying to do with your business.
So let’s jump in and talk about each one and which one is right for you.
Ease of Use
To be completely honest, they’re both super easy, especially if you are getting started with the basic plan.
You basically just set up your account. You have to link both of them to your domain if you want to get that set up, and it has a couple of templates that you can use on a drag-and-drop builder to create newsletter templates.
With Flodesk, they also have a drag-and-drop template builder. They also have already set templates, so they have templates for different types of businesses and different types of campaigns you might want to launch, and that makes it really easy to just pick a template, start writing, and send it.
In terms of getting set up, I definitely found that there was more of a learning curve with ConvertKit. Sometimes I found the platform difficult to navigate, and I found it hard to actually put together the email sometimes.
However, with Flodesk it was basically no learning curve. It was super easy to get set up and just start sending emails. Everything is very intuitive in the platform and it’s very easy to use.
Design & Email Aesthetics
Flodesk is obviously specifically famous for the design, and that’s why a lot of people use it, especially founders and solopreneurs.
And it definitely does blow ConvertKit out of the water on that basis. With ConvertKit you have limited design options, especially very limited compared to Flodesk where you have a lot more choices in terms of fonts.
ConvertKit keeps things pretty simple, where you can add things in for the purpose of features, so things like quizzes or polls or links, whereas Flodesk has a lot of templates that you can add in that help with things like sections.
Flodesk has lots of features and templates for things like different sections that you might want to add in, so different types of blocks, an about me section, announcement section, competition section, things like that. And then they also have all the features that you can add in like polls, you can add quizzes, you can add buttons.
You can add lots of different things. It’s a super intuitive drag-and-drop, but I think the biggest difference between Flodesk and ConvertKit is the templates.
ConvertKit has a few templates, they’re really, really basic, and I’m going to be honest, they’re ugly, whereas Flodesk has really pretty templates that look really good.
However, and this is my big issue with this, which is something I wish I’d known before I started using Flodesk, is the amount of blocks that you can use in terms of the templates is actually limited because each block is treated as an image, and if you want to use any of the custom cute fonts that’s also treated as an image block.
This becomes an issue because image blocks, if you have more image blocks in an email than text blocks, then your email will often go to promotions or spam, and I actually made this mistake when I first got started because I bought a template which was pretty affordable from Etsy and ended up not being able to use almost any of it because the entire template was just blocks and my emails were getting sent to spam when I tested them instead of being sent to my subscribers.
So now with my Flodesk template I have a split of 60% of it is text and then the other 40% can be blocks or images, so just something to be mindful of if you are thinking of getting Flodesk for the purpose of making your emails look really cute. There is a limit to how cute you can make an email look because you need to have plain text blocks, otherwise you’re getting put in spam or promotions.
Automation & Features
Like I was saying at the start, how much automation you are gonna need really is dependent on your business.
So if you are a very small business or a solopreneur and you literally just want to set up a couple of welcome sequences and send emails, this is not gonna be that relevant for you and you don’t need to worry about it.
If you have a lot of different products, a lot of different freebies, a lot of different launches, or you’re planning on product launches, you might need something that has more capabilities in terms of workflows and automation.
Both ConvertKit and Flodesk only allow one workflow on their basic/lower plans, so that is great if you want one welcome sequence and that’s all you need.
However, if you want to have multiple different welcome sequences, different triggers and automations, then all of these are called workflows in Flodesk and you might get stuck or you might struggle to do what you need.
Same thing with ConvertKit on the basic plan: if you need to do anything other than just send a welcome sequence and send emails, you are gonna have to pay.
With Flodesk you have segmentation, tagging, and workflows, and it is pretty different.
On Flodesk you can set up workflows and you can create them for essentially everything, and you create workflows based on different triggers.
With ConvertKit you have tags and segments and you can create your own tags, which is where, depending on how much you know about email marketing, this is gonna come into play.
As an email marketer, I do find it frustrating to not be able to create my own tags because I like the level of customisation you can get with ConvertKit, whereas if you want to keep it simple and you don’t know what tagging or segmenting is, Flodesk is great because it has already taken care of that for you.
Deliverability
Let’s quickly talk about deliverability and performance because this is a big one that is really hard to say.
I haven’t had too many issues on either platform, but I will say I have honestly had more issues with deliverability on Flodesk, and I think that part of that is because when I sent emails on ConvertKit they were always plain text.
I didn’t do any design, and on Flodesk my emails tend to be a lot longer. I have more images in them, and so sometimes they will get promotions for that reason. So I can’t specifically say that one platform or another is better for deliverability, but I do think the nature of Flodesk, where people tend to add a bunch of images and not enough text, can make deliverability harder.
And the other thing I would say is deliverability honestly is not necessarily just about the platform. A lot of it is about how you write emails and what you’re doing. So at the end of the day, if you’re using too many images, if you’re using clickbaity titles, if you’re using specific spam trigger words, if your emails are not getting opened enough by people, you are more likely to end up in promotions or spam.
I also would say that there is a certain point where you can’t really do anything about whether or not you end up in the inbox or promotions, past asking people to move you into the inbox and setting that expectation in your welcome sequence, because Google changes that algorithm a lot. And even some of the best email marketers I know I have seen some of their emails end up in my promotions folder even though I open them all the time, and sometimes they end up in my inbox, so there’s a lot of other factors that can kind of impact deliverability.
Both platforms in my experience are basically the same.
Pricing (And What You Really Get)
Flodesk have recently changed their plans, sadly, and so they now have a few different plans.
They have the free plan and I’m putting that in quotation marks because it’s basically completely pointless, and it’s essentially for you to demo the platform and test it out, but you could never use it because you can’t send emails on the free plan, so it’s honestly completely pointless. Like, I just actually don’t even know why they have it because I think it’s stupid, but that’s a whole other conversation—sorry Flodesk, no shade but it’s also shade.
Then they have the light plan, which has one workflow and all of the design capabilities, the tagging, segmentation, and that is it. They have a plan up from there where you can send emails, you have unlimited workflows, and then you have one product, and then you have an everything plan where you have checkouts, you can do product subscriptions and workflows – everything.
So for reference, right now I’m on the everything plan, and I actually am using a Flodesk discount code, so I get a slightly discounted rate right now. I used it from a friend who recommended Flodesk to me, and I actually use this plan. I’m gonna get into that in a second and talk about why I’m currently on this plan.
ConvertKit also has a free plan up to 10,000 subscribers, and it is a lot better than the Flodesk free plan.
So on this ConvertKit free plan, you get unlimited everything, you can use all of their automations, tagging, segmentation, you have access to a lot of the products, you can archive your newsletters, you can have up to 10,000 subscribers for free.
You can send as many emails as you want, and you get one visual automation, and you also can use it to sell products, which is pretty unlimited, so that is pretty great if you just want to send a newsletter.
However, the issue with that plan is the same issue that I have with the Flodesk light plan, is that you only get one workflow, so again, if you just wanna have a welcome sequence or if you’re willing to try and yeah basically you’re just gonna have one sequence that you can send people, so even if you’re selling your digital products through it, this can then become an issue because you’re not able to then add them into another workflow or anything like that. You’ll have the same issue on Flodesk on the light plan.
If you then move up to the next plan on ConvertKit, it gets pretty expensive. So on ConvertKit, the next plan up is $33 a month for the Creator plan, which is $33 up to 1,000 subscribers.
Once you get above 1,000 subscribers, the price goes up, and so you have unlimited workflows, a lot of the stuff is unlimited, you have access to most things, and so it is definitely more expensive than the next tier up on Flodesk, but you do have more features and more things included in the Creator plan.
For Flodesk, from the $19 plan you get to the $25 plan a month, and what that includes is unlimited emails, workflows, you can send emails to up to 25,000 subscribers. You get one product or digital product included, and everything else pretty much is included in that, so this is when you can start to see the pricing changing between the two platforms.
Up from there, both platforms then do have another tier. So you can go up a tier on ConvertKit to the Pro, and that essentially is for anybody who really wants to get really in-depth with email analytics.
So it’s when you get really advanced analytics, you can start doing A/B testing, you can add team members or other users to your account. You can start doing newsletter referrals, and that really is just for anybody who wants really, really nitty-gritty analytics stuff that you honestly only need if you’re an email marketer.
With the next plan from Flodesk, which is the Pro plan or the Everything plan, you get basically access to everything. That’s the highest plan that they have, and it includes things like checkouts, subscriptions, sales pages, and it’s unlimited on everything.
So…which one should you be choosing in terms of pricing?
My honest opinion is that unless you are an email marketer, you really want to learn email marketing, or you are working with enough subscribers that you need to do the nitty-gritty analytics stuff, then you don’t need to go to the most expensive plan on ConvertKit. You would be fine on either a free plan or a Creator plan for Flodesk.
I do think it can be beneficial for small businesses to use the Everything plan, which is what I’m on right now.
And the reason I’m saying that is I currently use Flodesk for my checkouts for all of my digital products or my small low-ticket offers which people can buy instantly, so if you don’t know you can buy audits and workshops from my site and I have checkout pages on Flodesk where people can buy directly from that.
This has made sense for me because it means that I can set up email automations and workflows directly when people buy the product as well as have a checkout page without having to integrate other products like ThriveCart or use any sort of third-party platform.
Otherwise, if you don’t have any digital products you are totally fine to be on the light plan of Flodesk. The only issue there is you’ll only have one workflow. I actually think it probably makes more sense to go to the Pro plan of Flodesk because it’s an extra $6 a month but you have unlimited everything except for obviously like products and checkouts.
But again what you really need to think about with pricing is kind of try and figure out how much are you going to be making from email marketing? How much are you making right now? How much do you expect to bring in?
And what exactly do you want to do because if you just wanna start a newsletter and just send it out and get used to email marketing you could start on Flodesk for free and just get used to it.
If you already know that you have a lot of workflows that you want to send out, you want to set up a bunch of different freebies or your priority is growing your list to a lot of subscribers without having to pay extra then Flodesk might be a good choice for you because obviously the issue with ConvertKit is once you start growing your list past 1,000 subscribers you’re gonna have to start paying more and more and more so something to keep in mind when you’re looking at pricing.
Pros and Cons of Each Platform
Okay so now that we’ve kind of looked at each platform in detail let’s talk about what I believe to be the pros and cons of each platform, which one each one is right for and which one I think that you should choose for your business.
Flodesk
So let’s start by talking about Flodesk, which, like I said, I’m currently still with. I am happy with them and I know a lot of small business owners and service providers who do use them, so let’s talk about that and let’s have a conversation about strengths and weaknesses.
Strengths:
The biggest strengths of Flodesk is the design and how easy it is to get set up.
If you care about branding and you have a business that relies a lot on visual branding and that’s really important to your business, then obviously Flodesk is going to be amazing for that. It’s also super easy to set up.
The templates are so easy to get started with and it’s a very intuitive platform. You really do not need to know anything about email marketing to be good at Flodesk.
It also has pretty good pricing in terms of how many subscribers you can have before you start paying a lot of money compared to ConvertKit, which obviously has a sliding scale.
And I actually do think that their Everything plan, including checkouts and sales pages and being able to add workflows and checkouts directly to all of your products and have that set up without having to use any sort of third-party platforms, is really helpful and can save you money in the long run because ThriveCart can be pretty expensive.
I would also say that customer support is great. Their team is pretty great. I actually know some of the team personally that subscribed to my email list and they’re just really cool people and really care about helping their customers, so that’s another bonus.
Cons:
My biggest issue I’ve had with Flodesk in general, and I still have with them sometimes, is because they are a newer platform there’s a lot of features that they are always missing and that they have to add in.
I also feel like a lot of the features that they have inside the actual emails just don’t make sense.
They have a poll feature, which is essentially completely useless because it’s not set up in a way that is intuitive for email marketing or getting research from your customers, and it also links out to an external sales page, which is super, super annoying and very frustrating to use.
So that is one of my big frustrations with Flodesk, because something that I didn’t like about Flodesk for a long time was they didn’t have a GDPR checkbox and you couldn’t create one, which meant that I couldn’t create freebies because I’m based in the EU. For like six months I was using it and it felt like such a waste of money, and that was really annoying.
They’ve now added that in, but that would be one of my biggest issues with Flodesk: there are just some random features that you would expect you have with an email service provider that they don’t have, and it takes them a really long time to implement things that should have been there from the start.
The other thing that does frustrate me is sometimes I feel like, while it is an intuitive platform and the designs are really pretty, it can feel really glitchy to use.
I actually have never made a sales page on Flodesk because the first time I tried to make a sales page, even though it had a really, really pretty template for sales pages, the platform would glitch so much when I was trying to design it, it was essentially impossible for me to actually build a sales page and use the sales page designer, and I ended up just making one on my site, and that was really frustrating for me because I feel like I am missing out on a feature that I’m paying for.
So that would kind of be my frustration with Flodesk. I do think that it’s super easy to use, it has pretty affordable pricing, but a lot of the features are easy to use but not actually very intelligently coded or coded in the way that is valuable in terms of collecting data, and sometimes the coding or the way that things work can be really janky, and they’re very slow to add features that every other email marketing service has.
(Convert) Kit
Ok – now let’s take a look at Kit (ConvertKit), who are also really good, but at different stuff.
Strengths:
For ConvertKit, I think that their automations, segmentation, tagging, flexibility, and control are my favourite things about it.
I think that they do have a bit more of an understanding than Flodesk, honestly, about what it takes to do email marketing, and it is a lot more intuitive in terms of collecting data from your audience, sending, creating your own segments, customising the analytics, and having just features that are essential to email marketing that are better than Flodesk.
And the other thing that might be important to you is that you can use their address—so if you wanted to set up newsletters without having to share your home address (according to ConvertKit!)—and that was something that attracted me to them when I first started using them because I didn’t wanna have to pay for a PO box.
And another one of their strengths is you can archive your newsletters directly in the platform and share them, which means that you can share all of your old newsletters with your subscribers whenever you want, and you can also share all of your old newsletters with other people, and you can share them with other creators in the ConvertKit platform or universe, which makes it easier for you to get your list and get more eyes on your business, so that is really cool and one of the best features.
Cons:
The biggest limitations for ConvertKit, I would say, is pricing.
Obviously, you know, the free plan is great—but at the same time, it’s so limited.
I don’t really think there is a situation, if you want to be strategic about email marketing, where only having one workflow is helpful, and obviously $33 is quite a big jump even over the Pro plan on Flodesk, and it only includes 1,000 subscribers, so if you are planning to have a very small, very basic list you could use their free plan and you’ll be fine.
If you need to have more workflows you’re gonna have to pay $33 or more every single month, and that can definitely add up. The other limitation is design. It isn’t very pretty. It isn’t very intuitive. You kind of have to design your own emails and figure it out yourself, so maybe not the best.
And then the other limitation I would say is I don’t feel like their checkout process is as seamless as the Flodesk one. I think that the way the checkout works with Flodesk and the fact that they partner with platforms like Stripe makes it really easy and it means that you don’t have to spend money on other platforms, which isn’t always the case with ConvertKit.
Who Each Platform Is Best For
So…which platform is best for you??
Long story short – if saving money is the main thing that you care about, there is no free plan on Flodesk. The minimum that you can spend is basically $20 a month, so if you literally just want to send newsletters and build an archive of them and have one welcome sequence and that’s all you wanna do right now – choose ConvertKit.
If you want to have really nicely designed emails and not have to do anything yourself, you don’t wanna worry about tagging or segmentation, you basically just want a platform where you can do everything as easy as possible, you don’t wanna learn email marketing, you just want to get a template, fill it out, send your emails, set up your checkout, set up your workflows, set up your automations – then Flodesk is probably the easiest one to use.
You really do not need to know anything about email marketing to be good at Flodesk. It is very intuitive. It is set up for people to just be able to send out simple emails that look pretty and that they can design themselves, so if using something easy with really pretty design is important to you then you should choose Flodesk.
I also would say if price-wise you want to do what I’m doing, which is essentially have newsletters, a bunch of freebies with different workflows, and then also have checkouts with different workflows set up from that – then the higher plan on Flodesk is also a really good option for you.
I think I’m saving more money than I would be if I was using ConvertKit for the same thing and I just like how easy it is for everything to be integrated.
And then if you are somebody who really cares about the inboxing side of things, you really wanna learn about the analytics, you wanna have the option to set up really complex automations or funnels, you would like to do A/B testing, you wanna set up a team in there, you want to hire an email marketer to come and use your platform and do a bunch of stuff in there – then choose Kit, because for the tech side of email, it’s the most advanced.
One of the places where Flodesk falls behind is it doesn’t always feel like it was created by an email marketer.
It feels like it was created by a business owner for other business owners who just want to keep everything simple and not have to think too hard about their emails.
So...Which One Should You Choose?
Honestly, if you are a new business, I think start with ConvertKit, and you can move if you need more options that they have.
I think that there is a point where if you are new to email marketing, you haven’t set up freebies, you haven’t started a workflow or anything like that, and you just wanna get started, you can regret signing up for a platform where you’re having to pay every single month, especially if you don’t know that you’re gonna make your money back.
If you are a slightly more established business and you have freebies already set up that you know you’re gonna use, you have clear branding that you want to represent in your emails, you are thinking about using checkouts for selling digital products, and you want to grow your list and use it for more than just sending newsletters — then I think that Flodesk is the best option in comparison to ConvertKit.
However, I don’t know if I necessarily think it’s the best platform out of all of them, and I am also going to be writing a blog post that compares Flodesk to ConvertKit and also ConvertKit to other platforms, because I personally think that there are also other options that are the best for small businesses.
FAQs
Okay so let me just answer a couple of quick questions that have probably come up.
(These are definitely things that I wish I knew when I got started!)
Can you switch later?
Yes – so this is the other thing I would say is again, don’t overthink it. Just choose a platform, get started, because you can always switch.
Like I said, I switched from ConvertKit to Flodesk and it was super easy.
I am actually considering switching to MailerLite or trying MailerLite and have thought about using that in the past.
I like to try out different platforms and depending on where I’m at with my budget and my needs I will consider moving from platform to platform, so you’re never stuck on one.
Most will offer migration and help with migrating from different platforms if needed, so never feel like you’re stuck with one. Try it and then you can move to a different one.
Which is better for beginners?
It depends. ConvertKit is better for beginners who literally do not have money to spend on email marketing and need to do something for free.
And Flodesk is better for people who have absolutely no knowledge of email marketing and just want somebody to set everything up, including segmentation and tagging for them.
Do design-heavy emails hurt deliverability?
Yes – I already touched on this, but I’m gonna touch it again because I feel like a lot of people don’t know this and it is the biggest risk that you take with Flodesk.
Especially why I would never recommend paying for Flodesk templates, because a lot of them will just send you a bunch of blocks that look really pretty, but if you use an email that is literally just blocks of design, it will be treated as images, it’s gonna go to promotional spam.
So make sure the absolute minimum you have is 50% text / 50% images.
Better is 70% text / 30% images, or, even more text than that.
In Conclusion: Don't Overthink It
The main thing I do want to say about this is: ideally it is great to have a newsletter and have an email service provider that you use for email marketing, but don’t overthink it and don’t worry too much about choosing a platform, because at the end of the day strategy is more important than which platform you’re on.
I think people can kind of get stuck with this idea that by choosing the perfect email service provider, where you’re never gonna have issues with deliverability, or one that will make it easier for you to grow a list and sell things really easily – but at the end of the day, the copy that you write in the emails is what is going to sell your products or your services, and the way that you structure and write your emails is going to affect deliverability.
The strategy that you use to grow your list is something that you’re gonna have to spend time doing.
You can’t just grow a list by signing up to Flodesk. It’s just not gonna work like that, and you need to figure out which service provider works better for you based on your business goals and your budget, not just on hype.
And I am saying this because as much as I love Flodesk, I do think a lot of people join Flodesk because of the hype, even though they can’t really afford the plans and they’re not using them enough for it to make sense.
Sometimes it makes sense to just go with an email service provider that is free if budget is an issue for you, and just focus on creating really good newsletters and really good emails and brushing up on your copywriting skills or creating really great emails people are obsessed with.
And on that note, I will tell you that I do have an email strategy session where I will help you plan out your emails and your newsletters and sort out your email marketing.
So if you read this post and you’re still not really sure what to do or you’re just not sure about email strategy or how you wanna run that at all, you can book one of those sessions with me and we will figure out what is the best platform for you – whether or not that’s Flodesk or maybe even another platform – as well as what you should talk about in the newsletters, what you are gonna talk about in your email, and how your email strategy should look moving forward, including how you’re gonna grow your list and use it to sell things.
The Hot Gossip, The 411
More from The Blog
If you loved this post, and you want to get the 411 on more things copy and marketing – here’s your next read, all lined up.
Hi, I’m Elle
Website Copywriter, Unapologetic Girls’ Girl, And (According To Clients) An “Absolute Dream.”
I’m also an ambassador for romanticizing business and making it fun, an expert in non-toxic conversion copy, a Miranda Priestley apologist, and voted most likely to over-deliver and overshare.
But — you know what else I am?
A girl who’s tired of seeing talented, creative women settling for mediocre copy and generic branding because they think they have to do it all themselves, or they’re waiting for permission to step into their It Girl era and become the hot brand they’re supposed to be.
Which is why I’d love for you to finally get copy that reflects your full potential — even if you can’t quite yet put that into words.
