ConvertKit vs Flodesk | Which one is right for you?
This post & info is relevant as of February 2024.
I’ve been asked a handful of times recently what I think about ConvertKit, so I figured I’d do a little comparison with Flodesk since it seems like these are the two main players at the top of the email marketing game these days.
Of course there’s MANY more out there, but I want to focus on these two today.
I’ve been using email lists for almost the entirety of my business (13+ years), and they’ve always been SO KEY to just building my brand, building an audience, launching offerings, and so much more. I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but email lists are truly the only place you can own your audience info, because Instagram, TikTok, none of that is really yours, so email lists are such a foundational & secure way to grow your business and I cant recommend them enough.
Before we dive in, I will say that I use ConvertKit, and I’ve been using it for a few years and I really love it. However, I’m going to share my honest opinions here and keep it pretty fair! I’ll tell you right now, I’m not going to say ‘THIS PLATFORM IS THE BEST! IT WINS!’. because that’s bullshit. It all depends on your own personal business needs, so I’m gonna present all the info I can find & you can make the best choice for you.
I’ve also asked my friend Lexi who uses Flodesk to weigh in with her thoughts on it, to give you a bit more of an even opinion from people who use either platform.
p.s. The ConvertKit links used in this post are my affiliate links, and the Flodesk links are Lexi’s affiliate links (Lexi’s link will also score you 50% off your first year of Flodesk!).
Here’s how this is broken down —
✏️ The Quick Run-Down
✅ The Comparison Chart: Going over the basic shit like pricing, free trials, functionality, all that good stuff.
👩💻 My personal thoughts on ConvertKit
👏 An honest review on Flodesk, from Lexi Smith (from Dynamo Ultima)
😊 Which one is right for you? (My recommendations)
💻 Final thoughts!
1 / The Quick Run-Down
ConvertKit
Been in the game since 2013, founded by Nathan Barry, who’s also a very public-facing Founder & CEO, which I love (and a lot of entrepreneurs will know of him because of this).
From my perspective, and quickly looking back at their website, their ultimate mish is to help creators earn a living & share their work with their audience. They’re truly a platform for creators & business owners, and they have really extensive automations & sequences available, and the shit just works. As I’ll talk about below it’s a platform that you can grow into as your business & audience grows, too.
Flodesk
One of the newest players to the email marketing game, launched around 2020 (I can’t find exact launch dates), their huge focus is on design & visuals and sending emails people love to get.
They really go hard on this, and it’s why they’re known for it, and why a lot of business owners made the move to the platform. Another big focus is the flat rate pricing that doesn’t increase based on your subscriber count, and as this is such a flagship point of their brand (and something people love about it), I can’t see this changing anytime soon. Overall it’s a relatively simple platform that’s visually beautiful & really beginner friendly.
2 / The Comparison Chart
| ConvertKit | Flodesk | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | FREE for up to 1,000 subscribers (some limited access to certain features) Between 1,000 & 3,000 subscribers from $49 USD/month, pricing increasing from there when you reach 5,000, 8,000, 10,000 subscribers and so on. | $38 USD/month, no limits on subscriber count (But, you can score 50% off your first year if you use the Flodesk links in this post, though!) |
| Free Trial | Free for up to 1,000 subscribers, no credit card needed. No expiry date. For real, you never have to pay at all unless you go over the 1k subs, or you want access to more features. Also have a free 14-day trial, no credit card required. | 30 days free. No credit card required. |
| Design | 7.5/10 | Specific, I know, lol. Their templates have gotten a lot better recently, but if you compare them solely to Flodesk they don’t stack up quite as high, BUT I don’t think this should be a single determining factor specifically for choosing an email platform, in my opinion. | 10/10 | Flodesk is 100% known for their super clean design, both of the platform itself, and the email designs & templates. Obvs I respect this as a designer (and it is so fucking good, ugh). |
| Functionality & ease of use | Takes a bit to understand the platform with the amount of automations & tools available, but once you get it, the possibilities truly get blown wide open. | Very intuitive & easy to use interface, but functionality is limited in terms of the automations, workflows, etc. |
| Commerce options within the platform (sell your products directly) | Yes. Uses Stripe. 3.5%+30c transaction fee. Get paid out every week on Friday. Unlimited sales pages & products. | Yes. Uses Stripe. From an additional $26/month flat rate + Stripe processing fee. Bonus — They also offer VERY well designed simple sales page templates right within Flodesk. Unlimited sales pages & products. |
| Free Migration | Yes! This is a huge win for ConvertKit, in my opinion. If you sign up on a paid plan they will migrate your entire list (and automations, segments, everything, depending on your subscriber count), for FREE. | No. |
| Automation | Extensive automation & sequencing options, likely some of the best in the game. Also works easily with extensions like Deadline Funnel etc, to set up more advanced funnels. | Beginner-mid level automations. |
| Tagging & segmenting | 10/10, extensive options. | 7/10, pretty good & this has improved a lot since they launched, but it’s still not as extensive as other platforms. |
| Email deliverability Keep in mind this can be very subjective based on the quality of your list & the contents of your emails. | Consistently above 99% as an entire company. Personally mine is almost always 100%. They also share these statistics publicly, every month on their blog. | Mixed results, some people say Flodesk increased deliverability, some say it decreased a lot. Lexi's is a lifetime rate of 99.2% though! No public info that I can find where Flodesk share their overall deliverability. |
| Ask The Audience — What do you LOVE about it? (I asked people on Instagram & Threads for their opinions on each) | - How easy it is to create sequences & automations - Extensive options & features that other platforms don’t have - Connection to Facebook Ads - The Creator Network - Landing page conversions are high - Great blog & always sharing stories of their users - That it’s truly geared towards business owners - Top notch support - Tip jar feature | - Easy to add branding - Pre-designed layouts to choose from - Simplicity - No price increase as your list grows - Built in checkout & sales pages - The design & interface |
| Ask The Audience — What do you NOT LOVE about it? (I asked people on Instagram & Threads for their opinions on each) | - Editing & building emails, things aren’t in a super logical place - You can’t save a previously sent email as a template - Cost - Email designs aren’t as flexible as other platforms (but they’re getting better) | - No option to give subscribers to opt-out of certain segments/tags with one click (you can do this on ConvertKit with Link Triggers) - Very limited automations & segmentations - Not very funnel-friendly, can’t do advanced things - Cost - Not the most robust or in-depth analytics - Subscribers can't change their email address so they have to unsub & re-sub |
3 / My personal thoughts on ConvertKit
Like I mentioned, I’ve been using CK for a few years now and I really love it. I had also used it previously before I moved to MailChimp because I just didn’t need the extensive features of CK for a few years, until I did, lol. Here’s what I think about it!
It links seamlessly to the Squarespace Commerce API. I really dig using the SS Commerce, it’s just so clean and integrated to my site and it works. This is one of the main reasons I’m on CK, because I’ve got a bunch of back end automations & things set up for when people purchase certain products from my shop. (I believe MailChimp now also links to the SS Commerce API too, but Flodesk does not. It may be possible with Zapier, but I’m personally not interested in that route).
They’re really a platform for Creators, and they always have been. They highlight creators that use ConvertKit a lot, and they’re really just in the game to help us do our thing, which I dig. In researching for this post I also remembered how open they are about everything as a company, from their statistics like deliverability & open rates, even to their finances, which is pretty awesome. In talking to other people who use it, these things are big reasons why people love it as a company beyond just the product they offer, because their values align with ours.
Their support is really good & fast. In the past I remember having problems with them taking forever to respond, which is not ideal when you’re running an entire business & running launches using their platform, but they have massively improved their support in the last few years. They’re really fast on the replies and they’re always happy to help even with small CSS fixes on my forms, which a lot of platforms would tell you they can’t help you with (because when it comes to custom code most of them don’t want to know).
It’s a platform you can grow into. This was a pretty major reason I moved back to ConvertKit a few years ago, because it had the functionality I knew I would need in the long run, for things like Squarespace Commerce, and slightly more complicated automations on the back end for when people purchase certain products, or sign up to certain forms. Even now I feel really confident in my set up, and I know if my business was to grow even more, I could handle it & I would know how to set things up in ConvertKit (or I could ask for their help, knowing I would get it, too).
One of the few things that annoys me sometimes is the design features of the emails. They have gotten a lot better over the last year or so as I mentioned above with new & more flexible template designs, but even if some of the new templates look really good on Desktop, they go a bit whack on mobile which is annoying & sorta renders them a bit useless. I’m going to hit up their support about this though and see if they can make improvements.
Overall I love it and I’m not planning on moving anytime soon, because it would be a major detriment to my business and all the time I’ve spent setting up the automations & sequences in ConvertKit, even though my setup is not that extensive. There’s also no other platform that I’d even consider, to be honest. Maybe if Flodesk was more established and had the same level of features for automations & tagging etc, it’d be an option, but I’m also just not interested in getting distracted by shiny object syndrome, which I think happens a lot in business. (Do you actually need to change platforms or are you just bored and you want to fuck around with something new & pretty?? Yes I’m calling you, and my past-self out.)
4 / An honest opinion on Flodesk, from Lexi Cheng (Dynamo Ultima)
Lexi is my design & business BFF, and she uses Flodesk. She’s been using it for a few years, and I really wanted to give this comparison a fair shot so I asked if she’d share her thoughts on the platform, so here’s what she’s got to say about it. We have pretty similar businesses in terms of how we use email marketing, and I fully trust her opinions & thoughts, which is why I asked her to share ‘em with you too. Here’s her thoughts…
Years ago I was an avid ConvertKit subscriber, but I ended up switching to Flodesk because I really was having a hard time making ConvertKit look good (that has since changed!) and I was intrigued with their super low launch pricing. Honestly I was tired of the super complicated email funnels and wanted something simple and visual.
Here’s why I love Flodesk (and a couple things I disklike), and why I probably won’t switch to ConvertKit anytime soon…
Flodesk makes it really easy to make branded emails. It has an easy drag and drop system similar to Squarespace. I really love how emails look in Flodesk and personally prefer to open emails that are branded! Plain Jane emails with just text and blue links? Meh.
It’s really affordable. I pay $20 a month which I believe was the original price I got grandfathered in to, along with a lot of other people from when they first launched. Even without that launch pricing it’s still so low compared to other platforms because it’s flat rate pricing that doesn’t increase based on your subscribers, which no one else does, so it makes it really affordable. p.s. You can also get Flodesk here (or via any of the links on this page) for 50% off your first year!
You can set up workflows. If you need to deliver a PDF? Free workshop? Welcome series… you can do all of that. These automations are simple and easy to create.
You can make the actual FORMS and landing pages to add to your website look beautiful and branded to your business. I really hate ugly and hard to design forms on other email marketing platforms.
Probably the only thing that has bothered me is I can’t add links to emails to have people segment themselves OUT of a launch series. Maybe someone is not interested and doesn’t wanna receive my launch emails? Too bad. They have to, or else they choose to unsubscribe from everything. Honestly though this is the only thing that bothers me.
I like to keep my business fairly simple and don’t need super complex automations, funnels, and crazy things going on. I just need simple segments, forms, and workflows so Flodesk works for me!
5 / Which one is right for you?
Of course I want you to take all of this info in, do your own research, and decide which platform is a good fit for you, but if you want my opinion on what I’d recommend, here it is!
I would recommend ConvertKit for you if…
You’re looking for an email marketing platform you can grow into without the worry in the back of your mind that you’ll need to change again in 6 months when your needs expand
You have extensive back end funnels & automations
You’re not as concerned about price, you just want the right features to be able to do exactly what your business needs
You’re using another platform that isn’t working for you (like MailChimp, Active Campaign, etc), you’ve got a decent sized list (5,000+), and you want someone to handle the entire migration for you
You want to use a more established platform that has many years of experience under their belt, with the functionality & support to back it up
You have under 1,000 subscribers and don’t want to invest any $$ on a platform just yet, but you want to start building your list (because it’s totes free for under 1k subs! with some limited feature access though).
I would recommend Flodesk for you if…
You’re new to email marketing
You majorly value design & aesthetics over functionality
You want a really simple, intuitive, easy to use solution
You don’t want to spend too much $$ on a platform
You don’t have extensive automations, funnels, or workflows
You want a simple & clean checkout/payment processor with built in sales page templates
You’re not worried about having to move platforms down the road if your needs do shift and your business & needs expand
6 / Final Thoughts
I mentioned it before but I’ll say it again — don’t get distracted by shiny object syndrome and think you need to change platforms if you really don’t.
I feel like way too many entrepreneurs do this (I used to, a lot), when they really don’t need to. Obviously if your needs change & you really need to shift, then do it! But if you’re just doing it because you’re bored, then maybe re-think it or hold off a bit longer.
From my knowledge it’s also really not a great idea to be swapping and changing your email platforms really often, like every year. This can start to affect deliverability & open rates, and in general it also means you lose access to consistent statistics for your emails, which can be really handy to track your progress.
I think it’s likely many businesses would outgrow a platform like Flodesk at some point, unless a) they really up their game in terms of automations & functionality, or b) you’re extremely focused on keeping your business & email lists as simple as possible, forevs. Also, this isn’t the end of the world, because you can move if & when you really need to.
But regardless, I hope this comparison breakdown is helpful for you if you’re considering either one of these two platforms, and it helps you make a decision on which one is right for YOU and your business. At the end of the day what matters most in my opinion is just getting started with email marketing and building your list, your brand, your voice, and your connection with your audience, and the platform really doesn’t matter that much… Until it does. 😉
This is my personal affiliate link.
This is Lexi’s affiliate link.
