If you’ve wondered which email marketing system is best for your business you’re in the right place. My favorite choice is ConvertKitand it’s what I’ve found to be best for my business. But even though it’s my favorite doesn’t mean it’s the best for your business.
How to Add ConvertKit to Showit
A while back I switched my email list from MailerLite to ConvertKit. The main reason I switched is that my subscriber forms weren’t showing up on my Showit website. Once again Mailerlite’s customer service proved to be not great. I had been thinking about switching to ConvertKit anyway but I decided to do it sooner rather than later because this problem. Thankfully my list wasn’t very large at the time so it wasn’t too big of a deal. But if you pick the right email marketing system to start with for your business you won’t have to worry about changing it later like I had to.
There are many email marketing systems out there to choose from but the most popular are ConvertKit, Mailerlite, Flodesk and MailChimp. I’d never recommend using MailChimp and hesitate to recommend Mailerlite. But when it comes to ConvertKit and Flodesk it’s a close tie for which is better than the other.
Which Email Marketing System is Best for Your Creative Business?
Easiest to Use
When you’re choosing an email marketing system ease of use is one of the most important things you need to consider. If it’s extremely difficult for you to send an email you’re never going to send out emails which defeats the purpose of having an email list in the first place.
Flodesk
Flodesk by far is the easiest-to-use option available. When Flodesk was being developed user experience was one of their main concerns and it shows in their platform. Flodesk has a simple and clean interface without all the “fluff” that some of the other platforms have. This makes it very easy to send email campaigns, create workflows and tag subscribers. One of the best features of Flodesk is that you can pre-upload all of your brand colors to make it easier to customize emails without having to grab your color codes every time you need to send an email campaign.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit is also very easy to use but offers more features than Flodesk does. This can make it take a little longer to learn the platform in comparison. That being said ConvertKit has lots of well-written help articles so you shouldn’t have any troubles using it. ConvertKit is still very easy to use even if it’s not “the easiest” and to me the extra features that they offer make it worth it using instead of Flodesk. You can easily create email templates to use for your newsletters which is a major time saver.
Mailerlite
Mailerlite has a very hard learning curve and is significantly more complex than Flodesk and even ConvertKit. It looks me weeks to figure out how to use it initially because it’s not intuitive to use. Once you do get the hang of using it it’s okay to use but the learning curve is very frustrating.
MailChimp
MailChimp is terrible when it comes to ease of use. It’s the “WordPress” of email marketing systems aka. overly complex, hard to learn and more expensive in the long run compared to other options. This is the main reason why I don’t recommend ever using it. I’m very naturally tech-savvy and I could never figure out how to even use it.
Ease of Use Winner: Flodesk with ConvertKit in a Close Second
Customer Support
Customer support is another key decision-maker in which email marketing system you should use. If you have a problem with your email list you want to be able to find a solution quickly and easily.
ConvertKit
From my experience, ConvertKit has the best customer service. They offer chat and email support and have lots of help articles to troubleshoot your problems. ConvertKit is constantly offering free webinars about using their platform and email marketing in general which is also very helpful.
Flodesk
Flodesk’s customer service certainly isn’t the worst but you do have to rely on email support. You do not have the option to chat with someone if you have a problem. They do have a very active Facebook Group where you can ask questions to other users for help.
MailChimp
I never actually got around to trying to contact MailChimp’s email support because the platform was so terrible to use. That being said if the customer support is anything like the platform itself I’m going to guess it’s not good.
Mailerlite
Mailerlite’s customer support is hit or miss on whether it’s going to be good or not. Sometimes it’s okay but usually, it’s bad. At the very least it’s slow because you usually have to go back and forth with them multiple times to get a problem solved.
One time I had problems setting up workflows and another time my subscriber forms weren’t showing up on my Showit website. Both times after going back and forth with customer support I ended up accidentally figuring out the problems myself. During the back and forth emails, they kept saying it was a problem on my end even though it was a problem on theirs. This is when I finally decided it was time to switch to ConvertKit instead of Mailerlite.
Customer Support Winner: ConvertKit
Pricing
While you don’t always want to go with the cheapest option price does matter when choosing an email marketing system. Keep in mind that the size of your email list aka. how many subscribers you have will make a big difference on which one is actually cheaper.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit offers a free plan with a 300-subscriber limit and some limited features. ConvertKit increases the cost of your plan based on which plan tier you’re on and how many subscribers you have. All of their plans include unlimited forms and email campaigns per month. If you want some of the more advanced features like automation you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Flodesk
When it comes to pricing Flodesk has the simplest structure and can be the cheapest option if you have a large email list. No matter how many subscribers you have or how many email campaigns you send out you’ll always pay the same price per month and get unlimited features. Unlike the other platforms, Flodesk does not offer a free plan option.
Mailerlite
Mailerlite offers a free plan that goes up to 1000 subscribers but puts a cap on how many email campaigns you can send per month. They also increase the cost of your plan based on how many subscribers you have. Automations come with the free plan but if you want any other advanced features you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
MailChimp
Not only is MailChimp’s pricing structure confusing but they also have a very different pricing structure compared to the other platforms. They do technically have a free plan. But their pricing is based on how many times someone has signed for your list instead of per subscriber.
Let’s say that you have three different freebies available on your website in exchange for subscribing to your email list. Now let’s pretend that someone goes to your website and subscribes to all three freebies. If your using ConvertKit this would count as one subscriber. MailChimp on the other hand charges per list signup. Each freebie would be a separate list which means that subscribers would count as three instead of one because they’re on three different lists. Eventually, this is going to get very expensive especially if you have a lot of freebies. Not to mention if they subscribe and unsubscribe more than once.
Pricing Winner: Depends on How Large Your Email List is
Features & Integrations
All of the four different platforms have different features and integrations based on which plan you’re on. It’s important to make sure that whichever one you pick works with other software you use in your business. All of these will work on most common website platforms like Showit. But if you sell products from your website you need to make sure that it integrates with your e-commerce functionality.
ConvertKit Features & Integrations
Flodesk Features & Integrations
Mailerlite Features & Integrations
MailChimp Features & Integrations
Features Winner: Depends on What You Need
Final Thoughts: Which Email Marketing System is Best for Your Creative Business?
Overall I personally think ConvertKit is the winner between the platforms.
Winner Tie: ConvertKit vs Flodesk
ConvertKit and Flodesk are the clear winners because of their ease of use, good customer service and affordability. What will help you decide between these two platforms are the features and integrations. Flodesk is more limited than ConvertKit but this may or may not be an issue for you. Both of these platforms are commonly used in the creative business space. You can’t go wrong with choosing either one as long as it has all of the integrations you need.
Blog Update Winner: ConvertKit
One thing that I keep noticing recently is that quite a few people who’ve tried Flodesk are now moving back to Convertkit because Flodesk does not offer enough analytics for their businesses. Flodesk is still fairly new so it could be when you’re reading this that that’s not the case. Analytics are very important sothat you can send more successfull emails. This makes ConvertKit the winner.
Third Place: Mailerlite
Even though I had problems with using Mailerlite it’s still not the worst option and it may work fine for you. I know of quite a few people that have had success with it that just wasn’t the case for me. I wouldn’t totally count it out as a contender for your emailer marketing system but you’ll probably like ConvertKit better.
Last Place/Don’t Ever Use: MailChimp
Because of its complexity, hard-to-use design and borderline scam-like pricing structure I’d never recommend using MailChimp.
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