ConvertKit Review: Best Email Marketing Platform for Creators in 2023?
With the global email user base predicted to reach around 4.5 billion in 2024 and an ROI of $36 per dollar spent on email marketing, it’s pretty safe to say that email marketing is still king. There’s simply no other marketing technique that’s as successful as converting potential customers. But let’s face it, having a great product or service just won’t cut it anymore. You also need a solid marketing campaign to help drive your message across.
This is where ConvertKit comes in.
ConvertKit is an email marketing platform with features tailored for professional online content creators. Their offerings support creators with getting their messages opened, read, and, most importantly, leading people to purchase.
But is ConvertKit the right tool for you? This review hopefully helps you make the right choice.
What is ConvertKit?
ConvertKit is a full-featured email marketing platform for content creators, i.e. social media influencers, professional bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters, and the like. They offer an impressive range of automation tools to help individuals set up a robust marketing strategy for continued growth. ConvertKit was founded in 2013 and is now one of the fastest-growing email marketing companies.
How Much is ConvertKit?
ConvertKit offers three plans for “every stage of your creator business.”
Their free plan will allow you to send emails to under 1,000 subscribers. Although it’s slightly limited feature-wise, it’s ideal for identifying and targeting your audience. If you upgrade from the free plan, you can take advantage of the 14-day free trial.
The premium plans, Creator and Creator Pro include all the features from the free plan. The Creator plan is ideal for automating campaigns, building your email list, developing trust, and increasing conversions.
The Creator Pro is there to help scale your business. Its premium features are subscriber engagement scoring, deliverability reporting for open and click rate info, and access to a Sparkloop plan for newsletter referrals.
Here are the current costs for the Creator and Creator Pro plans, from 300 to 20,000 subscribers.
|
No of Subscribers |
Creator Plan |
Creator Pro Plan | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Monthly |
Yearly/Monthly |
Monthly |
Yearly/Monthly |
|
Up to 300 |
$15 |
$108/$9 |
$29 |
$290/$25 |
|
Up to 1,000 |
$29 |
$290/$25 |
$59 |
$590/$50 |
|
Up to 3,000 |
$49 |
$490/$41 |
$79 |
$790/$66 |
|
Up to 5,000 |
$79 |
$790/$66 |
$111 |
$1,110/$93 |
|
Up to 8,000 |
$99 |
$990/$83 |
$139 |
$1,390/$116 |
|
Up to 10,000 |
$119 |
$1,190/$100 |
$167 |
$1,670/$140 |
|
Up to 15,000 |
$149 |
$1,490/$125 |
$209 |
$2,090/$175 |
|
Up to 20,000 |
$179 |
$1,790/$150 |
$251 |
$2,510/$210 |
ConvertKit’s plans and pricing structure goes up to 500,000 + subscribers, but for higher subscriber numbers, you’ll have to contact them directly for a demo. If you decide to pay annually, you’ll receive two months free, and both plans include a 30-day free trial.
ConvertKit Features
The ConvertKit platform is easy to use, versatile, and has a wide variety of exciting features tailored for content creators at all stages of their business.
Grow Your Audience
Landing Pages
ConvertKit has free unlimited landing page templates on all plans. Even with no coding experience, these completely customizable templates will help you create a landing page that’s fully responsive, attractive, and converts new leads. Because it’s also integrated with Unsplash, users get a selection of over 100,000 royalty-free images.
Sign Up Forms
ConvertKit also offers responsive signup form templates that you can modify to fit your brand. Unlimited custom fields mean you can collect the specific information you need to send targeted content. Their frictionless forms can be embedded into websites, including WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, and many other popular website or landing page builders. Free unlimited forms are available on all plans.
Connect with Fans
Email Designer
The email designer feature helps you to stay on point with messages. The text editor offers inline styling options for an easier writing process and assists with designing simple, structured, and functional emails that inspire action. You can personalize headers, add lists, CTA buttons, images, and more. In addition, you can create as many email templates as you wish.
ConvertKit has reliable delivery and average open rates. For example, according to their latest delivery report, their system-wide delivery rate was 99.7% and their average open rate was 44%. So you can rest assured that your emails will successfully land in inboxes.
Automate Your Marketing
Visual Automation
The visual automation tool is one of ConvertKit’s best features for a targeted marketing strategy. Here are some of the tasks you can achieve with it:
- Create subscriber exclusions based on specific variables like segments or tags to ensure the right emails go to the right customers.
- Create simple automation to send content to your targeted audience at specific times.
- Use targeted entry point automation to ensure your audience follows your pre-built subscriber journeys.
- Use logical progressions to specify follow-up actions once a customer performs a specific action based on the form information.
The visual automation templates can help get you started. However, this feature is only available on the Creator and Creator Pro plans.
Income Generation
Commerce
ConvertKit provides an easy way to try out money-making ideas and is an ideal platform if you have a product to sell. Without needing to invest in an eCommerce platform , here are some examples of the products sold on ConvertKit:
- Albums or singles
- Coaching sessions subscriptions
- eBooks
- Photos or video presets
- Paid newsletter subscriptions
Sponsor Network
While you focus on content creation, their Sponsor Network feature can connect you with premium advertisers who will support your work in exchange for publicity amongst your audience. If you publish at least once a week and have a minimum of 10,000 email subscribers, you can apply for this opportunity. ConvertKit handles the negotiations, sales, reporting, and all other groundwork necessary to make the deal a success.
The service costs 20% of total sponsorship revenue and 3.5% to process payments.
ConvertKit Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Landing page editor available on all plans
- Easy switch with free migration
- Tight account security with two-factor authentication
- Approximately 90 prominent website integration tools
- High deliverability and opening rate
- A “tip jar” as an additional income stream
- Option to sell products and services, i.e., paid newsletters
- Plenty of help, including live chat and email support, how-to guides, and a comprehensive knowledge base
Cons:
- Higher price point than some alternatives. The cost increases with more advanced features and a growing subscriber list
- Limited text-based email templates
- A/B testing of email subject only
- No automation features available on the free plan
- Some functionality is not newbie-friendly, like tagging and segment
- Limited reporting and analysis
ConvertKit Alternatives
For an idea of how ConvertKit compares to alternatives, here’s a quick synopsis of three of the best email marketing software on the market.
Mailchimp – Most Popular Alternative
Mailchimp is one of the most popular alternatives to ConvertKit. Their paid plans start at $20 per month for 500 contacts. Like ConvertKit, you can use their email editor for complete control over your content designs, or use their curated email templates. In addition, Mailchimp offers an automated workflow feature similar to ConvertKit, where something happens based on your reader’s action. For instance, they’ll automatically receive specific content based on their selected preferences. However, it doesn’t provide a visual builder, which could make it difficult to set up.
EngageBay – For Increased Marketing Functionalities
EngageBay is a one-stop shop for marketing, sales, activities to discover new opportunities, features to keep your customers happy, and more. It offers automation, email broadcasts and sequence, A/B landing page testing, and many other standard digital marketing functionality. Its standout features include video templates, CRM software, helpdesk support, and live chat software.
EngageBay has packages to suit your requirements. For example, the “All-in-One” paid plans start at $12.74 per user per month, including a 15% discount for a two-year contract.
Sendinblue – Cheaper Alternative
Sendinblue is a French email marketing solution and is one of the cheapest available on the market. They deliver an extensive range of marketing tools and allow you to customize features for a package to suit your needs and budget. Their price point is one of the cheapest as they charge based on your monthly email volume and not the size of your email list. They offer standard email marketing tools, in addition to SMS marketing and customer support, in six languages.
Their customizable starter plan is £16/$19.22 per month based on 20,000 emails.
ConvertKit’s FAQs
Why are emails going to spam?
This is a popular question for the deliverability team. There are several reasons why emails end up in the Spam folder. These include misleading or Spam triggering subject lines, no unsubscribe link included in the message, or it consisting of too many attachments, for instance. For more reasons, check out their deliverability podcast.
Why do subscribers bounce?
Many reasons cause subscriber bounce, and there are two types—temporary (soft) and permanent (hard) bounces. ConvertKit protects your sender reputation and ensures your messages aren’t bounced by removing the permanent bounces from your active subscriber list.
How often should I send emails to my list?
Read the room. If you send daily emails to a predominantly cold list, that’s a cue to send messages less frequently. But if you send daily emails which are frequently read, then daily emails sounds like a winning strategy for you.
Consider starting with two to three a month, then gradually increasing to two to three times per week, which seems to be the sweet spot.
Use Findstack to Make an Informed Decision on the Best Email Marketing Software
Choosing the right email marketing platform is crucial for getting great ROI. And ConvertKit targets people who want to make money through blogging, for example, or those already established in the content creation space. They provide several features to help creators grow their businesses and benefit from other income streams.
However, their reporting feature is slightly disappointing, with only basic features compared to comparable platforms. And their pricing is somewhat expensive.
Findstack helps you whittle down your choices and select the right software to fit your business. Our helpful resources, expert advice, and tailored insights spanning the most popular software categories mean you can find the tools you need for a prosperous business. In addition, our discounts and exclusive deals help you to save money on service and software purchases.
