ConvertKit Reviews & Product Details
ConvertKit’s popularity among bloggers and content creators is credited to the platform’s ability to remove the complications behind email marketing. The software provides a seamless experience that ensures they can focus on creating content that their audience will appreciate. ConvertKit’s interface is simple and comes equipped with simple design forms and landing pages that truly convert.
| Capabilities |
|
|---|---|
| Segment |
|
| Deployment | Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based |
| Support | 24/7 (Live rep), Chat, Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base, Phone Support |
| Training | Documentation |
| Languages | English |
ConvertKit Pros and Cons
- Reliable deliverability
- Interface is simple and easy to use
- Broadcast email functionality is seamless and convenien
- A choice of 50+ templates and quality themes
- Handy additional elements like a countdown timer and past edition feed
- Lacks integration with ecommerce platforms
- Not ideal for multiple clients
- Solely specializing in email means that you’ll need heavier integration all round
- Clunky builder
- Lacks spam testing
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.
The best thing about ConvertKit is that it is novice friendly and has easy navigation. It has tons of pre-built email templates, landing pages, and form templates that you can use after minor modifications. It also has an intuitive list management feature. You can add them individually or in bulk, and they can also subscribe to your list using your landing page and form. Later, you can organize them by tag, category, and source.
It has all the features that I need for my email marketing. There is nothing to dislike.
I use its email newsletter feature to send offers and service updates to my customers.
User-friendly layout despite tons of features. Automations forced me to switch from MailerLite to ConvertKit. You can tag leads and send them to different funnels etc. Then send personalized emails using automations. Custom fields make these automations even more powerful. Cherry on the top is excellent customer support. Moving from MailerLite was very easy. Just import the list and you are good to go with ConvertKit.
It becomes pricey as your list grows. It has steep learning curve especially when you are just starting out on email automations. Their email signup forms are very basic where you can change font, background color etc only. This can be improved definitely.
Putting users in automation funnels. And I am using it as a transactional email platform too. I t tags users based on onboarding completion steps. Then we see where users are leaving the most so we improve that plus users are sent email to complete onboarding from that specific step.
It is free to start with upto 1000 contacts. Which is too good for any starting marketer.
As on Date Nothing much. I wish GUI good
ConvertKit, provides, cost effective email marketing solutions for beginner marketer. As beginners, cannot afford costly tools. Convertkit helps them.
Convertkit allows you to create landing pages that solve specific use cases for getting customers to your product. Without the convert kit I wouldn't be able to optimize my business.
What is least helpful with Convertkit is that I don't like that there aren't any login integrations with google or single sign-on capabilities. It's hard to remember passwords.
I mainly use convertkit for email marketing purposes. This help solves all the use cases I must address when trying to traffic customers to my landing page. My business has increased by over 30% by using convertkit.
Simple set up and easy to use. Also the emails dont drop into spam or the google promotions tab.
Nothing really. I've found it pretty easy to use
Stops my email content going into spam
Customer service and willingness to help
few dislikes, the only thing is the interface SOMETIMES glitches but every software is like that
Im connecting ConvertKit email automations to my landing pages for my business and cannot wait to see the results
Simple user interface that is easy to use. I also love the automations and how easy it is to duplicate sequences for new campaigns.
Only downside is I wish I could add a subscriber to a sequence from said subscribers main "profile" page.
ConvertKit allows me to send emails to my list via schedules, one-off broadcasts, or automations triggered by actions. I love the different options and appreciate the simplicity and how they've split up the features.
It automates all the processes very quickly and is very user Friendly.
Pricing can be lowered so more user can use it.
I used it for my Email Marketing campaign.
The tutorials and chat/email help are Great! Every time I ask a question, the representative responds quickly, with detailed information, AND includes links to additional resources, usually their very clear, step-by-step tutorials that include pictures and sometimes automations that you can copy and paste into your own account.
I haven't found anything I dislike yet - oh, I changed my web hosting and had to re-authenticate my domain to be able to send my broadcasts. This was a small speedbump but tech support and tutorials gave me all the information to complete that process quickly.
I like using ConvertKit so it's helping me enjoy writing emails and communications to my list. I LOVE the automations - the graphic interface allows me to clearly map out a series of steps. The tagging system is great for me. I have a few special interest groups and about once a quarter, I email my list and ask the members to pick their preferred interests by clicking a link, and then they're automatically tagged! (Well, they're tagged because I set up the integration following the tutorial!!) Also, A/B testing of headlines is super easy to use. I was always confounded by that but the way ConvertKit works it makes it really easy to see which headline gets the best open rates and response rates.
It's a great and simple tool that has helped me to create marketing campaigns super easily and with a high level of security and professional outlook
Is possible the paid plan might be a bit too expensive to my taste
Faster and well-tracked campaigns
Handy FAQs to solve how-to steps and on-time Custome Service chat support to answer questions about the products inside Convertkit, unlike another counterpart which provides a bot or delayed response.
The pricing is much expensive compared to Mailchimp and other marketing landing tool. If the user subscription is lowered, say $20 per month up to 1000 subscribers....
It is a great Automation builder with its user-friendly navigation templates to follow and build your form using custom fields readily available for easy usage and completion.
As a digital marketer, I have used a wide range of email marketing services and here is why I belive Convertkit is #1. Almost every other email marketing service has the same flaw: they attempt to be a 1-stop shop. Meaning they dilute their main service with alternate features. A jack-of-all-trades but a master of none. Convertkit simply hyper focuses on email and getting you the most in-depth data, making them the master of email marketing.
The downside of having a service that solely specializes in email means that you will have to integrate with a large number of additional services to complete your marketing system.
They provide very in-depth data and tracking regarding behavior, actions and reporting for email campaigns, automation and broadcasts.
The tagging feature is really great because we've been able to keep customers separated based on purchase or what they've signed up for. This way we can better target our emails. The automations/rules was a big game changer. Through that, we've automated so much in our business, which has saved our assistant a lot of time to be doing other important tasks for us. All around an excellent product. I can't imagine running a business without it anymore.
I would like it if more other products naturally integrated with Converkit so we didn't need to use a service like Zapier so much. It seems most other services naturally integrate with mailchimp or constant contact, maybe because those companies are bigger? I'm hoping as Convertkit grows, there will be a lot more native integrations.
It is helping us better organize our customers so they get the most relevant emails for their problem. It is helping us automate our business and better collect information from customers, which is helping us know our customer better.
- GDPR compliant privacy-focused tool - Offers forms & landing pages to collect subscribers - Simple & purpose oriented landing pages - User-friendly UI - Easy email import & migration
- Sends email to subscribers to confirm their subscription - Though it's free to start but becomes expensive as your list grows - Not offer to create landing pages from scratch - URL of the landing pages are so wired they could have had a separate domain for this
Convertkit helps me build relationships with my audience in the form of an email as well as generate leads for my business. It saved me more hours by simplifying my email marketing efforts.
I enjoyed the weekly training Convertkit offered to their community whereas, with ActiveCampaign, I enjoy the monthly calls with an account manager to help optimize the CRM system.
I did not like the cost per subscriber as the email list was projected to grow. I would have liked to have more monthly calls to talk about some of the issues that come up with optimizing the list.
At this time I am no longer using Convertkit. However, I still use their lead magnets to help optimize my website traffic and provide great content for my clients.