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 |
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Segment |
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Deployment | Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based |
Support | 24/7 (Live rep), Chat, Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base, Phone Support |
Training | Documentation |
Languages | English |
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
The visual automation templates can help get you started. However, this feature is only available on the Creator and Creator Pro plans.
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:
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.
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 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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I've only used ConvertKit for about a year and have had a good experience with it. I switched to ConvertKit from MailChimp after hearing so many rave reviews from other business owners. It's email automation features are second to none I've encountered. You can also integrate it with many third parties
It doesn't have nearly as many features as Mailchimp. It's also expensive compared to other systems. It doesn't have a landing page builder.
Email automation and taking control of my email marketing strategy
Responsiveness of CS if there are any issues when building broadcasts, forms or land pages.
Limited design for broadcasts and forms.
Conversion rates for emails to determine IRR on email marketing campaigns.
Convert kit makes it easy to set up newsletters, email autoresponders (visually) and the A/B testing is so easy to understand to someone who has a huge phobia of tech (like me.) When I was too lazy to set up a website, Convertkit was a lifesaver because they allow you to create landing pages and I was able to start collecting emails before I ever laid a finger on my website. I tried two other email systems before convertkit and the deliverability is waaaaay better. My email open rate went up but my emails didn't change. It's one of the reasons I am definitely sticking with convertkit. Last, the support with convertkit is amazing!!! They are fast and super polite. There are very few companies whose support I am impressed with but they are definitely one of them. I had a billing error happen around June and they fixed it in less than 30 minutes.
Convertkit is missing some crucial things. The template selection is scarce, so I create my own which takes way longer. Seriously, I live for templates and they need an upgrade. I would love if you could set up your own domain like you can in someother programs. especially since you can create landing pages. I really wish the analytics were more detailed. Convertkit literally gives you the basics and thats it. At the very least they need to make it so you can integrate google analytics. I also don't like that I am so limited in the editor. Maybe that's what keeps the deliver rate sky high but I can't even use my brand fonts.
I am solving the problem of being able to send emails that actually make it to my email list. AND having a pretty self explanitory interface so that everything is easy to figure out on my own or look up.
Easy to use. Has everything you need. Tag subscribers.
Cannot format email with beautiful template like mailchimp.
Email sequences.
I love the ability to be able to tag what people are interested in so that I can send follow-up emails. It also immediately pulls things from my blog and creates drafts. I also like that there is only one list to have to content with.
The emails that you send out aren't as pretty as they are with some other sites. It's definitely function over form. Wish there were more landing page designs.
This is allowing me to interact with my email list, and also create landing pages. It can also integrate with my website effortlessly through a plugin, so that's great too.
I can automate my newsletter, which allows me to "set it and forget it". I can also create landing pages, forms, and process payments all in one place.
Customer service is not ideal. You can only contact customer service through a chat window (vs. phone) and in my experience, there is always a delay in response, each step of the way as you exchange comments/questions back and forth. I also had an experience where a customer service rep directed me to do something, which created an irreversible issue for my newsletter automation. I'm sure she had good intentions, but didn't have the necessary knowledge to guide me appropriately.
creating landing pages and forms to use on my website and accepting payments
Convertkit does a great job of allowing you to segment your audience, creating appropriate automations and workflows.
It's not quite as well known as other platforms, but I think it can be in the future.
Emailing my lists with the ability of automations and segmentation
ConvertKit is barebones. It's simple. It's not made for people doing complicated list stuff.
It's simple. It's not made for people doing complicated list stuff.
Emailing and organizing my contacts
It's low cost Affordable Billing options are good
Not very user friendly or intuitive Doesn't integrate with ANYTHING else (technology wise, we have to use zapier zaps to connect it to our CRM)
Email automation sequences and forms We also use their visual automations to connect a form to an email sequence We can download subscribers to forms and see basic reports on how people are engaging with our email campaigns
If you are a SMB and looking to send on a non-white labeled email platform this is a good choice. They obtain great delivery and keep a clean reputation.
Customer service is among the worst I have seen in the industry. Weeks go by without a response. Additionally, delivery team is very vague on what they expect to from you (stats and content) which makes it hard to be a responsible mailer.
Achieving delivery to hard to reach subscribers
The graphic designs for templates were an attractive aspect of the product.
Not good with CRM needs were not available at the time of purchase; and it cost too much to upgrade.
The graphics design for templates; they are intuitive to use.
I love the visual automations and tagging. I've used plenty of email marketing tools before -- Mailchimp, Drip, HubSpot -- and ConvertKit is powerfully easy.
Technical problems. So. Many. Technical problems. My story: So I thought everything was humming along fine until I started getting emails and comments from my subscribers: 'Hey pal -- where's part 2 of the 3-part course I signed up for!' It seemed that folks in certain sequences weren't getting their emails. In fact, some subscribers weren't even getting welcome emails! So I complained to support (nice folks) and they said someone was on it. Well 11+ days later and none of the problems have been fixed. So it looks like I'm gonna have to switch to a more reliable email marketing system -- which sucks. Because it was easy to use. Also: I dislike how when someone finishes a sequence, they call it a 'unsubscriber'. Makes things super-confusing.
If it works properly, it makes it easier to build complex email automations.
The lady that contacted me to do the demo spent a generous amount of time answering my questions.
WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE EVER! You have to prove to them when you have a bigger list that you have at least 20% Open rate which is impossible and unrealistic when your email marketing ends up on the gmail promotions folder.
This is the most ridiculous email marketing company ever! The lady at the customer service chat named Courtney was unprofessional and even deleted my account even though I showed her many screenshots of my sales on mailchimp. RUDE! Will take my business elsewhere!