Convertkit Review: Is this the Best Email Marketing Service?

This Convertkit review will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Convertkit: Advantages, disadvantages, price, capabilities, and weaknesses.

Convertkit is an email marketing service.

Have you noticed anything strange about Convertkit reviews?

ConvertKit is a newer email marketing service but it has created a lot of buzz which has turned many people’s heads.

It has also led to a hot debate on whether it is the best email marketing software in the market.

I am writing this convertkit review mainly because I have used it in some of my websites.

So, I am giving you a real user’s opinion.

 

 

Affiliate disclosure: I promote Convertkit and therefore I shall get a commission if you purchase the product using my link. However, you shall not pay anything extra. You shall gain practical insights from this review which shall enable you to make an informed decision.

Let’s dive in:

Who was Convertkit email marketing service created for?

Convertkit as an email marketing service provider was created for professional bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters and course creators to enable them to access easier email marketing.

Therefore, just as you cannot judge a fish by its inability to climb a tree, don’t judge Convertkit it doesn’t deliver what it was not created to do.

You need to understand this, otherwise the Convertkit review will not make much sense.

 

Convertkit Pricing

Price is an important aspect of any email marketing tool considering the fact that you pay for the service depending on the number of subscribers.

 

Does Convertkit have a free trial period?

Yes.

Convertkit has a free 14-days trial period in which you pay nothing. I have heard of others who try Convertkit for 30 days free. I am et to contact Convertkit and find out if this is true.

 

How much does Convertkit cost?

Maybe, the best question should be: How much are you willing to pay for your email list?

The cheapest plan on Convertkit costs $29 for 0-500 subscribers.

What do you think about Convertkit pricing?

Read on to find my answer.

 

How does Convertkit Pricing compare with other email marketing software in terms of prices?

Look  at these ConvertKit Pricing plans

 

The one thing I love about ConvertKit is the ability to get all features regardless of the plans that you choose.

This means that if I have 100 subscribers and you have 5000 subscribers, we all access the same features.

The only excluded feature from lower tiers is the free platform migration which is only available to plans that cost over $79 or the ability to have more than 5,000 subscribers.

They only give you free migration from an existing email marketing service if you have more than 5,000 contacts.

Ordinarily, you will need to pay Convertkit $29 for up to 1000 subscribers, $49 for a list of up to 3000 subscribers and $79 for a list of up to $5000 subscribers. Convertkit pricing, just like in other email marketing services, increases with increase in the number of subscribers.

 

Is Convertkit the cheapest email marketing tool?

No.

There are other email service providers (ESPs) out there that are way cheaper than Convertkit.

Look at this:

However, you also know that the cheapest email marketing system may not necessarily be the best.

Then why are people talking about migrating to Convertkit?

Maybe Convertkit has some amazing features.

Read on to discover.

 

Is Convertkit the best newsletter marketing service for me?

It depends on what you are doing.

 

I recommend Convertkit for the following people:

If you want to create ultra-targeted email campaigns, then it’ll be great for you.

Convertkit can help you in tagging and segmenting focused automated email campaigns that target specific contacts in your email list.

It also has a nice inbuilt landing page editor which makes the management of end-to-end campaigns from one tool possible and blissful.

 

I don’t recommend Convertkit if you want to send visual emails

Let me tell you one thing.

Convertkit has only three email templates and all of them are text-based.

What does this mean?

It means that if you want to send media-rich emails, you will be limited.

But there is a catch. Did you know that sending emails that are full of images and videos may lead to lower delivery rates?

It is a subject worth exploring in another article.

Convertkit does not allow you to upload your email templates.

If you want such functionality, then clearly you are not going to get it. You may like to stay with MailerLite or MailChimp which have a ton of email templates.

 

I don’t recommend Convertkit for you if you don’t have a nice email marketing budget

If you don’t have a lot of budget, don’t go for Convertkit.

This comes after analyzing the Convertkit pricing comparison with respect to other email marketing companies.

It is sad that Convertkit targets junior bloggers and creatives without providing affordable prices.

I believe that bloggers who are starting out deserve some little time like a longer trial period to get momentum and collect email subscribers worth paying for.

 

Convertkit Review

Convertkit review: Ease of Use – Is Convertkit easy to use?

Yes.

Unlike other email marketing services, the learning curve is not such steep.

In fact, when I started using Convertkit, I was able to move around and create nice email campaigns without contacting customer support or Convertkit resources available online.

The lacking details may require some html and css skills especially in email formatting.

 

Convertkit review: Newsletter Creation: Is Convertkit great for creating emails?

Convertkit Email editor

Although the editor loads faster and is easy to use, it looks basic compared to the editors of other email marketing services.

It has basic functionality such as regular text, bulleted and ordered lists, horizontal lines, simple images and file uploads.

It lacks ability to insert visual elements such as video, gif, images and social media buttons.

 

Convertkit review: Personalization

Convertkit is very easy to personalize.

You can create conditional logic with Convertkit using If, Then and Else logic.

The use of conditional logic is coding-based.

 

Convertkit review: Email types – Which email types does Convertkit support?           

Convertkit allows sending of various email types such as classic newsletters, sequences (autoresponders), automations, A/B testing (for subject lines only) and creation of landing pages.

 

Convertkit review: Email Templates and Designs

Convertkit has three responsive email templates.

Given that Convertkit has three basic email templates to pick from, you can’t do sophisticated kinds of stuffs with it.

It is really limited in creating visual stuffs like Call To Action (CTA) buttons, columned content and grouped images.

 

Convertkit review: Email Automation Review

You can create beautiful email sequences with Convertkit.

It also allows creation of smart workflow-based visual automations.

You can set event triggers to help you in communicating with subscribers based on their actions.

For example, you can tag or subscribe users who click on links or subscribes on a form.

 

Convertkit review: List Management Capability

You can use the tagging system to add and remove users from your email campaigns and email sequences as appropriate.

Convertkit makes segmentation of subscribers very easy.

 

Convertkit review: User Registration Forms

Convertkit has the ability to create very nice opt-in forms. Opting out of an option is easy as well. The flawless process makes it easy to create embedded forms, pop-ups, slide-in forms and great landing pages.

You can easily any form through the visual editor.

For the forms, there are a couple of nice designs to choose from.

 

Convertkit review: Email Deliverability: What is the email delivery rate of Convertkit?

Convertkit boasts 87% email deliverability rate.

This is among the highest rates and it is within the acceptable range.

 

Convertkit review: Reports and Analysis:

If you want to monitor how your email campaigns are doing, Convertkit gives you basic reports and analytics.

This is nothing much but you can expect to get reports on email open rates, clicks, unsubscribes, sign-ups.

It does not give a heatmap, e-commerce conversion tracking capabilities nor social media conversion analytics.

Worse still, it doesn’t have bounce rate and Google Analytics integration.

 

Convertkit review: Languages: How many languages does Convertkit support?

Convertkit is only available in English.

 

Convertkit review: Spam testing and Design-Testing: Does Convertkit have a spam testing feature?

Although Convertkit doesn’t have a spam testing functionality, all emails sent through the system get tested in the background to flag and weed out spam.

Now that Convertkit has no design testing feature, you will need to use an external solution.

 

Convertkit Bounce Management: Does it exist?

Yes. Convertkit notes hard bounces and flags them. No further emails will be sent to them.

The system also notes soft bounces and classifies them as hard bounces in case the emails are not reached after a couple of attempts.

 

Convertkit review: storage space for data and images

Convertkit gives you unlimited space to store your data and images.

However, you cannot manage your uploaded files.

 

Convertkit review: Advanced Email Marketing Features             

Convert kit has authentication which supports SPF and DKIM.

This email service provider uses Mailgun, an external email server, unlike other email marketing firms.

 

Does Convertkit offer different levels of account access to different people

Yes

Convertkit allows you to invite other email admins and team members to your account regardless of the number of subscribers.

 

Review of Convertkit Integrations

 

Convertkit integrates with about 100 third-party tools.

For instance, it integrates with WordPress, Shopify, Gravity Forms, WooCommerce, Click Funnels, SumoMe, Zapier, ConvertPlug, etc.)

However, some integration needs manual setting by copying and pasting html codes.

 

Does Convertkit have a Landing Page Editor?

Yes it has a great landing page editor.

Convertkit landing page editor has only four templates.

It is very simplistic and easy to use although with limited design compared to other email service providers such as Getresponse and Active Campaign.

You can host the landing page on your website using a plugin or use Convertkit hosted landing page.

 

Convertkit Customer Support       

The company has an awesome customer support team.

I tried contacting them to ascertain how fast they answer my question concerning email automations.

My take: They are fast, responsive and technically savvy.

You can access them via live chat and through email ticket.

Furthermore, if you hate talking to people, you can read self-help resources available online.

 

Convertkit Review Conclusion

Convertkit is a great email marketing tool because of the following reasons:

• Great landing page editor to help you collect emails even if you don’t have a website. You can use it to collect emails from social media campaigns.
• Friendly and technically knowledgeable support team
• The flexibility of managing subscribers through tags (great for bloggers and marketers)
• Easy to use

Here are a few limitations that I identified:

• Limited email designs
• Higher price

 

Do you recommend Convertkit?

Yes.

I recommend it for bloggers, digital marketers, podcasters and those of us who create online courses.

It is your turn now.

What do you think of Convertkit?

Give Convertkit a 14 days risk-free trial