Why did I switch to ConvertKit instead of MailerLite from FloDesk?
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I’ve recently made the switch from FloDesk after using it for nearly 2 years.
When I announced it here on my blog (because I’d shared a bunch of pro-FloDesk posts, I thought I should let people know I moved away from it myself), I understandably got a few questions including why did I leave FloDesk?
And most frequently this one: Since I’ve used MailerLite before, why did I decide to go with ConvertKit instead?
After leaving FloDesk, why not go back to MailerLite? It’s a good question: what made me choose ConvertKit over MailerLite?
…And one that’s hard to answer because it’s a personal decision based on how YOU (or in this case, me) want to handle email marketing for your business, and what features you need from that platform in order to do that.
It’s all about YOU, here. Not necessarily the platform.
However, since I can’t make this decision for you, I’ll just go over feature differences that stood out to me at this stage and you can use that to make an informed decision for yourself. How ‘bout that!
But first, here’s what I’ve used before & for how long:
Don’t care about my past? 😂 I hear ya. Click here to jump straight to the list.
My first ever website was on Weebly. 🤢 I’d never heard of Squarespace at that point, and that was the only option I knew of that would let me DIY my website for the freelance design business I’d started, without needing Wordpress (also 🤢) or coding it from scratch.
While with Weebly, I also used their email marketing service, which was not unlike what Squarespace now offers with their Squarespace Email Campaigns. It was GREAT, but only because I’d never used anything else before. 😂
Weebly lasted maybe 4-5 months. Then I found Squarespace, created a new & also terrible website there, and learned about ConvertKit from the person who also introduced me to Squarespace. So, I moved my whopping email list of just 14 subscribers to CK.
I used CK for the first 3 or 4 months of 2016, then realized it was WAY more robust (and expensive) than I needed for my absolutely massive list (still of just 14 subscribers & some of those were friends & family… not gonna lie) at that time.
So, I switched to MailerLite and I used it from March/April 2016 – Sept 2019. The first 18 months or so, I was on their free plan; the last half of my time there, I'd decided to upgrade to the lowest paid plan to keep features I’d been used to using but were moved to only paid plans. No big, as a year of their lowest plan was like $80-90 USD at the time.
I genuinely enjoyed MailerLite and probably never would’ve left it, –had I not eventually become frustrated that I couldn’t stay as on-brand as I wanted, matching my website's classy, studio-brand vibe. That’s ultimately what pushed me to FloDesk; there’s nothing else out there like it, to this day (that I’m aware of), in regard to email design control.
When FloDesk began to irk me with their severe lack of overall account growth stats and automations for single broadcasts (emails), I realized I’d have to leave FD.
I was also really bugged that I couldn’t use basic automations in regular email broadcasts, which meant that if I sent out a promotional email, there was no way for me to tell FD to label people that wanted to opt-out of that topic in the future if it wasn’t sent out from a Workflow. And if it wasn’t a sequence of emails, I wasn’t using Workflows, because subscribers had to be manually added via a tag trigger or something.
Even less helpful, is their double opt-in email (the one you get before you get to the free shit that asks ‘if you’re sure’ you want to be on the list); it’s not customizable per opt-in item, so it’s extremely ineffective in getting confirmations. It has to be turned on for GDPR & CCPA compliance, but when it was on, my new subscriber count all but dropped off the face of the friggin’ universe.
Finally, their recent survey was the tipping point. As soon as I got the hint that prices may increase and it’d still lack features I desperately needed, I was like “No. I’m done." I wanted to love you, FloDesk, but damn.
Why I chose ConvertKit
These are features I was drawn to and differences that I was fairly sure MailerLite still lacks.
CK’s affiliate program has recurring monthly payments per signup for every person who uses my affiliate link, rather than one-time payments per signup; that means affiliate payouts can actually help offset the cost of using it on an ongoing basis.
CK’s double opt-in emails are customized & set up, per form, so it can be related to the content they were signing up for. Genius! Now I’m GDPR & CCPA compliant, without losing tons of subscribers before they get the freebie they wanted. Win-Win.
CK also has “incentive” emails you can add, per form, which basically include an automation/workflow within the form’s individual settings to deliver that freebie. Meaning, you don’t need to set up a form, then go set up an automation to deliver the freebie in a separate area because it’s all part of that form’s settings. WAY easier, faster, and simpler.
Also means, if you have 10-20 freebies, you won’t also need 10-20 automations/workflows in order to deliver them, creating separate things to edit if any of those freebies have to be updated in the future. Anything to do with the form and its opt-in are editable all within the form & its individual settings.
I can choose to show GDPR settings on signup forms only to people from the EU, so everyone else won’t have to see all that unless it’s relevant to their location by law, OR I can show it to everyone.
On that note, CK also has a specific GDPR options page URL, so you can also get the same permissions from any of your other subscribers, even if they’re outside the EU.
You can also filter your subscribers by location based on their IP address so that you can exclude subscribers who opted out of newsletters & promotional emails when they signed up to get that freebie.
I know MailerLite is also GDPR compliant, –or at least it was last I checked and I assume it still is. However, I remembered feeling frustrated about meeting compliance there with all the checkboxes adding to forms, etc. ConvertKit made compliance a lot simpler/easier.
Deliverability in FloDesk and MailerLite isn’t always as great as ConvertKit, for my audience personally, so I began to believe in the merit of using regular text-based email vs a designed & image-heavy layout with lots of fonts/graphics...
Also for me personally, I tend to open these text-based emails more frequently than the designed ones as the designed ones visually read as “promotional” instead of feeling like the sender sent an email specifically to me, regardless of knowing I’m just on their massive list. 😂 It’s a psychological & subconscious thing.
CK’s automations builder is better than ML’s (at least it used to be; granted, I haven’t tried it since 2019)
Email design: I was getting bogged down in email design tweaks. CK doesn’t have as many email design options, which removes that issue for me and makes sending emails generally much faster.
Segments & Tagging in CK is much simpler & easier for me, than it was in ML; I’m not sure if it was that the “Groups” and “Segments” labels in ML was confusing (which one is top-level?) or what, but once I understood ML’s I still preferred CK’s methods & labels of assigning them.
CK’s analytics/stats may leave out Spam counts, but I’ve never had a problem with subscribers reporting me for that, so I don’t feel it necessary to know that statistic, as it’s literally either been 0% or basically 0% for all these years. This isn’t necessarily a “feature” pro, but it’s also not a con that CK doesn’t show this statistic.
Signup forms can be much more specific in CK than in ML, like popup forms on exit-intent or even a blog category form notifying relevant subscribers when similar content is posted, like the post where they signed up. I haven’t tried this, but it’s a neat thought (bonus) for sure.
CK is specifically geared toward Content Creators, which I can definitely tell/appreciate now that I can comfortably call myself one without feeling imposter syndrome. 😉 I definitely had imposter syndrome back in 2016 when I tried CK the first time!
final thoughts
Ultimately, ML can do most of what ConvertKit does, so it could be a hard decision to make.
If your budget is happier with ML pricing over CK’s, then I say go for it! And if your primary focus is to have more attractive email templates, then I say ML is the better option for you.
You honestly can’t make a wrong decision here; “wrong” is not the same as needing something different. I’ve switched platforms 5x in 6 years (which –wow– when I type that, it’s kinda funny)!
So don’t let yourself get bogged down in decision-overwhelm or analysis paralysis. No matter which one you choose, you can always switch later if it ends up being the wrong fit for you. ☺️ If people with 100,000+ email lists can migrate when their platform of choice is no longer working for them, then so can we, right?!
