Looking for a new (pretty) email marketing platform built for your small business?

You’re in the right place.

I, too, have been through the email-marketing research phase and today, I want to tell you about the platform I use (and love) in my business.

Meet Flodesk.

Flodesk is email marketing designed for creatives, entrepreneurs, bloggers, and small business owners.

It’s modern, clean, and highly customizable, while also being extremely intuitive and simple to use. No more 3-hour design sessions for one email campaign!

Are you intrigued?

Flodesk offers a free trial so you can try it out, ask questions (by email or in their Facebook group), and play around with the design elements and features in the back-end.

Here’s a closer look at what it’s like and why I chose to switch to Flodesk for all my email marketing.

*Disclosure: I get commissions for purchases made through links on this page.

Brevo

• 20,000+ emails/month

• 40-55 transactional emails/hour

• unlimited subscribers

• list-based

• $25+/month

• free plan (300 emails/day, unlimited subscribers)

• custom email builder

• mobile optimization

• custom opt-in forms

• limited layout options

• automated workflows

• Zapier integration

Flodesk

• unlimited emails/month

• unlimited emails/hour

• unlimited subscribers

• segment-based

• $38/month (Save 50% your first year when you sign up through my affiliate link)

• free 30-day trial

• intuitive email builder

• mobile optimization

• custom opt-in forms

• beautiful layout options

• Unsplash + GIPHY integrations

• automated workflows

• Instagram feed integration

• embedded script fonts

• line-spacing and letter-spacing options

• image overlay capability

• analytics + workflows written in easy-to-understand language

• Shopify + Zapier integration

Convertkit

• unlimited emails/month

• unlimited emails/hour

• 1,000+ subscribers

• subscriber-based

• $29+/month

• free plan (1,000 subscribers)

• custom email builder

• mobile optimization

• custom opt-in forms

• limited layout options

• visual automated workflows

• Shopify, Teachable, and Crowdcast integration (plus many more)

Cost

Compared to other email marketing platforms out there, Flodesk is a very affordable option.

Flodesk pricing includes unlimited everything for as long as you use the software! P.S. Save 50% on your first year when you sign up through my link!

Right now, that means you’d pay only $19/month.

For comparison, I would have to pay $32/month with Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) and $179 with ConvertKit to accommodate the size of my current audience (and that’s not accounting for growth!).

Features

Most email marketing software lets you customize emails to match your branding: upload your logo, use a font that matches (or is close to) one you use on your website, and set custom colors for text, backgrounds, and buttons.

That being said, the customization (and particularly layout) options are limited in most email marketing software (unless you know how to code). The end result is an email campaign that feels corporate and a little dated.

That’s what really sets Flodesk apart.

Their email template designs and layout blocks are fresh and unique, modern, stylish, and highly customizable.

• Choose from several different image block layouts, not just image on the left or right. Plus, search for content on Unsplash or GIPHY right from within the platform.

• Overlay text on the images right in the platform (without having to open up Illustrator or Canva and create a custom graphic for your campaign).

• Use script fonts for headings, design details, or signatures. They’re embedded in the program to ensure that they’ll show up in all inboxes.

• Customize line-height and letter-spacing for every snippet of text you use. This is a game-changer!

These features allow you to create email campaigns that match the look and feel of your brand and increase open rates. It feels authentic, fresh, and simple.

Support

Martha and Rebecca (the CEOs) are extremely friendly, supportive, and quick to respond to inquiries through email. They’ve done lots of research in the area of email marketing and they know creative businesses and what sets us apart from bigger companies.

They’ve also created a Help Section with answers to frequently asked questions, video tutorials, email marketing best practices, and more resources on how to use the platform.

User Experience

Flodesk is very simple and easy to navigate in the back-end. There are four links at the top of the dashboard:

• Emails (a collection of all the email campaigns you’ve created, templates you’ve saved, and pre-made templates included in the software)

• Forms (opt-in and sign-up forms, including pop-ups and inline forms)

• Workflows (automated sequences you’ve built)

• Audience (subscribers and segments)

Creating new emails, forms, and workflows is easy and quick and their ready-made templates are a great starting place. (I found that I didn’t need to make that many changes to the templates. I created all-new opt-in forms for my resource library in less than a minute each!).

I also love that you can organize emails and forms into folders (great for launches and keeping track of monthly newsletters) and color-code segments.

Think Flodesk might be the
right fit for you?

Create your flodesk account.

If you’re like me, you have a long list of questions for any potential email marketing platform.

After a few days of researching Flodesk, I made a list of all the questions I had and sent a long email. I received a reply from Martha, one of the CEOs, within 24 hours. I was impressed! Here are my questions and her answers:

How do segments work?

AD: My current software uses lists to organize contacts (I’ve created a different list for each content upgrade I have on my blog). Is this the same as segments? What does this look like? Can you explain this a little more?

MB: Absolutely. You can manually slice this list, like in this example:

Let's say some of these are existing clients, so we cut a slice from that pie (add them to a segment called "Clients") and this slice becomes your clients. Now you can send a very personalized email to this segment that says, "Hi [name], because you are my client, I wanted to share this with you."

Or you can automatically slice this list, like in this example:

Let's say you want to grow your list, so you put a form on your website so people can opt-in to receive your "Top 10 Tips on _________." These subscribers will be part of your whole pie, but they're sliced as your "Top 10 Tips Opt-In" segment. Now you can automatically deliver your "Top 10 Tips" email, and even have workflows to send an email later on that says, "Because you downloaded my Top 10 Tips, I thought you'd like this, too."

Is everything unlimited?

AD: Is everything unlimited—unlimited subscribers, unlimited emails, no daily sending limits? Forever?

MB: For as long as you keep your subscription!

When are subscribers added?

AD: When are subscribers formally added—at the beginning or end of the welcome sequence? How easy is it to see people who are currently in a workflow? I’d love to be able to separate out those who are in the middle of a welcome or launch sequence so I don’t interrupt that with my monthly newsletter.

MB: You can trigger add to segment at the beginning, middle, or end of the sequence. You can see where subscribers are at any time by going to your workflow insights :).

Do you offer a dedicated IP service?

AD: How can I make sure my emails are getting delivered?

MB: Yes! To complete your DKIM authorization go to your Account > Domain Setup.

5 Things I Love About Flodesk

01 | Amazing Customer Service

From the day I started my free trial to now, Flodesk has impressed me with their customer service and their knowledge about the creative industry. They are working hard behind the scenes to roll out new features all the time. They have been extremely responsive and helpful in answering all my questions and helping me get set up.

02 | One Price, Unlimited Subscribers

I love that everything is included for one price and it’s not based on number of subscribers or number of emails sent (one less thing to keep track of in my business!). Pay only $19/month for your first year (reg. $38/mo.) for unlimited emails and subscribers.

03 | Beautiful Design Templates

This is something that I think really sets Flodesk apart from its competitors. Most platforms are limited to basic building blocks or require complex HTML code to customize things like letter-spacing and line-height to match your branding.

Flodesk gives you the ability to fully customize these details while still offering a simple, easy, and fast solution for creating beautiful email campaigns and opt-in forms. For the first time ever in email marketing, you can use custom fonts and image collages. This is huge!

04 | Built for creatives

Flodesk was designed specifically as an email service for creatives, entrepreneurs, bloggers, and small business owners. This is another thing that sets them apart from their competitors, which are built for individuals and small businesses as much as they are for large businesses and corporations.

By focusing on small businesses, Flodesk has included small details that make a big difference in presentation and appeal, creating emails and opt-ins that are professional, yet still personal. For example, you can easily integrate your Instagram account into outgoing emails to showcase your most recent posts. Create a horizontal gallery or a pin-board style collage in seconds.

05 | Extremely easy to use

The Flodesk platform is extremely easy to use and set up. They offer just enough customization options to design email campaigns and opt-in forms that match the look and feel of my site, without getting stuck in HTML coding and endless menus. I love the drag-and-drop functionality for laying out email templates and the ability to drop in and customize a few things in the templates they’ve already designed (no coding required). This is a huge time-saver!