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Flodesk Review: Is it right for your business?

If you’ve been curious about Flodesk and are wondering if it might be the right choice for your business, then you’ve come to the right place! Today, I’m sharing my honest Flodesk review. I’ll talk about what I love, what I think could be better, and who I think it would be a great fit for!

flodesk review

Flodesk Pros and Cons

I love Flodesk and I think it’s a fantastic email marketing platform. I’ve used Flodesk in my own business and for lots of clients over the years so I’m super familiar with the features and also some of the things that might become a bit of a headache.

Because Flodesk is insanely simple to use and it’s super affordable, I think Flodesk is a great option to get started with email marketing. The catch is that as your business grows, you might need a more powerful service in the future. So, how do you know if it’s right for YOUR business? Let’s weigh the pros and cons in this full-length Flodesk Review!

Flodesk Review: Pros

Overall, Flodesk has many features that make it a winner for newer businesses and DIY email marketers. It’s ultra beginner-friendly, the templates are gorgeous, and the pricing is really good! 

1. Easy for beginners to use

If you’ve ever used an email marketing program, you know that getting set up and finding your way around can be a HUGE learning curve. Flodesk stands out from the other options because it’s effortless to use, even if you’re brand new to email marketing. Seriously, it’s possible to figure things out and set up an entire campaign in one day! The dashboard to set up campaigns is clever, minimalistic, and intuitive. I’ve found that for most people just starting out with email marketing Flodesk is easy to learn. Some other platforms like ConvertKit and Active Campaign have more of a learning curve and you’ll probably spend more time googling and experimenting to try to figure things out.

2. Beautiful Templates

Another thing that differentiates Flodesk is their beautifully designed email templates. They emphasize making stylish template options for users, and you can tell; even if you’re not a very creative person, your emails can have a super-polished feel. Flodesk templates are especially helpful for content-based businesses, like food bloggers who need to show of styled food shots or fashion bloggers who are sharing photos regularly.

3. Designing emails is simple

The Flodesk email builder is highly user-friendly, and it’s an effortless process to design a campaign. Once you’ve set up your preferences and uploaded a logo & brand colors, you just choose a template to get started. You can drag and drop template elements around to customize the appearance – and if you don’t find a template you like, you can design your own totally from scratch.

4. Flodesk Pricing

One of the major reasons people consider Flodesk is its transparent pricing structure. Basically, you pay one flat price for unlimited access to all of their features, no matter how many subscribers you have. This is HUGE! Most email platforms charge you by the amount of subscribers you have. Flodesk doesn’t punish you for growing and becoming more successful!

Flodesk could save you a fair amount of money, and knowing the exact price you’ll need to budget for each month’s emails is a fantastic feature! You’re never hit with surprise costs.

Flodesk Review: Cons

Even though it’s a strong option for beginners, as your business grows, you might need more design features, more powerful workflows & automation, and better analytics data.

1. Limited template designs

While Flodesk has lovely templates that are easy to figure out and tweak to your liking, there aren’t a ton of designs to choose from. They only offer 24 base templates, making it harder to find something you like. You’re also pretty restricted on where and how to use text and photos in Flodesk templates, which is potentially frustrating. Of course, you can always build your own template, but that isn’t as simple or beginner-friendly as being able to choose one and go (and there are still limitations to designing your own template). If you’re someone who wants complete control over exactly what your email will look like, know that Flodesk won’t give you full control.

2. Restrictive automation & workflows

Flodesk’s workflow tools let you create certain conditions that will trigger specific content to be sent out, depending on actions taken by a visitor. So, for example, you can pre-write a series of emails to be delivered to new subscribers over time. However, that’s only the beginning of what you might need to get out of marketing automation, and Flodesk doesn’t do a fantastic job at handling more complicated welcome sequences or multiple types of flows to promote a launch. In particular, course creators will need something more robust, like ConvertKit, Active Campaign, Kartra, or Kajabi.

For example, if I send out an email telling everyone about the launch of my new course. It’s really challenging in Flodesk to tag everyone who clicks the link to the sales page. I love tagging people based on what they are clicking in emails so I can tailor the content they get. There are a few workarounds for this in Flodesk, but for the most part Flodesk just doesn’t have the features yet.

Flodesk is best for if you have one main email list and send generally the same emails out to most people.

3. Minimal analytics content

While a more straightforward analytics layout can be helpful when you’re a beginner and don’t want your brain buzzing with data, in the future you’ll need access to more complex data to step up marketing efforts. Flodesk lets you segment your audience in fundamental ways to view things like open rates, percentage clicked, and which devices people used to view your email – and all of those things are valuable information! However, it’s also missing some key insights that help you see exactly what people are doing when they open your emails, which links they’re clicking on, and overall trends like account growth.

Let’s Review Flodesk’s Pricing

Pricing is one of the things that makes Flodesk so appealing and it’s important to discuss in any Flodesk review, so let’s talk a little more about the details! Flodesk pride themselves on offering a flat rate for unlimited access to all of a plan’s benefits. That means they never charge users based on the number of subscribers and don’t limit feature access between price tiers. That’s a big difference compared to other popular email marketing software providers, who charge different rates depending on which features you want access to and how many emails you send per month.

Flodesk offers three basic pricing plans:

1. The Email plan costs $38 per month or $420 annually – but through my link you can get a free trial and 50% off your first year, bringing the cost down to $210, or $17.50 per month! You’ll get unlimited:

  • Emails
  • Subscribers
  • Forms
  • Landing page forms
  • Workflows
  • Segments

2. The Checkout plan is priced the same as the Email plan ($38 per month/$420 annually) and includes unlimited:

  • Sales pages
  • Checkout pages
  • Upsells
  • Payments
  • Transactions
  • Instant deliveries

3. The Everything plan which is available for $64 per month (or $708 annually) that includes all of the benefits from the Email and Checkout plans in one seamless email marketing and e-commerce solution, which can be perfect for course creators who want all those things in one place.

Which Flodesk Pricing Plan do you need?

Most people are fine on the basic email plan. The other two options will give you some features to selling digital products, but if you’re just looking for email support the lowest tier (and the cheapest!) is going to be the best for you

My Honest Flodesk Review

Real talk: Wondering if I use Flodesk in my own business and what I really think about it?

Since I sell multiple digital products and love having access to advanced automations, Flodesk is not the best fit for me right now, but I did use Flodesk extensively early on in my business and loved it! I currently use Convert Kit for all of my emails which gives me more control over sequences, tagging and selling digital products.

I think Flodesk is great for people who are just getting started with email marketing and want an incredible price!

Flodesk’s pricing is fantastic and their templates are gorgeous. It’s a terrific way to dip your toes in email marketing without a hefty price tag, just know that as your business grows you might outgrow Flodesk and that’s ok!

Ready to give Flodesk a shot? Try it for free for 30 days and get 50% off your first year when you use my link!

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