ConvertKit is a relatively new player on the email marketing software scene. Their product targets professional bloggers, podcasters, course creators and YouTubers. They want to help creators connect with their fans, and earn a living through the use of email marketing.
It sounds like it could offer some pretty cool niche features that would appeal to such a target group. Let’s find out if this is actually the case in this ConvertKit review!
You might have checked out the ConvertKit reviews offered by users online, only to find a bit of a mixed rating. Our review of ConvertKit is based on a methodical approach and uses our practical experience and knowledge of dozens of other simple and advanced marketing automation tools.
ConvertKit Review: Summary
On paper, they appear to have really advanced features (e.g. landing page editor, email automation templates, digital products online store, etc.), but how do ConvertKit actually perform? We’ll also see whether their claim that their system is “easier to use than Mailchimp”, is true.
Let’s take a close look at ConvertKit and its features!
ConvertKit Pricing
300 Subscribers
unlimited emails
Free plan doesn’t include automations or reports.
300 Subscribers
unlimited emails
Discounts available for yearly plan.
1,000 Subscribers
unlimited emails
Discounts available for yearly plan.
3,000 Subscribers
unlimited emails
Discounts available for yearly plan.
5,000 Subscribers
unlimited emails
Discounts available for yearly plan.
10,000 Subscribers
unlimited emails
Discounts available for yearly plan.
25,000 Subscribers
unlimited emails
Discounts available for yearly plan.
55,000 Subscribers
unlimited emails
Discounts available for yearly plan.
105,000 Subscribers
unlimited emails
Discounts available for yearly plan.
When you purchase a paid plan, they’ll migrate your lists into their system at no extra cost.
You can always check our pricing comparison tool to see how ConvertKit stack up against the competition. Or check our pricing guide to find out how each plan’s features vary.
How to use ConvertKit
ConvertKit is well known for its extremely user-friendly nature. So easy that once you sign in to your ConverKit platform, you are instantly presented with a “quick actions” toolbar on the right-hand side. Here you have the option to create a broadcast, form, landing page, snippet, or email template. Within Convertkit the term “snippet” refers to a reusable block of content designed to help you save time when your creating email campaigns.
To create an email campaign, select the “Broadcast” option. From here you are taken to a very basic email editor, which, as we mentioned earlier, could easily be mistaken for a basic plain text editor. Within the email editor, you will have the option to switch between the legacy editor and the new editor, although there’s no big difference between the two. In terms of email templates, it’s safe to say Converkit is very limited. You only have a total of 9 templates to choose from, one of which is a ‘text only’ option, the rest of the email templates are on the basic side. Alternatively, if these templates don’t suit your email marketing strategy, you can import your own custom HTML. You can edit email templates from the dashboard, by clicking ‘email template’ from the quick actions tab.
ConvertKit’s landing page editor
How to create a landing page with ConvertKit:
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- Click on the “Landing Pages & Forms” tab within the ConvertKit dashboard.
- Next, you’ll see a “create new” CTA, once you’ve clicked this you’ll be asked how you want to gather your subscribers, here you’ll be asked which landing page template you want to use, and luckily for you, there are over 50 templates for you to choose from.
- Now you can choose the landing page design that suits your marketing needs, whether that’s for Newsletters, Webinars, Profiles, etc.
- Then once you’ve found the landing page template you like, click “Choose” to start editing the design. Now you can add your content, branding, imagery, etc.
- You can preview your landing page before publishing it to make sure you’re happy with the overall layout and design.
- Once you are happy with the overall feel of it, click “Save & Publish.” Then you’ll be able to choose your domain name for your landing page.
- Later, if you need to go back and edit your chosen domain, landing page URL, or SEO settings, you can access and update all of this within the “Settings” tab.
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ConvertKit’s Deliverability
ConvertKit’s email deliverability rates have always been pretty stable in our deliverability tests, their results have ranged from 80% to mid-nineties in our last five tests. In our most recent test, they scored 91.3% which is their best score since October 2021. They were one of the providers who were most likely to end up in Gmail’s main inbox, with 78% of their emails ending up there. The future is looking bright for ConvertKit’s deliverability.
Conclusion
There are several areas where ConvertKit does quite well. For example, support is quick, friendly and effective, we can’t complain here. We also liked the flexibility when managing subscribers via its tagging system. This is certainly something bloggers (and digital marketers) can take full advantage of whilst targeting communications to their audience (hence why we listed it as one of our Mailchimp alternatives).
ConvertKit comes with a landing page editor that will let you collect subscribers even if you don’t own a website, which is great for social media campaigns. Their new commerce feature, which allows you to sell digital products and subscriptions, is pretty cool, and not something you’ll see in other email marketing tools.
However, ConvertKit is only really effective when you are using the paid option, therefore it can get expensive pretty quickly. For this reason, we’d strongly suggest that you check out some ConvertKit alternatives before choosing them as your next email marketing platform.