Why I Switched from Mailchimp to Flodesk
When I first started by business, I used Mailchimp’s email service because they have a free plan that allows you to have up to 2000 subscribers, which is a very worthwhile deal when you’re first starting out. However, the free plan has its limitations such as the inability to send workflows or schedule emails. The upgraded plans aren’t cheap, especially when your business starts growing then you’ll have to start paying more. Moreover, their support is abysmal and I’ve had a terrible experience with them that caused my website to be taken offline for 3 weeks. That prompted me to shop around for other options and that’s how I discovered Flodesk. I fell in love with it immediately and found that it is sooooo much more superior.
Here I’m going to share a little about my impression and experience with them so far, if you’re also thinking of jumping ship to a different email provider this might be something right up your alley
Pros
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User Friendly: Clean Interface, Easy Navigation
If you’re a tech newbie like me, then you’ll appreciate the clean and minimalistic interface that Flodesk offers. It's clean cut and simple, making it extremely easy and intuitive to use. I mastered the use of the page really quickly and within 10mins I already had all my brand details all set up.
Being able to set up my brand information all at once is AMAZING because I haven’t been able to do that in Mailchimp. Flodesk allows me to upload my logo, brand colours, all my social media links so that it auto-syncs it to all the emails I’m writing.
I never have to individually type in each of my social media links again, which was something I’m doing all the time in Mailchimp. I cannot pick my brand colours in Mailchimp either, which means I keep the colour codes on hand so I have to key in the hex code manually every time I design an email.
These may seem like small things but over time it will frustrate you because its precisely the fact that simple things should have better ease of use and make your life easier, not more difficult.
Setting up sign up forms on Flodesk was so intuitive, I successfully set up one form in 10mins. In addition, if you look at the top navigation bar, you will notice that it’s very clean and minimalistic. There are different pages for forms, individual emails and workflows. That makes it very easy to navigate and you’ll never get confused. Another thing about Flodesk that I love is how visual the interface is designed. I’m a visual learner so having such an interface helped me grasped the usage quickly because I could process the situation so much faster.
In comparison this is Mailchimp’s interface that seriously has me clicking on everything everywhere just to find one function. The confusing interface is really a deal breaker for me especially when email marketing is already a complicated enough topic to learn, adding on a badly designed interface makes my job unnecessarily harder. Mailchimp has a tendency to dump forms, workflows and emails all onto the same page, so you have to look at it closely under the title or filter it by type to differentiate if its a landing page or a workflow automation.
2. Affordable Flat Rate Payment - No Confusing Payment Tiers
Mailchimp offers an amazing free plan if you’re starting out and they are superior in their offer of 2000 free contacts, I have not seen another email provider with such a generous offer. However I have to say the generosity ends there because you do not get any scheduling or automation functions under the free plan, which I think is important in helping you batch work and plan things ahead while getting work done without having to constantly log in and manually send out mail.
As you can see the $25 plan only gets you 500 contacts and the prices will actually go up quite a bit once you’ve exceeded the maximum contacts available. If’s only affordable if your list never grows beyond that number, but once it does it becomes very expensive.
On the other hand, you don’t have to worry about the different payment tiers and functions because Flodesk offers EVERYTHING for a flat rate $38USD/month. It seems a little more pricey now but is actually more worthwhile in the long run because this price stays the same regardless of how many subscribers you have.
Even better, if you sign up using my affiliate link you’ll get 25% off your monthly bill FOREVER. With the discount, it comes up to $19USD/month ($25SGD), which now makes it on par with Mailchimp’s Standard plan price point but with wayyyyyyy more functions!
3. Beautiful Modern Templates & Fonts
Flodesk offers a multitude of beautiful templates that are modern and minimalistic. I honestly have never seen my emails look that great! It also comes with over a hundred types of fonts, most of which are premium ones that you would have to pay for if you were using another email provider.
4. Short Pre-written Swipe Copy
When you use any of their templates, it comes with a couple lines of useful swipe copy that you can immediately incorporate into your emails as well. Frankly you can just use this entire welcome email copy because it’s so well written! Also see what I mean about beautiful fonts available for use, so that your emails look AH-MAZINGGGG?! You can literally create emails that you are excited to open.
5. Support
As a Flodesk user, you can join the official Facebook group to get ideas and support from like-minded creatives. The group offers useful information to help you resolve any technical and non-technical problems quickly. Having a community is always helpful, because you can seek help from other users as well. I haven’t had the opportunity to approach Flodesk helpdesk yet, but I like the idea of this Facebook group.
On the other hand Mailchimp’s helpdesk is quite horrible. After you submit your ticket, they take 2-3 days to reply to you, and my experience with them is that the helpdesk is not very helpful. They don’t seem to read the previous tickets and I have to repeat myself every time they switch me to a different operator. I’ve gone back and forth with them with over 10 emails and after 3 weeks the problem persists, none of them could solve it. At which point I’ve decided that enough is enough, that is how I stumbled upon Flodesk.
I cannot stress enough how important a a good helpdesk is, they can make or break your overall experience and affect your business operations.
Cons
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Limited Website Integration
Currently Flodesk does not have any direct integration with Squarespace which is a pity but they do have an integration with Shopify so you can handle all the post purchase emails directly. But since Flodesk is still pretty new, I am hopeful that more integration functions will be made available as time goes by.
Overall, these are some of the reasons why I love Flodesk and switched over from Mailchimp. From the ease of use to the aesthetically beautiful templates, it’s my email platform of choice. If you think you want to try it out, Flodesk offers a FREE 30day trial and if you use my link to sign up, you get a whooping 25% off your monthly bill forever. Grow your email list in peace without having to worry about growing prices again.
** UPDATE **
Since Flodesk came out of Beta in November 2021, their offer has been updated. You all know I love Flodesk for my email marketing. I signed up with them as an early adopter and have been using it ever since. If you’re not using it right now, sign up with my affiliate link to get 25% off your first year
