My no bullshit experience using FloDesk
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FULL DISCLOSURE: I no longer use FloDesk myself, BUT this post is still full of helpful insights for those who are interested. Read this post if you want to find out why I left FloDesk and read this one too if you want to compare 5 of the most popular options.
Updated July 2022
There’s a lot to be said for pretty emails. It can make you stand out from the crowd, for sure.
But what’s the cost?
If you’re in the entrepreneurial space at all, you may have heard about FloDesk: the beautifully styled email marketing tool that doesn’t limit you to a subscriber amount. It’s one flat fee no matter how many subscribers you have, which sounds great. …So what’s the catch?
Feel like maybe I’m about to give ya some negative feedback? I am, actually! And it doesn’t seem to be the popular opinion, but here goes.
What is FloDesk* really like & is it worth the switch?
1st impressions (pros)
Okay so as a designer, I fell madly in love with its design capabilities immediately. Here are a few of the many things I really loved about using FloDesk, myself.
Their emails can be downright gorgeous and far outrank anything I’ve seen from other platforms thus far. There I said it. 🤷🏼♀️
My open rates got better after switching to FloDesk from MailerLite, by a good percentage! 🙌🏻
They have account-wide brand settings, which let you plug in your brand color’s hex codes 1x and in ONE place, then you’ll always have easy access to them from the email design area.
They have a great affiliate program with real cash-money payouts, rather than free months offered back to users who bring new recruits.
Designing the emails starts with a template and moving things around; editing the blocks and picking fonts are easy.
Oh, did I mention ALL the fonts?! OMG. All the fonts. So. Many. Font choices compared to the other platforms I’ve used. Those who use serif fonts in your branding would love to have this many choices besides Times, Georgia and the handful of others that most platforms offer.
You can embed your IG feed into your emails and it updates automatically.
The disclaimer (ie: you’re getting this email because…) we gotta put at the bottom comes pre-worded in several voice-style options, so you can rest assured that it’s safe to use, while also staying true to your brand’s voice. Pick one that’s friendly, or sarcastic, etc.
You can add nav links across the top or bottom and choose where they link to, something MailerLite also has templates for, though the control over this design in FloDesk is much better than what I’ve seen in MailerLite’s similar feature.
The design and user–experience is super simple and clean. There are only 4 main pages: Emails, Subscribers, Forms, and Workflows/Automations + all the settings in another area. That’s it.
The site is also super mobile-friendly, so even though they don’t have an app, you can login on your phone if ya need to in a pinch, though you can’t create new emails or forms, etc on your mobile device, you can do little things like check your subscribers or how your sent email is doing.
Email lists have basic segmenting capabilities, which is useful to segment your audience by the way you got them in the first place so you can try to send them only info you think they’ll be interested in.
Workflows are super easy to set up (read: automated sequences).
Forms are also super easy to set up and install easily even on Squarespace without a true integration (like MailChimp’s).
Layouts in the layout design block are gorgeous! If you pick one with a link capability, it links the whole block for you, which includes any image or button you’re using in that section. Really handy, and keeps ya from having to paste the link in so many places, …which also keeps you from inevitably forgetting to link up something you’d meant to.
It can save you SO much money! FloDesk doesn’t “punish” you for having a large email list. It cost the same, no matter how big or small your list is.
Let’s say you have 105,000 subscribers. Using ConvertKit you’d pay about $566/monthly or $6,790/year to market & manage a list of that size.
On Active Campaign it’d cost around $9,000/year for around 100k subscribers, depending on the plan & features you want (listen to Boss Project talk about migrating their 100k email list from AC to FloDesk here 😳)
With FloDesk:
it’ll only cost you $38/mo or $456/year, or
you can get started at only $19/mo for the first year with my 50% off referral code: DAMN50
Now, bear in mind that I say this having also tried & used ConvertKit, MailChimp, MailerLite, even Squarespace’s Email Campaigns, and very briefly Infusionsoft/Keap while helping a client, –and of course, now FloDesk, ––so I have some comparison experience.
2nd impressions (cons)
MailerLite is still a really great option. It had all the features I had been using ConvertKit for, for absolutely zero money, –at least for the first year or so I was using it. Then they moved some of the features I was using to a paid plan, but it was still peanuts compared to what ConvertKit is charging and ConvertKit gives you a lot less control over how the email itself looks. I didn’t have the numbers to justify switching back to ConvertKit yet, so I upgraded my MailerLite plan.
Back to the topic at hand. I used FloDesk from November 2019 to about mid- 2021, then switched back to ConvertKit as I needed more features to manage my list for my fast-growing business.
When I moved from MailerLite to FloDesk, l had to redo a lot of stuff, manually bring over my list via CSV file export/import, redo all my website forms, redo all my workflows.. that part was a big pain in the ass. ––Y’all, find an email app ya love and STAY there for a bit. 😂 Switching isn’t a super awesome experience, especially as your list gets bigger and more complicated, BUT it can be done.
All that said, I’ve told ya what I liked. Now here’s what didn’t like:
#1 BIGGEST COMPLAINT was a lack of overall account analytics.
Yes, you heard me. There’s no central dashboard (yet) that shows your overall account growth, month-by-month, or anything like that. I can click on individual emails or workflows or subscribers to see what the open rates & clickthrough rates are, but I can’t see what the overall trends are for the entire account usage, without creating my own spreadsheet and entering in each email’s stats. HUGE pain point for me, because it’s not even that easy to see how many total subscribers you have every time you log in –something MailerLite and ConvertKit have right in the home dashboard.
I should’ve noticed this during my free trial, but I was so enamored with the beauty & simplicity of it that I completely overlooked the lack of this feature.
#2 BIGGEST COMPLAINT was that setting up the delivery of freebies was overly complicated, compared to ConvertKit.
When sending a freebie or opt-in in FloDesk, you have to have 1 “Workflow” setup per signup form, if the freebie is different between them. That means, you set up the form, embed/install it on your website, then create a workflow to deliver it –which is not a huge deal, but if you’re new to email marketing that isn’t intuitive.
In ConvertKit, as a comparison, the delivery of the freebie, the opt-in email wording & more –is all inside the settings of the signup form you create. So it’s all handled in one place. You can also choose to set up an automated rule that will tag subscribers who do X with Y in order to further segment who signs up for what if you need to. FloDesk has nothing comparable to this.
#3 BIGGEST COMPLAINT was that all automations have to be done inside Workflows; there’s no automation for what happens in single-use broadcast emails.
This doesn’t become an issue until you run your first affiliate marketing campaign and use normal Emails to write & schedule them out, which is exactly what happened to me. Since I found it more difficult to use sequences in Workflows, I used normal emails without realizing I wouldn’t be able to automate what happens if subscriber X clicks the P.S. link that will supposedly let them opt-out of further emails on that topic, but STAY on my list. I quickly realized, that I could do this, but it would be manual. After each email, I had to manually look at that emails analytics, click around inside to see who clicked that link, and then manually add them to a new segment I’d created labeled as an opt-out group for that affiliate launch. Then I had to make sure that further emails would send to my whole list, EXCEPT for the opt-out segment. 😳
There are no “Rules” in FloDesk that can auto-apply to situations like that, such as an account-wide rule for anytime a subscriber clicks a specific link in an email, they will be added to an opt-out tag where they can be sorted out of future emails on that topic… ConvertKit does do this, and I believe MailerLite did too but it’s been a while since I had an active account with ML so don’t hold me to that.
Workflow emails are kind of their own beast. There’s no account-wide email template (like ConvertKit) so if you want the same style of email in multiple Workflow sequences, you have to create it multiple times or duplicate a current Workflow and then edit the emails inside.
it’s harder to use GIFs which I really like doing bc it’s way better than emojis at conveying my personality & sarcasm. LOL
I can upload them as images, but they don’t always tend to be small files, so that would make the email load time much longer than I’d want it to be
with MailerLite I can put them in as links via embed blocks; works much better that way!
with ConvertKit you can upload them and CK will optimize the size so it won’t drag down the load speed of the email.
The template/layout options are growing but not that diverse… what they do offer is gorgeous, but there are a couple of things I’d like to be able to do in the design area that even MailerLite offered, which are not available in FloDesk.
The kinds of blocks you have access to ARE quite useful (& they added a few new layouts in mid/late 2020), but there are a few functional layout options that are missing, which I’d love to see FloDesk add in the future, such as:
code blocks or embed blocks (for gifs or countdown timers, for example)
more options for inserting images with the image block than just creating some columns
🥳 SOLVED in 2021! FloDesk paragraph blocks finally have bullets and numbered formatting! Highlight some text in the body of your email, and included in that text formatting popup you will be able to add bulleted or numbered lists to your paragraph text.
🥳 SOLVED in 2020! Instagram feeds embedded into the email layout design DO auto-update even after you schedule them to send on a later date. Meaning, if I pre-write & schedule my blog for next weekend & write that email today, then schedule it to go out the morning the post is scheduled to be published automatically (which IS what I do),… the IG feed updates itself between now & then. If I post anything new on IG between when I created the new email & when it actually sends, they show up in that embedded feed in that email.
Final thoughts
FloDesk is still the new kid on the block and I’m sure they will only improve & get better with time. They seem to be regularly/actively working on new features and layouts.
I’ve personally spoken with one of the founders, Rebecca, and she excitedly listened to my ideas, my complaints & comparisons, then assured me good things are coming soon, which is always great to hear.
Let’s see what you’ll do next, FloDesk!!
Love your email again!
Try all of FloDesk FREE for 30 days, then use my code DAMN50 for 50% off your first year!
