Flodesk vs. MailChimp is a common debate among email marketers.
It’s not surprising, considering Flodesk and MailChimp are two of the most popular platforms for creating email campaigns.
But between the two, which one is the right email marketing tool for you?
Let’s have a closer look.
Why Should You Have An Email Marketing Campaign?
One of the more popular beliefs in marketing and sales is not allowing your clients to forget you and your brand. A quote by Patricia Fripp, a Hall of Fame keynote speaker, even goes like this:
“It’s not your customer’s job to remember you. It is your obligation and responsibility to make sure they don’t have the chance to forget you.”
The quote suggests that the key to salesmanship is to be worth remembering.
However, it takes a lot of time, money, and effort if you were to do that by creating ads. There’s also the chance that not every single one of them can end up trending.
This is why email marketing comes in.
For a small business, using an email marketing platform returns your investment by at least ten times more.
Think of it like this.
Considering the billions of people using their emails each day, if you’re able to reach at least 0.01% of these users, you’ll quickly increase your sales.
It’s no wonder why almost a third of brands worldwide are investing in their email marketing campaigns.
Even if we say that out of the worldwide population, only 1 billion have a working email; you’d still make profits.
After all, even if you only reach 0.01% of them, that would equate to 100,000 people.
Why Should You Use Email Marketing Platforms?
If you’re looking to create an efficient email marketing campaign, it’s common sense to send to every single email you’ve listed.
But it’s simply impossible to do that manually. And this need for marketing automation is why email marketing software is essential.
Email marketing software lets you plan, execute, and monitor your email marketing campaign.
Most software comes with email templates, email scheduling features, email builders, and campaign automation tools. You can streamline your operations and even fine-tune your email marketing strategy with them.
On that note, Flodesk and MailChimp are two platforms that you can consider.
Flodesk vs. MailChimp: Which One Is Better For Your Team?
What is Flodesk?
Dubbed the Tesla of the Email Marketing Industry, Flodesk provides services entirely different from what other tools have been doing.
With Flodesk, users have complete creative control over their on-brand email templates. You can also choose from the different forms, web fonts, and designs they offer.
Every one of Flodesk’s templates and layouts feels like it’s created just for you and your business. This ensures you’ll never be starting from scratch when you begin to create emails.
What is Mailchimp?
It’s safe to say that MailChimp is the original king of email marketing tools. And since its conception, the software has been continuously growing.
Nowadays, they offer transactional email services, eCommerce solutions, and website hosting.
There’s a reason why MailChimp is the first tool that comes to mind when people talk about email marketing campaigns.
The software makes email marketing easier and more accessible, which allows even small businesses to grow their brand faster.
Flodesk vs. MailChimp: Which Is Better?
Flodesk and MailChimp are excellent email marketing tools for large and small businesses.
Each one comes with email marketing features you cannot find on other platforms.
They’re both good at what they do, too, so understandably, deciding which one to go with can be difficult.
To help you choose, we’ve compared the two side by side. Read on:
Ease of Use
Flodesk is known for having a user-friendly platform that business owners love. Because it was designed to be easily accessible and convenient, it has a more intuitive user interface.
You can easily drag, drop, and edit items when creating emails. Its user-friendly interface allows you to customize almost every part of your campaign.
Flodesk is perfect for beginners who want an intuitive learning curve from an email marketing automation tool.
With MailChimp, on the other hand, setting up is a breeze. The tool is straightforward and has a simpler interface than Flodesk.
Unfortunately, if you’re unfamiliar with how to work the software, your email can get marked as spam.
The tool is more for users who are familiar with every minor detail of email marketing. As a result, MailChimp offers more complex email marketing features.
To summarize, go with MailChimp if you have more experience with advanced features. However, if you’re still starting out and want an email marketing tool that’s easier to understand, choose Flodesk.
A/B Split Testing
One of the MailChimp pros is that, when it comes to A/B split testing, MailChimp is the clear champion.
Flodesk doesn’t offer any A/B testing feature. MailChimp, however, only offers A/B split testing with its free plan.
You may be wondering if A/B testing is relevant to your email marketing campaign.
Well, yes, it is! With A/B testing, you can get data about subject lines, time of day, and days of the week.
You can use the data to better your email marketing strategy and get better results.
Landing Pages
A landing page aims to acquire information from your audience in exchange for something.
You can use it for lead generation and get data such as Name, Address, Email, and Phone Number.
In return, you can offer lead magnets like retail codes, financial advice, free courses, or business insights.
With an effective landing page, you can lure people into checking your business, products, and services.
When it comes to landing pages, MailChimp and Flodesk are evenly matched. They both offer great templates that you can use to direct people to your website.
With Flodesk, you’ll have aesthetically pleasing landing pages. MailChimp, on the other hand, allows you to customize your website and landing pages and add your custom domain to them.
These features make them much easier for you to get unlimited subscribers.
Customer Support
The difference in the value of Flodesk and MailChimp pricing can be seen once you’ve experienced their customer support.
After all, you’ll want great customer service with your email platform, especially if you’re a paying customer.
And when it comes to customer support, Flodesk stands out. In fact, its customer service representatives are available 24/7 to help you.
If that’s not enough to make up the Flodesk pros, you can also join the Flodesk Insiders’ private Facebook group. There, you can ask other members questions and even share your own tips.
The thing is, MailChimp actually offers customer support as well. In fact, here are some of their support options:
- Email support
- 24/7 chat support
- Weekday phone support
- MailChimp assistant
Unfortunately, some of the options MailChimp offers are only available to subscribers with paid plans. Only Email Support and MailChimp Assistant are available in the free plan.
Integrations
We’ve already established how can customers can easily use Flodesk. However, if you want to connect Flodesk to other tools, it can be complicated.
In fact, it’s only possible to do Instagram and Shopify integrations with Flodesk. Moreover, integrating other apps can only be done through the help of platforms such as Zapier.
With MailChimp, meanwhile, you’ll have plenty of integration options to choose from for your small business.
Some of MailChimp’s native integrations you can find are:
- Zendesk
- Shopify
- WoodCommerce
- WordPress
- Firebase
- Squarespace
- Canva
Analytics
There is no easy choice as far as the Flodesk vs. MailChimp debate goes.
In fact, if you go with one over the other, one of the things you might consider is whether or not you can track your progress effectively.
Good thing for their customers, both MailChimp and Flodesk offer tracking features. The data from both platforms provide actionable insights that allow you to improve your campaign’s deliverability.
Here are the pieces of data you’ll get from Flodesk and Mailchimp using their analytics:
Flodesk:
- Number of email subscribers who unsubscribed
- Emails that were opened on desktop and mobile
- Number of bounced emails
- Number of emails that were marked as spam
Mailchimp:
- Performance of your social media accounts
- Geographical regions (focused on the ones with the most opens)
- Subscribers with the most opens
These two pieces of data from MailChimp will come with a comparison to the industry average:
- Open Rate
- Click-Through Rate
Drip Campaigns
You may not be familiar with drip campaigns. It’s understandable since even more, experienced email marketers do not stock value on it.
However, if you want an effective email marketing strategy, a drip campaign is necessary.
A drip campaign refers to a number of automated emails sent to your email lists.
For every action that you want customers to make, you can choose to send an email. You may even decide to send a singular email for the whole process.
The action they can take may be to make a purchase, schedule a consultation, or book an appointment. The end goal is to convince the user to take action.
Now, between the two, MailChimp outshines Flodesk when it comes to drip campaigns. MailChimp allows you to customize what and how many emails to send.
You can choose from their pre-written and automated templates. Moreover, the platform also allows you to create beautiful emails on a preset email according to your subscriber’s action.
Flodesk, on the other hand, has a more intuitive drip campaign feature. It allows users to easily set up their drip campaigns.
Content Creation
As for content creation, there’s no clear winner between Flodesk and MailChimp.
Flodesk offers standard, beginner-friendly features that allow you to customize your emails and give them your own flare. And if you run out of ideas, you can find numerous educational tutorials and videos online during your spare time.
On the other hand, MailChimp offers integration with Creative Assistance. The feature lets you create unique emails from their pre-existing templates.
You can add GIFs, merge your social media accounts, and integrate your online posts into your emails. The tool also allows you to set a default logo and even save copies of your emails.
Flodesk vs. MailChimp Pricing Structure
MailChimp has a much higher pricing due to its features, expertise, and email marketing experience.
It’s in the upper echelons in terms of pricing plans, but it’s not as high as others.
In fact, you can sign up for a free plan and take advantage of some of MailChimp’s templates.
Subscription for MailChimp starts at $11 per month.
On the other hand, Flodesk’s pricing plans are based on their disruption to the entire industry, which can be surprising.
You can try Flodesk’s free trial for 30 days and compare it against its paid plans.
With it, you can learn how to build an email list, experiment, and familiarize yourself with the tool.
Flodesk offers three pricing plans: Email, Checkout, and Everything. Every pricing plan caters to different sets of needs, so pricing is respectively tailored for different types of email marketers.
Subscription for Flodesk starts at $38 per month, billed annually.
How to Switch from MailChimp to Flodesk
If you’re a small business owner looking to switch from MailChimp to Flodesk, you can do so by storing your list of subscribers in a CSV.
Here’s a step-by-step guide:
Export your email list from MailChimp
Go to the Audience feature in MailChimp. Select every name in the list and then click “Export Segment.”
You’ll receive an email confirming that you’re done exporting the list. You can then download the CSV file it comes in.
Upload the list to your Flodesk account
Go to your Flodesk account, and click Audience. Then, press the “Upload.csv” button and upload your downloaded file.
Match your data from the list to your Flodesk account
Take the time to match every email address to the name of your customers. The data from MailChimp should be the same as the one in Flodesk.
Add your upload to a “Segment” in Flodesk.
Create a specific segment for all of your subscribers. The tool will automatically create the segment after the date you’ve uploaded the file.
However, you can choose another segment or add the upload to an existing segment.
Final Thoughts on Flodesk vs. Mailchimp
The debate between Flodesk vs. MailChimp is hard to resolve. This is understandable since each email marketing platform brings something to the table.
If you’re still starting your email marketing campaign and don’t mind limited features, we recommend Flodesk. It’s beginner-friendly and intuitive, making it easy for most users.
On the other hand, if you’re a more experienced email marketer who wants a platform with a proven track record and more features, what MailChimp offers may be for you. It’s a robust email marketing software that has changed the industry.
With its customization and automation features, it’s such a handy tool to have. You can first try out MailChimp’s free plans and move on to its premium plans once you’ve tested its templates and features.