Flodesk Review - Beautify Your Emails

What Is Flodesk?

Founded in 2019, Flodesk is pretty new to the world of email marketing. Built by creators, for creators, it emphasizes sleek professional design at an affordable price. The one-fee approach ($38/month for unlimited subscribers, emails, and all features) is a real unique selling point, so it’s no surprise this new platform has been making a splash!

Flodesk Pros & Cons

Pros

• Simple price plan - There’s no need to hunt around for what features are included when everything fits under one price plan, regardless of the size of your operations. At $39/month, it can present a real bargain

• Professional templates - The main standout for this brand is its clean, polished pre-made templates, ready to be adapted to your needs. As well as the pre-made, there’s a drag-and-drop editor to allow you to easily jiggle things around

• Easy to use - This tool is built for creators, by creators. The emphasis is on allowing you to easily design a professional email campaign, without getting bogged down with fiddly stuff like coding

• Useful integrations - Flodesk is compatible with Zapier, meaning you have access to thousands of integrations over numerous categories, ready to be used to get everything working in harmony

Cons

• Limited customization - While the templates might look nice and pretty, they don’t have many customization options. You need to format your emails to predetermined layout blocks in the drag-and-drop editor, which could limit your freedom of design

• Lacking features - Flodesk is missing some features present in similar alternatives, such as A/B testing or advanced personalized content. Although this is still a young company, and they seem committed to continuing to add features

• No 24/7 support - This company still only operates with a small team, so quick responses can be lacking at times. They operate 8 am-8 pm EST and aim to respond within two working days

Who Is Flodesk Recommended For?

If you’re a small brand in a creative profession, such as fashion, art or blogging (to name a few), you might be onto a winner here with Flodesk! This service is great if you’re after something that comes with a no-hassle setup, beautiful ready-made templates and landing pages, and a simple UI to allow you to focus on design.

Who Is Flodesk Not Recommended For?

If you’re more concerned about advanced features and in-depth reporting analytics, you might not find that here. Flodesk concentrates on simplicity and is focused on creating easy designs, which won’t necessarily be the needs of everyone. The price plan, while inexpensive for large subscriber bases, might be a hindrance to those with small subscriber pools who might find cheaper options elsewhere. 

Flodesk Pricing

Normally here I’d discuss some of the differences between the price plans and what they offer, but I only had one to pick from! There aren’t any features lurking behind hidden costs and no penalties for going over a certain amount of emails or subscribers; it’s truly what it says on the tin. If you’re willing to nail down an annual subscription, you’ll get a one-month equivalent discount.

Cancellation / Refund Policies

You’re able to cancel your subscription any time through your account settings and upon doing so, billing will stop immediately. It’s worth knowing that once you cancel your subscription, you’ll eventually lose access to all of your account data. So make sure to extract what you need before hitting that cancel button so you don’t lose everything!

Flodesk Features

Flodesk’s concentration on design and simplicity means a lot of the features are focused on making life easier for you. As they’ve only been around for a couple of years, they’re continually looking to add features all the time, so watch this space!

Pre-Designed Templates

With options for newsletters, subscriber forms, and landing pages, this service gives you multiple professional-looking templates, ready to be edited for your purpose. Compared to some other email marketing services, these really do stand out above the rest of the crowd.

·       Ease of Use

Where this service really shines. The simple UI, drag-and-drop functionality and migration tutorials, among other features, make for an easy-to-use tool, allowing anyone with an eye for design to jump in and get creative without a big learning curve.

·       Workflows

Sometimes referred to as scheduling, Flodesk’s workflows allow for trigger-based automatic responses based on certain conditions, time delays and actions to be taken before the next stage is released.

·       Analytics

The reporting tool gives you all you need for basic analytical work. Open rates, click rate, and deliverability are all observable here, as expected with this kind of service. The ability to see what device your email was opened on and when is a great way to see how best to target and design your campaigns.

·       Automated Resends

Having the option to resend an email campaign might increase your open rate, and maybe it’ll lead to another sale? At one click, you can send a follow-up to subscribers who didn’t open your first email. Flodesk will segment your emails automatically to do this for you so you’re not having to waste time on it yourself.

·       Double Opt-In

Send a follow-up to new subscribers asking them to opt-in to email engagement. This will allow you to become more compliant with anti-spam measures, will give you fewer unwanted subscriptions, such as spambots and will ensure you have a group of readers who are actively engaged and seeking more interactions.

·       Help Center

This clear-to-understand hub for documentation breaks everything down nicely into categories with a search option. I found everything I needed to get going here, as well as some handy tips like how to improve delivery rates and how to better your campaigns.

FEATURES SCORE: 4/5

Flodesk Automation Features

The Flodesk “workflow” system allows you to set up automated email marketing campaigns by following certain parameters set by yourself, and triggered in response to other variables. You want subscribers to click a certain link through a campaign? Send a personalized follow-up response to retain that interest.

You want your email campaigns to be healthy with high deliverability. Segmenting your audience by interactions could be a good way to ensure this. Lucky for you, Flodesk will automate this by removing unresponsive emails, allowing you to send meaningful emails to people who you know are engaging.

Flodesk Software Integration

For ecommerce purposes, Flodesk currently only integrates directly with Shopify. You can, however, integrate this service with Zapier, which will allow you to create “if __ then __” automation triggers between hundreds of different compatible apps.

As Flodesk is such a new company, direct integration capabilities aren’t quite there yet. This could be a problem if you’re already using other integrated systems, as you preferably want everything working in cohesion. If you do have other tools in place, I’d recommend looking at the compatible apps via Zapier to make sure yours are on there. However, since this tool is aimed more at smaller design-based businesses, I can’t see this lack of direct integration being too much of an issue.

Flodesk Alternative Brands

MailerLite - Similar to Flodesk, this service contains all features on all paying subscriptions. As an added bonus, there’s a free plan for up to 1000 subs and 12,000 emails per month with some feature limitations. If you’re willing to sacrifice some of those fancy designs for more features and a possibly cheaper plan, this could offer a good alternative.

Sendx - This email marketing tool has unlimited email sending on all paid plans, and with multiple awards from trusted brands, you know you’ll be getting great service. Here you’ll find options for more advanced automation capabilities and live customer support - all at the affordable end of pricing.

EmailOctopus - If you’re fine with email and subscriber limitations on your plan, this service offers an array of features to get stuck into; control over customization and personalization with a user-friendly interface make for a great tool. They can also integrate directly with multiple ecommerce platforms for a streamlined shopping experience.

Conclusion

By marketing to creators, Flodesk has found a niche market that seems to have embraced them with both arms. Giving you access to professional-looking templates and an easy-to-understand workflow in their all-in-one price plan means you can jump in as a newbie and make it look like you’ve been doing this for years.