Flodesk review 2024: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Flodesk was formed in 2019 to help solopreneurs, creators, and small businesses build email marketing campaigns without breaking the bank. While it’s new in the market, its effectiveness is maintained, as you’ll find out in this detailed Flodesk review.

This email marketing software solution stands out for its ease of use, affordability, and aesthetics. It has an intuitive email campaign builder with well-organized functions and a clear interface. 

Flodesk’s email, signup form, and landing page templates are uniquely designed and extremely good-looking, unlike most top email marketing platforms. 

This Flodesk review gives you an in-depth look into each tool’s features and pricing plans to help you decide if it’s the best platform for your business needs. 

Let’s get started.

Is the tool right for me?

While Flodesk has some outstanding features, such as good-looking email templates, signup forms, and landing page templates, it may still not be the ideal tool for you.

Here’s a quick list to help you determine if Flodesk is the right tool for your business.

Flodesk is a partially-fledged email marketing platform, but it’s very intuitive. It was built with content creators in mind and provided just enough features to fulfill their email marketing needs at an affordable price. 

Its most outstanding feature is its visual appeal, from the platform’s interface to the email and checkout templates. This is especially suitable for personal branding specialists. 

This Flodesk review discusses every feature in detail, including how to create powerful campaigns and monetize your landing pages.

Flodesk screenshots

Flodesk features: An in-depth review

Here’s a quick summary of Flodesk’s major email marketing automation features and how they compare to other top platforms in the market.

Ease of getting started ★★★★★

Flodesk is a straightforward tool to use. It has a straightforward interface that makes it suitable for beginners. You can easily set up your account, set and change the sender’s email address and locate other items like templates, audiences, forms, and more. 

The interface is clean, with minimal features. You’ll see a few menu items directing you to build a campaign, build forms, and manage your recipients. 

While the platform seems minimalistic, it has all the core email marketing features that most businesses need to start. 

The only missing element is that Flodesk doesn’t offer a getting started wizard to guide users through the tool.

All in all, you’ll find your way around with minimal inconvenience.

Building an email campaign ★★★★☆

Flodesk’s email editor is well-organized. The platform takes you to the templates window once you choose the “Emails” options on the main menu. 

Here you can select the type of email you want to create, e.g. welcome emails, and you’ll get templates in that category.

Flodesk provides a list of beautiful, unique, modern-looking templates for building email campaigns. This is one of Flodesk’s most outstanding features that set the tool apart from its competitors.

Once you’ve chosen your template, you can customize it to your liking. You’ll be able to change the layout and add content blocks. Flodesk even allows you to change the opacity of images directly in the editor, which is another unique feature. 

Other essential content blocks you can include are:

• Video content
• Logo
• Social media links
• Instagram (to embed images directly from Instagram)
• Address/location, and more
• Ecommerce product (only the layout available, adding the products require manual work)

The next step is to add email campaign details, including your subject line and preview text. Then you can select who your recipients will be and a sending time. 

This final step differs slightly from most other email marketing tools but is easy to follow.

You can create two types of email campaigns on Flodesk: automated and regular. 

Flodesk’s email editor has fewer customization options than other top email marketing platforms and appears pretty basic. For instance, ecommerce features, A/B testing, and auto-resending functionalities are all that Flodesk needs to add.

The personalization function is also not straightforward, but it is explained in the knowledge base. Most email marketing tools include this feature on the email editor.

Marketing automation ★★★☆☆

Email marketing automation helps you send campaigns to your customers on autopilot. This section reviews Flodesk’s email marketing automation feature.

Compared to advanced email marketing tools like GetResponse or Omnisend, Flodesk’s automation features are essential. They are suitable for business owners like bloggers and freelancers who only need to send simple autoresponders.

You can build simple automation workflows or start with the existing prebuilt workflow templates. These include:

• Welcome series automation
• Sales sequence
• Lead nurturing sequence 
• Lead magnet delivery automation

Flodesk’s prebuilt workflows contain logic and content ideas you can edit to fit your use case. You can also add conditional YES/NO split.

The automation trigger options are also limited. So far, all automation triggers are segment-based. You’ll need to add subscribers to a segment first. 

Flodesk is incompatible with other marketing channels, like SMS and web push notifications. Therefore, you’ll not be able to integrate these platforms for omnichannel marketing to optimize your email marketing performance. 

Flodesk’s automation features may be good enough for small generic businesses. However, if you run a medium-sized to a large company or an ecommerce store, consider other alternatives.

Signup forms and landing pages ★★★★☆

Flodesk has an excellent signup form feature, ready templates, and an easy-to-use builder.

You’ll have the option to choose from 40+ attractive, modern-looking templates. These templates are easy to customize; you can add stock images from Unsplash. 

Your forms will appear as 

• Popups
• In-line forms
• Full-page forms. 

Recently, Flodesk launched new “Link in bio” feature. You can create a landing page for lead generation and integrate it easily to your social media accounts.

Once your audience subscribes to your signup form, you can redirect them to a suitable landing page or just show them a thank-you message. Flodesk also provides analytics that helps you track your performance. 

You can view your opt-ins, track your conversion rates, and view your subscriber growth over time. 

Flodesk has a remarkable landing page tool, just like the signup forms. It’s called “checkout” and is provided as an entirely separate function (though still integrated with Flodesk email). We found this labeling quite unusual, though.

With Flodesk’s checkout, you can monetize your content or digital products through your landing pages. There are beautiful, customizable landing page templates to get you started with this function. Stripe will power your sales pages to ensure your financial transactions are safe.

You can still use these checkout sales pages to monetize your products without a website. This function is still a beta version.

Is it easy and clear how to manage subscriber lists?

First, importing contacts on CSV files into your Flodesk account is easy. Contact mapping is also easy, just like most leading email marketing platforms. 

Flodesk doesn’t have lists, so your audiences will be categorized by segments only. These segments are easy to create and manage as well.

Segmentation ★★★☆☆

Segments allow you to divide your audiences based on their interests, purchase behavior, demographics, etc. That helps you send more targeted campaigns that are more likely to convert.

Flodesk’s segmentation feature appears basic at a glance compared to other email marketing platforms like Mailchimp. 

Segmentation criteria you can expect on Flodesk:

• Activity status and date
• Source
• Segment
• Data fields

Flodesk doesn’t offer ready-to-go audiences. It also needs some essential segmentation criteria, like demographics and email activity. We couldn’t find the function that allows you to tag your subscribers either.

Analytics ★★★☆☆

Though less advanced than the reports provided by some top platforms, Flodesk’s analytics provide some valuable insights. For instance, the automation reports offer insights on key metrics such as:

• Open rates, click rates, and unsubscribe rates
• Number of active subscribers
• Number of entries and completions

Your email campaign reports will show your email engagement rates, opens, and clicks by device. The checkout page reports show how many visitors you gained, orders placed, and total sales made from these orders.

Flodesk’s reports are also visually appealing, making them easy to interpret. 

Some essential reports missing from this tool include geolocation reports, click maps, and ecommerce reports.

Customer support ★★★☆☆

You can email Flodesk’s customer support from 6 am to 6 pm Eastern Time in the US. 

There are also lots of helpful resources at the Flodesk Help Center. Flodesk University also has some helpful video tutorials to get you started with the platform.

Compared to other email automation platforms, Flodesk lags behind when it comes to customer support. Their availability time is limited, and the only channel you can reach them on is by email.

The platform doesn’t provide live chat or phone support.

Integrations ★★★☆☆

As of today, Flodesk offers direct integrations with Shopify, Instagram, Interact, Marvelous platforms. Also with Stripe for checkout page activities.

Compatibility with other marketing channels ★☆☆☆☆

Flodesk doesn’t provide any other marketing channels besides email.

Generative AI tools ★☆☆☆☆

So far, Flodesk doesn’t offer any Gen AI assistance for email or form creation.

Flodesk pricing plans ★★★★☆

Flodesk uses a flat-rate pricing plan for the email and ecommerce email and checkout functions. 

• Email: $38/month
• Email + ecommerce: $64/month

The pricing is independent of the number of subscribers on your list.  

Flodesk doesn’t have a free plan, but a 30-day free trial allows you to test its features with no credit card needed.

The flat fee can be expensive for users on a budget who may not need all the features that Flodesk comes with. However, as your contact list grows, this pricing plan becomes wallet-friendly compared to most other tools.

Here’s how Flodesk’s pricing compares to its top competitors.

Paid plans offering

At first glance, tiered pricing plans by other platforms seem affordable, as is the case with MailerLite. However, as your mailing list grows, the prices increase. 

As you can see above, MailerLite’s lowest-tier plan can cost as high as $289/month if your mailing list gets to 50K subscribers. This is still so much higher than subscribing to Flodesk’s Everything plan, which costs $64.

So while Flodesk’s pricing may lack flexibility, it is cheaper in the long run.

However, businesses that are starting out and only need a few features may not find this appealing at first, more so because Flodesk doesn’t provide a free plan.

Flodesk competitors

Flodesk is a pretty new tool in the market and its features are less established compared to other tools. For this reason, consider other alternative platforms if the software doesn’t meet your core business needs.

Here are our top three picks.

1. MailerLite

If you’re looking for an affordable alternative to Flodesk with flexible pricing for businesses with different budgets, consider MailerLite. This tool’s features are well-suited to startups and inexperienced marketers. 

As your business grows, you’ll be able to access more advanced features by upgrading your plans. 

The platform also provides a free plan, which gives it a bit of an upper hand compared to Flodesk. It’s equally easy to use, allows you to sell digital products, and is compatible with social media marketing channels.

2. Omnisend

Omnisend makes for an excellent Flodesk alternative if your business is looking for an ecommerce email marketing tool. Omnisend is a specialized platform for ecommerce businesses of all sizes. 

It offers useful ecommerce features like product content blocks and coupon codes, as well as extensive ecommerce reports. Also, if you’re looking for 24/7 customer support through both email and chat, Omnisend is the best alternative. 

Besides, Omnisend’s email automation, segmentation, and overall reporting capabilities are more advanced.

3. Shopify Email

Created by Shopify, Shopify Email was built with Shopify store owners in mind. It’s an alternative tool to Flodesk if you run an online business on Shopify and are looking for a simple email marketing solution. 

It’s a Shopify email marketing plugin that helps you nurture leads and market your products. It has all the basic automation workflows you need as well as fundamental reporting capabilities. It’s also pretty affordable and suitable for beginner marketers.

Flodesk review: Wrap up

Flodesk is a powerful email marketing tool that’s easy to use and cost-effective, especially for users with large mailing lists. Hopefully, this Flodesk review helps you decide if it’s the best tool for your business.

And if it’s not, there are always more alternatives to consider, our top three being MailerLite, Omnisend, and Shopify Email. 

MailerLite would be a better Flodesk alternative for flexible pricing, while Omnisend would offer ecommerce features that Flodesk lacks. Also, Shopify Email would provide a direct integration to the Shopify store, unlike Flodesk.

Ultimately, your tool of choice will depend on the nature of your business. 

FAQs

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Our team strives to be accurate and unbiased in reviewing email tools. However, we recognize that mistakes can happen, and it’s essential for us to stay up to date. If you come across any errors or things that need to be reviewed again, please let us know.