Flodesk Review: Is This Email Marketing Service Worth Your Time?

Welcome to my Flodesk review.

If you’re here to find out more about Flodesk you’re at the right place.

In this post, I’m going to evaluate the main features of Flodesk to find out if it is worth your time and if it will give you a better chance to achieve your goals.

I'll also provide you with some alternatives just incase Flodesk isn't right fit for you.

Flodesk strives to make email marketing as simple as possible and as a result, they chose to focus on only offering the most essential features needed for email marketing.

In exchange for that, they have put more time into improving the quality of these essential features but is it enough to create successful email campaigns?

Find out by reading my comprehensive Flodesk review below.

Main Features

Flodesk its unique selling point is based on the simplicity of the email marketing software. The founders wanted to create a tool that people can use without it having a steep learning curve.

As a result, they worked as much as possible on enhancing the user experience and focusing on providing their customers with the most essential features for a basic email marketing campaign.

Here’s a list of all the features Flodesks offers:

• Website Builder
•  Email builder
• Form Builder
• Automation workflows
• Integrations
• Analytics
• Email Templates
• Email broadcasting
• Segmenting

I’m going to go through all of these features so you can get a good idea of what Flodesk has to offer.

Who would benefit the most from Flodesk

There are a lot of groups that could benefit from Flodesk but here’s a list of the groups that I believe would benefit the most from investing in Flodesk:

• Solopreneurs
• Small businesses
• Bloggers
• People with no prior experience
• People looking for unlimited subscribers, emails, etc
• People that don’t want to deal with a learning curve when getting into email marketing

Free Plan and Limitations

Flodesk doesn’t offer a forever free plan with limited access such as a lot of other email marketing services. Flodesk provides people with a 30-day trial of the everything plan which gives you full access to all the features in Flodesk.

It’s this trial I have used for the past weeks to get a good idea of what Flodesk is capable of.

The Flodesk 30-day trial makes it possible to send unlimited emails, process unlimited checkouts, and create unlimited automation workflows.

It’s a great way to see everything that is offered and decide if it can help with achieving your goals. I can imagine that this free trial could be very valuable for people that already have a consistent traffic source that can be converted into subscribers.

Ease-of-Use

Flodesks uses the simplicity of its platform as the selling point for its email marketing service.

It’s ideal for people planning to make simple email marketing campaigns especially when you compare it to a lot of other email marketing services.

Everything that is customizable from the landing pages to emails is done with either a drag-and-drop editor or a WYSIWYG editor which eliminates the need to know code.

The only exception to this is inserting forms in the pages. They do give you small but clear instructions on how you can do that.

Overall, I’d say that Flodesk can be considered beginner-friendly.

Website Builder and Landing Pages

Landing pages are incredibly important so the more options you have when it comes to creating them, the better.

Flodesk uses a simple WYSIWYG system for building landing pages.

You can use it to start building landing pages from scratch or use one of the templates and edit it with the help of the builder.

I have been playing with all the settings and features for a while and can say with confidence that you don’t need any prior experience to build your landing pages.

You just click on an element and on the left a menu appears with everything you can edit.

You can edit multiple elements, including background colors, images, spacing, and text.

It’s not as sophisticated as products solely dedicated to creating funnels and websites (which is normal because it’s an email marketing service first) but a lot is possible.

Form Builder

The editor for the Form builder is the same as the one you use for building landing pages. The landing pages you can create with Flodesk are also seen as a type of form.

Flodesk gives you the ability to edit one of their templates or create forms from scratch.

There are 3 types of forms you can create with Flodesk:

• Pop-ups
• Inline
• Fullpage

Just like with the landing pages the same elements can be edited when creating forms from scratch or templates. It’s a very simple system that you can use to create all your forms.

The form templates are visually very appealing. I have been working with landing pages since 2018 and I can confidently say that these templates without editing would convert at a high rate.

What I like about their library is that they’ve forms for all kinds of goals such as selling courses, and services, making money online, free gifts, and more.

Email Designer

The email designer is also the same builder used for forms and landing pages.

Just like the forms and landing pages, Flodesk provides you with templates that you can immediately use or edit for a more personal touch.

I mostly use simple text emails for my marketing campaigns but I can imagine if you want your branding to come off as a larger corporation making them look more professional has value.

Here is an example of a template.

Flodesk also lets you import fonts and colors so all your emails are consistent with your branding.

Marketing Automation

Flodesk might be simple but it has more automation features than a lot of email marketing services that I have reviewed in the past.

Flodesk makes it possible to create marketing automation workflows so that list management and email communication can be done on autopilot.

You can either start from scratch or use one of the template sequences for your marketing automation. Flodesk offers 4 different automation workflow templates:

• Nurture sequence
•  Welcome sequence
• Lead Magnet sequence
• Sales sequence

You can edit these sequences by adding 4 elements.

• Email
• Time delay
• Condition
• Action

It lacks some automation features such as cleaning up your list like Getresponse but I’d consider the automation features better than that of a lot of email marketing services that have been around twice as long.

Analytics 

The production of analytics based on the performance of your email campaigns is one of the most important assets an email marketing service should have.

You need to be able to have enough insight into your campaigns to make the necessary adjustments so that campaigns can perform optimally.

Flodesk makes it possible to look at the performance of your email campaigns through their analytic features. Just like with everything else, Flodesk kept it simple and focus on 4 key things when it comes to their analytics:

• Open rate
• Clickthrough
• Delivery rate
• Link performance

The way they display these analytics is also easy to understand even if you’ve never worked with email marketing services.

I remember when I first started with email marketing only looked at these factors and it was effective. I do think some extra features could be added for those that have more experience with adjusting campaigns with the help of analytics.

Flodesk lets you see the performance of your campaigns as a whole but I wish they’d allow you to get information such as seeing which emails are opened instead of just the rate of the whole campaign.

This would allow users to make more precise changes in their campaigns.

Management and Segmentation

Flodesk makes it possible to segment email subscribers based on information such as:

• Location
• Time subscribed
• Activity
• etc.

When it comes to segmenting email subscribers it’s on par with most of the email marketing services I have reviewed.

You simply click on the audience and you can start creating segments based on the information your subscribers provide you with. I have used a few email marketing services that don’t include segmentation in all their plans but I’m glad to say Flodesk isn’t one of them.

A/B Testing

Unfortunately, Flodesk doesn’t offer A/B split testing.

They probably chose not to include these features to adhere to their philosophy of creating a simple way to do your email marketing.

Is it absolutely necessary to use A/B testing in your email marketing campaigns? No in my first 2 years, I wasn’t actively split-testing my subject lines and content and was able to be successful.

After those 2 years, I wanted to learn more about marketing and improving my campaigns and noticed that testing could help. That being said if you aren’t a complete marketing nerd not having this feature isn’t going to be your downfall in my opinion.

Integrations

Most email marketing services offer integrations so you can connect other software applications to them. This is where Flodesk is lacking a bit in my opinion.

Flodesk has decided to stick to 3 integrations by being able to connect to your Instagram, Shopify account, or Zapier account.

I suspect the thought process behind this decision was to let Flodesk connect to apps indirectly through Zapier.

That being said, if you for example use other apps you’re going to have to invest in Zapier to connect them to Flodesk. I can imagine not everyone is willing to do that.

Customer Support

I have read some older reviews about the customer support of Flodesk and I have to say I haven’t experienced any of the complaints. So either Flodesk has aggressively solved all their problems or the complaints weren’t accurate.

There are 4 sources that people can use to get customer support.

1. Flodesk insiders group on Facebook
Facebook group that functions as a community for every Flodesk user.

Rather than it being a place where you can get technical support it’s more like a place where people can share their ideas about how to get the most out of Flodesk and email marketing in general. At the moment, it seems to be very active and contains more than 16K people.

2. Submit a support ticket
You can submit a support ticket by sending us an email to support@flodesk.com. They have a helpdesk called the member experience team that helps with:

• setup guidance
• general product questions,
• account and billing matters, among others.

According to their website, they answer within 2 business days but in the 2 times I have used it I got a response within 2 hours.

3. Flodesk university
This is Flodesk it’s an online campus that contains videos made by experienced marketers to help with using Flodesk features, creating content, selling, and more.

The Flodesk community was created with the goal of helping entrepreneurs and small business owners with creating or improving their email marketing strategy.

Most of the videos at the university are around 10 minutes long but give clear instructions in my opinion.

Pricing

The 1 thing I really like about Flodesk is that they have a fixed price for all their plans. No matter how many email subscribers join your list the prices will be the same.

Flodesk offers 3 different plans that you can take advantage of.

Switching to Flodesk From Another Service

I understand that not everyone interested in Flodesk is new to working with email marketing services. 

You might’ve already built up a decent list and you’re thinking about switching to Flodesk. The process of moving your subscriber list to Flodesk is simple.  

They even have unique moving guides for moving to Flodesk from email marketing services such as Getresponse, Mailchimp, Mailerlite, Aweber, etc. 

They also provide you with guides to get subscriber data out of e-commerce platforms such as Woocommerce, Bigcommerce, Shopify, etc.

You simply export your lists into CSV files, establish which row contains what type of information, and import them into Flodesk.

Something you do have to take into account when switching to Flodesk is that all the opt-in pages, and email templates that you have designed won’t be transferred to Flodesk.

This means you might have to spend some time customizing your emails, websites, and opt-in pages.

This also applies to email sequences so make sure you still have your sequence saved in text somewhere on your computer before switching to Flodesk.

Flodesk Affiliate Program

Flodesk is designed to help you with your email marketing campaigns but it also gives you the opportunity to earn money through their affiliate program. 

Affiliate marketing is a form of marketing where companies promote their products with the help of independent publishers (a.k.a affiliates). 

Every time an affiliate refers someone to their company and they purchase a product the affiliate will receive a commission. 

The Flowdesk affiliate program grants a commission of $19 for every sale and they pay out automatically 2 weeks after every sale made based on the referral of an affiliate. 

There also isn’t a minimum amount of sales needed before Flodesk pays out affiliate commissions.

To become an affiliate you need to have an active Flodesk subscription (this includes the 30-day trial). As soon as you join the affiliate link will be ready in the Flodesk referral area.

While the money you can earn per sale isn’t that high I do like the bi-weekly payout. Most email marketing services payout monthly. 

It’s a great affiliate program in my opinion.

What I like about Flodesk 

1. Fixed pricing plan

I have always had a love/hate relationship with email marketing services because the majority of them don’t have fixed prices. 

In most cases, the more subscribers you acquire and the more emails you send, the higher prices become for their services. 

This isn’t the case with Flodesk. 

They offer a fixed price so no matter how much you grow, you’ll always pay the same price.

This is a huge benefit in my opinion.

Great and beginners-friendly user experience

A lot has been done to create a beginner-friendly user experience. 

You’ll notice that instead of displaying all the options you can use like normal email marketing services, you are almost being guided through a funnel step by step until your email campaign is set up. 

It eliminates the need of going through support articles to see how everything works.

2. The templates are great from a visual standpoint

I was very impressed going through the process of making my first email campaign with Flodesk. 

Not just by how simple it was but the content of their template library. 

I preferably keep my campaigns as simple as possible from a visual standpoint but if you want to create visually amazing emails and opt-in pages you’ve picked the right platform. 

They’ve visually stunning templates that are easily adjustable for any niche. 

It doesn’t matter if you want to present yourself as a large corporation or a small family business. 

Flodesk has a large variety of templates to choose from.

What I don’t like about Flodesk 

1. No A/B testing features

The fact that Flodesk doesn’t provide people with A/B testing features is a bit disappointing in my opinion. 

A/B testing features are a great tool for finding out what works in your email marketing campaigns. 

In the past, I’ve been able to optimize my email campaigns significantly thanks to A/B testing tools. 

It’s a shame they didn’t include it for people that want to get the most out of their email marketing.

2. Flodesk sticks to 3 integrations

I assume this is a temporary thing because Flodesk is a relatively young email marketing service.

The problem is that with Zapier you can have access to more integrations but this can come with additional costs. 

Looking at Zapiers current pricing it could quickly go from $18 additional costs to even €45,53/ month just to get the same number of integrations other services provide their users.

3. Flodesk lacks the capability to upload fonts

At the moment, Flodesk doesn’t provide its users with the ability to upload fonts. 

If you’re starting from scratch this shouldn’t be a problem but I can imagine if you already have put a lot of time into your branding this might be frustrating. 

That being said, they do offer a wide variety of fonts which makes the possibility to find a similar font that fits high.

Conclusion: Is Flodesk Worth Your Time?

Flodesk is a great email marketing service for people that don’t want everything to get too complicated.

If there are 2 things I’d change about Flodesk it’d be to add a cheaper limited email plan for those that are planning to use organic traffic which would take more time before it becomes profitable.

The other thing I’d add to this service is split test features so that you can test out different subject lines and content to see what performs better.

That being said, it has everything you need to start building email campaigns and they offer excellent support features. I recommend giving Flodesk a chance.

So. Is Flodesk worth your time?

Yes. If you’re looking for a simple approach to email marketing then Flodesk is worth your time.

Flodesk Alternatives: My Top Picks

I think Flodesk is a great email marketing service but I understand it might not be a great fit for everyone. 

This is why I created a post listing my highest-rated email marketing services. In this post, I’ll also go over why every service listed is beneficial for a specific group. 

So take a look at my top email marketing services review to find an email marketing service that can help you achieve your goals.

Do you have any experience with email marketing services such as Flodesk? Let me know in the comments! I'd love to hear your opinion.

That’s all for today. 

See you at my next post!