Flodesk vs Aweber review 2024: Which Should You Pick?

Welcome to my Flodesk vs Aweber review. 

In this post, I’m going to compare the main features of both email marketing services to find out which will give you a better chance to achieve your goals. 

Flodesk and Aweber have been around for a long time and can arguably be called some of the best email marketing services on the internet. That being said, depending on your goals one can be a better fit than the other. 

That’s why I’m going to go over the most important features of these email marketing services to highlight the differences so you can make an informed decision before purchasing one of these email marketing services.

Since I value your time I’m going to give you the conclusion of this comparison right now.

Flodesk prioritizes simplicity which is the reason why it has fewer features than Aweber. It’s specifically made for sending content and communication with your email subscribers. 

Most people that want to build brands, content creators, and people that want to create simple email campaigns will benefit from this.

Aweber is more for people that have commercial goals such as entrepreneurs, small businesses, affiliate marketers, etc. The features on Aweber are more appropriate for optimizing your messaging to stimulate people to take action.

Free Plans and Limitations

Aweber Forever Free plan
Aweber has a forever-free plan that was created to give people an idea of how the paid version can help them. This Free plan provides you with the ability to create an email list with a max of 500 email subscribers. 

The free plan is limited compared to Aweber Pro. The most noteworthy features that are limited are the split testing features, segmenting, behavioral automation, reporting, and analytics.

That being said, I do think it provides you with enough information to decide if this email marketing service is a great fit.

Flodesk 30-day free trial
Flodesk doesn’t have a Forever Free plan to take advantage of. They have decided to provide people with a 30-day free trial to see if its services are a good fit for them.

Unlike Aweber, the 30-day free trial gives you full access to their everything plan.

You’ll have full access to all Flodesks features and there is no cap on how many subscribers you can have emails you can send, and automation workflows you can create.

Ease-of-Use

Flodesk 
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.

Aweber 
Aweber isn’t a difficult platform to navigate for people that have experience with email marketing but I can imagine that people with no experience might find it a bit overwhelming.

The connection between all the features isn’t always clear. I would love to see them add a step-by-step process that people can just fill in to create their entire campaign.

Website Builder and Landing Pages

Flodesk
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.

Aweber
Aweber has made it very easy to create landing pages that you can use to get people to subscribe to your email list.

They use a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor with a drag-and-drop system. So you can click on an element and place it wherever you want it to go.

As someone who has worked with other email marketing systems, I can confidently say that you won’t have to learn anything new to create visually appealing landing pages.

New users with no experience would probably need no more than 10 minutes to master the landing page builder and even start creating landing pages from scratch.

Marketing Automation

Flodesk 

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 Aweber but I’d consider the automation features better than that of a lot of email marketing services that have been around twice as long.

Aweber

Aweber’s automation encompasses the entire process that happens on the front end with the emails that are being sent to subscribers and the backend that goes over list management through the actions of the subscribers. 

The marketing automation scripts can be influenced with the help of 4 actions:

• Send email 
  The ability to send messages to your subscribers.
• Wait
  Set a time frame before the next action
• Apply Tag 
  Tag an email subscriber based on an action
• Check feed
  Look if new content has been added to a feed.

I do think it’s solid for creating basic automation but compared to other email marketing services the conditions you can set to help with automating email sequences are a bit limited.

Analytics & Reporting

Flodesk 
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.

Aweber
Analytics features are vital for email marketing services because they give you insight into the performance of your email campaigns and what you can change to optimize them. 

Aweber analytic features focus on the few factors below:

• Opens
• Clicks
• subscribers
• Subscriber totals
• Broadcast totals
• Location totals
• website tracking 
• sales tracking

At first, it’ll take a bit of getting used to getting all the information out of the analytics and the reports for beginners but after a week you should be able to understand enough to make meaningful changes.

The analytic features aren’t overcomplicated but there’s a little bit of a learning curve that you’ll have to take into account when working with them. 
 

Management and Segmentation

Flodesk 

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.

Aweber 

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

• Location
• Time subscribed
• Activity
• etc.

The free plan only gives you access to a few tags for segmenting but the paid plan does make it possible to customize the tags you can add to subscribers.

You simply click on the audience and you can start creating segments based on the information your subscribers provide you with through landing pages, forms, etc.

I have used a few email marketing services that don’t include segmentation in all their plans but I’m glad to say Aweber just like Flodesk isn’t one of them.

A/B Testing

Flodesk

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.

Aweber

Aweber does have split testing features that you use to find out how you can craft the perfect email letter. You can create different versions of an email and choose what percentage of your lists will receive the variations of the email. 

After finding out which version performs the best you can send this version to the rest of your email list. Aweber has among the most versatile features for split testing at its price range. 

Most email marketing services only allow you to split-test the subject line. That isn’t the case with Aweber. These are great features not only for beginners but also people that are experienced in email marketing.

Integrations

Flodesk
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.

Aweber

Aweber has more than 240 integrations that you can connect to it including Zapier. Aweber is designed in a way that you can immediately insert the integration into the workflow.

An example of that is the Paypal integration. You can create a workflow that makes sure that after a person pays for one of your products with PayPal he’s added to your email list.

This process can be automated with the help of Aweber.

Aweber is a clear winner when it comes to integrations. It has +200 more integrations than Flodesk including those that Flodesk uses.

Customer Support

Flodesk 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.

Aweber customer support

Aweber has been around for a long time and as a result, they’ve assembled a team that can provide high-quality support through multiple channels such as: 

Phone
They have got a toll-free number that you can call if you’re located in the United States and a second number for all international calls that’s available for all users. This is a huge plus in my opinion because I know a lot of services that only offer phone support to people that are in the highest tier of their services. 

Live chat 
They also have a live chat where you can ask anything from 8 AM–8 PM ET Mon–Fri.

Email
Aweber also has a team that handles email support. The email support team’s exact working hours aren’t something I could find any information about but their response time is short. I emailed them regarding a problem with automation and they responded in less than 2 hours.

Pricing

Flodesk

Aweber

Feature Gaps

There are some very noticeable differences in the features that both email marketing services offer. In this section, I’ll list all the differences I have found while working with these services. 

Flodesk
Flodesk is made to be very simple on purpose. It’s a minimalistic email marketing service that caters to people without email marketing experience and people that want to create simple email campaigns to communicate with their audience.

As a result, Flodesk doesn’t offer features that Aweber doesn’t have.

Aweber
Aweber is also known as a relatively simple email marketing service but what makes it different from Flodesk is that it offers the capability to optimize the emails you send. 

Aweber provides you insight in the performance of your campaigns and how you can adjust should that be necessary.

A/B testing
Split testing gives you the ability to experiment with different versions of the same email to find out which works better for getting your email subscribers to open emails, click on links, and purchase products and services.

Integration
Both Flodesk and Aweber use integrations but the number of integrations that you can use differs. Aweber has 200 more integrations that you can use to connect other applications to it.

Conclusion

Aweber and Flodesk are both great email marketing services.

I do think which one you pick should depend on how deep you want to get into email marketing, how you’re going to get your email subscribers, and how much money you’re willing to spend.

Here’s the piece of advice I want to leave you with when it comes to picking between the two services.

If you want to simply communicate with your email subscribers and send them content to build your brand then Flodesk is a great solution. 

If your goal is to get your email subscribers to take a specific action (sales, affiliate marketing, business) Aweber might be a better solution. 

I hope this review was of value to you. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment.

That’s all for today.

See you in my next post!