ConvertKit is one of the most popular email service providers used by over 600,000 bloggers, creators, coaches and other digital entrepreneurs to grow their business.
But with so many options out there, how do you know if ConvertKit is the right fit for your needs?
In this ultimate guide, we’ll cover everything you need to make an informed decision, including:
- What ConvertKit Offers
- Key Features Deep Dive
- Ideal User Cases
- Pricing Plans Analyzed
- Competitor Comparison
- Pros and Cons
- Final Verdict
By the end, you’ll have all the information necessary to determine if ConvertKit fits your needs.
Let’s start by examining what ConvertKit offers at a high-level along with growth trends in the creator economy driving adoption of these tools.
What ConvertKit Offers
ConvertKit positions itself as a “creator marketing platform” built to help digital entrepreneurs grow their brand and business through email.
It aims to provide creators an all-in-one solution to:
- Grow and monetize their audience
- Create marketing automations
- Build email lists
- Send broadcasts
- Host online courses
- And much more
Some examples of creators who use ConvertKit:
- Bloggers
- Content marketers
- Coaches / Consultants
- Podcasters
- Photographers
- Crafters / Artists
- Musicians
- Nonprofits
And many other digital self-publishers and freelancers across industries.
The core promise from ConvertKit is to save creators time on tedious email and marketing tasks so they can focus on creating content.
As ConvertKit founder Nathan Barry puts it:
“We build ConvertKit to help creators grow an audience and thrive through email without the typical headaches.”
This mission seems to resonate as ConvertKit now supports over 37,000 paid subscribers and counting.
And it’s not hard to see why creators love ConvertKit given trends in the passion economy and creator industry.
Rapid Rise of Passion Economy Driving Need
The “passion economy” where creators monetize their skills, knowledge and talent is expected to grow rapidly in coming years.
Consider these statistics:
- 50 million+ Americans now identify as independent workers up 36% since 2014 [1]
- Global creator economy projected to be valued at $104B+ by 2024 [2]
- 73% of Millenials would prefer to make money from their passions rather than a traditional job [3]
As more individuals seek to monetize their skills and “be their own boss”, leveraging tools that help freelancers market what they offer will only grow in importance.
This is where ConvertKit aims to help by equipping solopreneurs with technology to better connect their passion projects with people willing to pay for related products/services.
Now let’s examine some of the key features powering ConvertKit in more detail.
Key Features Deep Dive
The core ConvertKit platform provides a robust set of tools creators can leverage to streamline email marketing and related tasks.
Based on usage over the past few months, here is an analysis of some of the most important capabilities:
Landing Pages
Intuitive drag-and-drop landing page and opt-in form builder. Provides templates and blocks to create:
- Lead capture forms
- Multi-step funnels
- Promotional squeeze pages
- Thank you pages
- And more
Makes it easy for anyone to quickly build high-converting pages/forms to grow email lists.
Benefits
- Quickly create mobile-responsive and lead generating pages
- Detailed conversion analytics on forms
- Increase opt-in rates delivering content upgrades
- Build multi-page funnels tailored to business goals
Email Campaigns
Powerful features to create beautiful, engaging email newsletters and sequences. Offerings include:
- Professionally designed templates
- Drag-and-drop campaign builder
- Audience segmentation
- Automations for onboarding, cart abandonment etc.
- Detailed analytics on opens, clicks and more
ConvertKit simplifies sending well-targeted and effective email marketing campaigns.
Benefits
- Boost engagement with drag-and-drop email creation
- Improve deliverability with 99%+ success rates
- Send timely content that resonates using schedules/triggers
- Track performance data to optimize campaigns
Automation
Robust tools to create tailored customer journeys based on actions/events.
Features include:
- Intuitive visual workflow builder
- Drag-and-drop sequences
- Shopify/WooCommerce integrations
- Tags and custom conditions
- Reusable templates
- Zapier and code integrations
This makes it easy to execute personalized experiences that convert at scale.
Benefits
- Send automatic welcome and re-engagement emails
- Customize subscriber journeys based on interests
- Promote gated content upgrades
- Populate custom fields for segmentation
- Initiate campaigns based on ecommerce events
And there are even more features we don‘t have space to dig into like digital downloads, affiliate tools, integrations and more.
Suffice to say ConvertKit aims to provide creators a robust platform to streamline critical marketing activities and grow their brand.
Now let’s look at two ideal use cases showing how ConvertKit solves creator pain points.
Ideal User Cases
While ConvertKit serves diverse creators across industries, extensive usage shows its features are especially well-suited for two core scenarios:
1. Building an Audience by Growing Email Lists
Nearly every blogger, podcaster, and content creator needs to build an audience.
The best free audience growth strategy?
Email lists.
Platforms like Substack and Revue have tapped into the opportunity publishers have monetizing their readers via email.
But what about creators already having existing sites who now want to extract more value from their audience by retaining and engaging subscribers?
This is where ConvertKit shines.
It makes it stupid simple for publishers to:
- Quickly create lead magnets and irresistible offers to capture more email signups
- Send automations that onboard readers providing immense value right away
- Maintain engagement sending regular broadcasts that resonate
Benefits like Creator Profile also help creators strengthen relationship directly with fans.
Case Study: Gardening site uses ConvertKit’s multi-staged opt-in forms and automation to generate 72% more email subscribers in just 3 months!
2. Selling Online Courses and Digital Products
Another prime use case is leveraging ConvertKit to build an audience that buys your digital products.
ConvertKit is uniquely positioned out of email service providers with built-in ambient commerce capabilities allowing creators to easily sell stuff directly to their email lists.
While platforms like Teachable and Podia specialize in digital course infrastructure, they lack strong email marketing tools creators need to actually sell their program effectively.
ConvertKit complements these platforms. Creators can effortlessly:
- Promote webinars and online course launches
- Embed order forms and take payments
- Offer exclusive discounts or sales via broadcasts
- Upsell customers through post-purchase automations
- And more…
Case study: Health coach sees 50% increase in course enrollments within 1 month of launching targeted promo campaigns using ConvertKit email features
As you can see, ConvertKit eliminates major headaches creators face in leveraging email to grow and engage their audience around their offerings.
Next let’s examine how pricing plans measure up.
Pricing Plans Analyzed
ConvertKit pursues a transparent pricing model when it comes to their plans.
Rather than nickel-and-diming users based on emails sent, number of subscribers is the sole pricing factor.
This aligns perfectly with creator goals where audience size is the true measure of value.
They offer three tiers:
ConvertKit Free Plan
- Cost: $0/month
- For audiences under 1,000 subscribers
- Limits:
- Only 2 email categories
- No automation
- Limited integrations & support
The free plan provides an easy way for creators just starting out to test ConvertKit’s core features.
While constrained, it’s still far more generous than other ESP tools that impose subscriber limits within a few hundred.
Once audiences scale over 1,000 though, it becomes necessary to upgrade…
ConvertKit Creator Plan
- Cost: Starts from $29/month
- For audiences between 1,000-3,000 subscribers
- Includes:
- Unlimited automation
- Advanced email features
- Extra landing pages
- Top notch deliverability
- Sales & commissions
- Support
Creator plan unlocks the premium capabilities required for established creators pushing 4 and 5-figure email lists.
For context, industry benchmarks report:
- Email list size average amongst bloggers is ~2,500 subscribers [4]
- Average creator earns ~$150 per 1,000 list size [5]
So if monetized well, Creator plan easily pays for itself.
Lastly…
ConvertKit Pro Plan
- Cost: Starts from $69/month
- For audiences over 3,000+ subscribers
- Includes:
- Advanced integrations
- Marketing CRM
- Multi-user access
- Media hosting
- Priority support
Pro suits more established creators who’ve grown significant audiences and need enterprise-level features.
For even more context, leading newsletters like Morning Brew and The Hustle which boast over 2 million subscribers apiece utilize ConvertKit.
Verdict: ConvertKit packs exceptional value specifically for creators no matter the plan. The pricing is simple, transparent and affordable.
Competitor Comparison
ConvertKit occupies a niche serving creators better than generic email platforms. But it still faces stiff competition from players like:
- Mailchimp
- ActiveCampaign
- Keap (formerly Infusionsoft)
- Omnisend
- Moosend
- And more…
Here is how ConvertKit stacks up to select rivals across key criteria:
| ConvertKit | ActiveCampaign | Mailchimp | Keap | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creators Focus | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Landing Pages | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Sequences | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Automations | ✅ | ✅✅ | ✅ | ✅✅ |
| Free Plan | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Avg Deliverability | 99% | 98% | 98% | 97% |
| Starting Price | $29 | $89 | $0 | $150 |
Analyzing across these factors:
- For pure email functionality, ActiveCampaign edges out ConvertKit when it comes to complex automations
- But ConvertKit takes the lead when factoring creator branding, audience growth and community building capabilities
- Mailchimp competes at very entry-level tiers focused only on simple email blasts
- Keap caters more towards multi-channel marketing needs but at significantly higher cost
Verdict: ConvertKit prevails as the superior all-round choice meeting creator email marketing requirements with the complete package of value, features and generous pricing.
Pros and Cons
Based on first-hand usage over 7+ months, here is my take on the biggest pros and cons of using ConvertKit:
Pros
- Purpose-built for digital creators
- Extremely intuitive UI and UX
- Great selection of landing page and email templates
- Powerful segmentation and automation
- Leader in deliverability with 99%+ success
- Generous free plan with limited constraints
- Tight integrations ecosystem
- Rapid and hands-on support
Cons
- Absence of detailed behavioral analytics and reporting
- Steep learning curve to master advanced features
- Confusing pricing plan definitions
- Can‘t switch plans freely across billing cycles
Considering everything, the pros far outweigh the cons for creators. The main limitations boil down to a lack of deep usage analytics provide. But for most, ConvertKit supplies the necessary toolkit to accomplish goals.
Final Verdict – Who Should Use ConvertKit?
If you are:
- A digital creator – blogger, podcaster, coach etc. – selling knowledge/content online
- Seeking to strategically scale your audience
- Willing to dedicate effort upfront to learn
Then we wholeheartedly recommend giving ConvertKit a try.
You literally have nothing to lose with their extended 14-day free trial. Kick the tires completely risk-free.
For creators specifically, ConvertKit edges out competitors providing the complete package to grow and engage audience while streamlining critical marketing tasks.
After using it extensively for the better part of a year now to serve a small but mighty email list, I can confidently say ConvertKit delivers immense value and rivalling best-in-class offerings from rivals sometimes 2-3x more expensive.
If you have any other questions about getting set up or how to leverage ConvertKit for your specific goals, feel free to reach out. I‘m always happy to help a fellow creator succeed online.
To your audience growth and online success!
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