Flodesk vs. Kit: Which email marketing tool is better?

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Discover the key differences between Flodesk and Kit in this detailed comparison and find out which email marketing tool best fits your business needs.

 
 
Kit
Pricing:
Free - $38/mo
Pricing:
Free - $2,599/mo
Best For:
Individuals and small businesses
Best For:
Content creators and bloggers
Pricing:
Free - $38/mo
Best For:
Individuals and small businesses
Kit
Pricing:
Free - $2,599/mo
Best For:
Content creators and bloggers

Choosing the right email marketing platform can make or break your business’s communication strategy. 

Flodesk and Kit are two popular options, each offering a unique set of features tailored to different user needs. 

In this comparison, we’ll dive into the strengths and weaknesses of both platforms, examining everything from design capabilities and ease of use to automation and pricing. 

Whether you’re a small business owner looking for beautiful, customizable emails or a content creator focused on audience growth, this guide will help you decide which tool is the perfect fit for your email marketing goals.

Flodesk vs. Kit: At a Glance

Here’s a breakdown of how Flodesk and Kit stack up against each other.

CriteriaFlodeskKitWinner
SMB Guide’s Rating7.3/107.6/10Kit
Marketing Automation CapabilitiesBasic automationAdvanced automationKit
Email BuilderDrag-and-drop editorText-based, visual editorFlodesk
Personalization & CustomizationBasic personalizationHighly personalizedKit
Campaign Performance TrackingBasic trackingDetailed metricsKit
Email DeliverabilityKit
List ManagementEasy to manageMore advanced segmentation and taggingKit
A/B TestingKit
Advanced Reporting & InsightsDetailed reportsAdvanced InsightsKit
Compliance & SecurityTie
User Experience and User InterfaceUser-friendly interfaceMinimalistic interfaceTie
Integrations and CompatibilityIntegrations via Zapier300+ integrationsKit
Customer SupportEmail support; Knowledge baseLimited supportKit
PricingFree – $38/moFree – $1,600/moFlodesk
ScalabilityKit

Flodesk: Key Features, Pros, Cons, & Pricing

flodesk homepage

Flodesk is a simple, user-friendly email marketing platform ideal for small businesses, creatives, and entrepreneurs. It offers a drag-and-drop email builder and beautiful templates, allowing anyone to create professional, on-brand emails without technical skills.

Basic automations, such as welcome sequences and follow-up emails triggered by user actions, help nurture leads and keep subscribers engaged—all without a complex setup.

One of Flodesk’s standout features is its flat-rate pricing, which lets you send unlimited emails regardless of your subscriber count.

It also offers personalization tools like dynamic content and merge tags for tailored messaging, along with essential analytics to track open rates, clicks, and conversions. 

Flodesk is a great choice for those who want an aesthetically focused, easy-to-use platform that balances simplicity with powerful email automation.

Pros & Cons

Pros

Free forever plan

Integrations via Zapier

User-friendly interface

Ecommerce functionalities

Cons

No mobile apps

Lack of advanced features

Pricing

Flodesk features a simple pricing structure with a single flat-rate plan that includes unlimited access to all features and no restrictions on subscriber count or email sends.

Users can try the platform risk-free with a 30-day free trial to assess its offerings. Unlike many competitors, Flodesk does not offer tiered pricing or a freemium option. Instead, it provides equal service levels to all users at one consistent rate.

This straightforward approach is ideal for businesses seeking predictable costs and comprehensive access without worrying about subscriber limits or additional fees.

Flodesk

Simple and intuitive email marketing that brings your brand to life.

Sign up free

Kit: Key Features, Pros, Cons, & Pricing

Kit homepage

Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is a top choice for content creators, offering strong automation and customizable forms, though it lacks advanced design features.

Ideal for bloggers and small businesses, Kit provides an intuitive interface, powerful automation, and 130+ integrations to enhance marketing efforts.

Pros & Cons

Pros

Free forever plan

130+ integrations

Free migration service

User-friendly interface

Cons

No phone support

No mobile apps

Pricing

Kit provides various pricing plans to suit individuals and businesses of all sizes, each offering a 14-day free trial for paid options. For those with over 500,000 subscribers, custom plans are available tailored to specific requirements.

Paid plans include:

  1. Newsletter — Perfect for creators who are just starting out
  2. Creator —  For growing creators and SMBs
  3. Pro — For established creators and businesses
Kit

Setting up automated email sequences is as easy as a few clicks saving you time and hassle.

Start free trial

Marketing Automation Capabilities

Flodesk streamlines marketing automation with a user-friendly setup, enabling quick creation of workflows for tasks like welcome sequences, lead nurturing, and follow-ups.

These automations activate based on user actions such as subscribing or completing a form.

Flodesk automation workflows

However, Flodesk’s automation capabilities are basic and lack advanced features like branching logic or multi-channel options such as SMS or social media.

While it supports basic dynamic content personalization, it doesn’t offer in-depth segmentation or behavioral targeting.

This makes Flodesk ideal for users seeking straightforward automation without complexity.

Kit automation workflows

Kit excels at designing simple marketing workflows with branching logic and conditional actions. It features various triggers for automating tasks, such as user behavior, time-based events, and external triggers.

Though Kit centers on email, it also supports multi-channel automation, including social media and SMS via Zapier.

Automated email content can be dynamically personalized based on recipient attributes or behaviors, providing a powerful tool for targeted marketing.

✅ Winner: Kit

Email Builder

Flodesk’s email builder is highly user-friendly with its drag-and-drop functionality and no coding required.

It offers a range of attractive, mobile-optimized templates for various needs, including newsletters and promotions. Customization is simple, with options to adjust layouts, fonts, and images.

Flodesk email builder

However, Flodesk lacks HTML editing, which might be limiting for those who code their templates. It also doesn’t include tools for email previews across clients or spam testing, which can affect deliverability.

Still, its design-focused features make it ideal for small businesses and creatives who value aesthetics.

Kit email builder

Kit offers three pre-designed email templates, fewer than many competitors. Its drag-and-drop email editor is user-friendly, enabling easy layout and element customization.

The templates are mobile-optimized for a consistent experience on various screen sizes. Kit also supports direct HTML editing for those who prefer coding their templates.

Additionally, the platform provides preview options to view how emails appear across different clients and devices.

✅ Winner: Flodesk

Personalization & Customization

Flodesk offers basic personalization with options to insert dynamic content based on subscriber details like name or location, using merge tags for a personal touch.

However, its personalization capabilities are limited compared to more advanced platforms.

Segmentation is straightforward, allowing targeting by criteria such as subscription source or engagement level, but lacks advanced features like combining multiple conditions or complex behavioral triggers.

Flodesk email personalization

Overall, while Flodesk’s customization options are simple and functional, they fall short of the depth found in more sophisticated tools.

Kit excels in dynamic content personalization, using recipient attributes, behaviors, or segmentation criteria. Versatile merge tags allow for detailed customization with recipient-specific information.

Kit personalization

Its flexible segmentation options let you target specific audience groups with tailored messaging. Personalization tokens enable the insertion of names, locations, or other relevant data to make emails more pertinent.

Kit’s standout feature is its ability to adapt messages based on user behavior or interactions with previous campaigns.

✅ Winner: Kit

Campaign Performance Tracking

Flodesk provides basic email tracking tools, including open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.

Its reporting dashboard is straightforward and user-friendly, offering real-time insights. However, the analytics are limited, lacking advanced tracking and analysis options.

A/B testing is not supported, which might be disappointing for those looking to test different campaign elements. Additionally, there are no integrations with third-party analytics tools like Google Analytics for tracking conversions and ROI.

Flodesk analytics

While Flodesk’s analytics may fall short for those needing deeper insights, it’s well-suited for small businesses and beginners who need essential performance metrics.

Kit tracks key email marketing metrics, including open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and ROI. Its real-time dashboards provide up-to-date campaign performance insights.

Kit performance tracking

Users can set and monitor specific goals like revenue or lead generation. Kit also supports split testing for campaigns, offering insights into the effectiveness of various strategies.

For enhanced performance tracking, Kit integrates with third-party analytics platforms such as Google Analytics.

✅ Winner: Kit

Email Deliverability

Customer feedback on Flodesk’s email deliverability is mixed—while some users report excellent results, others have seen better outcomes with platforms like Kit.

To improve deliverability, Flodesk recommends:

  • Authenticating your domain
  • Migrating only active subscribers
  • Avoiding purchased email lists
  • Warming up your sending address
  • Segmenting your audience for relevant emails
  • Removing inactive subscribers
  • Steering clear of spam filters

Kit boasts an impressive 99.8% delivery rate and maintains a strong reputation with email providers, ensuring emails reach recipients’ inboxes.

✅ Winner: Kit

List Management

Flodesk provides robust tools for managing subscribers, whether individually or in bulk. You can easily select all subscribers from your list or within specific segments, allowing you to unsubscribe, delete, or move them to different segments in bulk.

Kit list segmentation

Kit offers more than just standard list management—it helps you accelerate organic growth. Through its Creator Network, influential voices in your niche can recommend your content, rapidly expanding your email list without any ad spend.

This approach ensures you attract quality leads, helping you engage and convert subscribers to grow your business efficiently.

✅ Winner: Kit

A/B Testing

Flodesk’s A/B testing is fairly basic, allowing you to only test subject lines. Unlike some other platforms, it doesn’t support testing different email content or sender details, which may be a limitation for businesses that depend on more robust A/B testing for campaign optimization.

Flodesk a/b split testing

In Kit, A/B testing allows you to compare two subject lines for your Broadcast. Initially, 30% of your recipients receive the two versions.

After evaluating open rates, the subject line with the better performance is sent to the remaining 70% of your list automatically.

✅ Winner: Kit

Advanced Reporting & Insights

Flodesk’s advanced reporting features may be limited compared to other platforms, but the platform is continuously improving.

Recently, Flodesk introduced a new analytics dashboard offering detailed insights into email campaigns, forms, workflows, and checkouts.

Flodesk advanced reporting

This visualized data (charts, graphs, and tables) helps users track performance, identify what’s working, and make adjustments.

Users can compare metrics across different elements and download reports for further analysis, signaling Flodesk’s commitment to evolving based on user feedback.

Kit analytics reports

Kit’s Creator Pro plan offers advanced analytics with detailed deliverability reports, allowing you to filter data for specific audience subsets, broadcasts, or sequences. This is particularly helpful for identifying issues like open rate declines. 

The advanced Insights dashboard, developed in partnership with SegMetrics, provides a full view of how your traffic turns into subscribers and customers.

With this tool, you can track key metrics such as subscriber origins, top-performing emails, and acquisition costs, giving creators valuable data to grow their business.

✅ Winner: Kit

Compliance and Security

Both Flodesk and Kit prioritize data security and compliance. Flodesk adheres to GDPR regulations, while Kit also complies with GDPR and follows Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs).

Both platforms offer robust measures to ensure the security of user data and maintain high compliance standards.

✅ Winner: Tie

User Interface and User Experience

Flodesk is user-friendly and intuitive, ideal for those with little tech experience. Its clean, minimalist interface simplifies email creation.

The straightforward layout and easy-to-use menus enhance the user experience, while the drag-and-drop editor and customizable templates make branding effortless.

Flodesk interface

Focused on design and aesthetics, Flodesk enables the creation of attractive emails with minimal effort. However, it lacks advanced features like keyboard shortcuts and customizable dashboards.

Additionally, its testing options are limited, and it doesn’t offer comprehensive email previews across different devices and clients. 

Despite these limitations, its ease of use and design appeal are major strengths.

Kit dashboard

Kit features an intuitive interface, simplifying the process of creating, sending, and managing emails. Its organized layout ensures easy navigation through menus and features.

The drag-and-drop editor facilitates straightforward email design, with customizable templates and pre-designed options. Preview and testing tools verify how emails display across various devices and clients.

Customizable dashboards and shortcuts enhance usability. A standout feature is the automatic color extraction from your website to align with your brand, accompanied by a brief introductory video (1 minute and 5 seconds) to help you get started.

However, the extracted colors won’t apply to the email template, which can be confusing if they’re not used effectively.

✅ Winner: Kit

Integrations and Compatibility

Flodesk offers extensive integrations via Zapier and Pabbly Connect, connecting with apps like Shopify, Facebook, Instagram, Typeform, WordPress, Google Sheets, and Slack for streamlined data syncing and workflow automation.

It features direct Shopify integration for personalized e-commerce campaigns and provides an API for custom integrations.

However, Flodesk lacks a mobile app, limiting on-the-go management, though the web platform is mobile-friendly.

Flodesk integrations

On paid plans, Kit supports third-party integrations with popular CRM systems like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zoho, as well as APIs for connecting with various business tools.

It integrates smoothly with e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and Adobe Commerce.

Kit integrations

Kit also connects with social media for sharing and tracking and works with analytics tools like Google Analytics to monitor campaign performance.

Currently, Kit does not offer a native mobile app, though a third-party app named KitPilot is available on the Apple Store.

✅ Winner: Tie

Customer Support

Flodesk currently offers support only via email and a knowledge base, lacking live chat or phone assistance. This might be a downside for those needing real-time help.

However, email responses are generally quick, and the knowledge base is rich with articles, tutorials, and guides for troubleshooting and maximizing platform use.

Additionally, the community forum provides a space to connect with other users, share insights, and seek help. Online videos and tutorials are also available to help new users get acquainted with Flodesk.

Kit provides various customer support options, including live chat, email, and a knowledge base, with generally prompt responses and effective issue resolution.

It offers thorough help documentation, tutorials, and user guides. Additionally, an active community forum and user groups provide extra assistance.

Training resources, such as webinars and online courses, are available to help you fully utilize the software.

✅ Winner: Kit

Pricing

Flodesk’s pricing plans are fairly straightforward. It provides all users with the same level of service and functionality at one flat rate. 

FreeEmail MarketingEmail Marketing & Checkout
$0Billed monthlyBilled annuallyBilled monthlyBilled annually
$38$35$26$24

Kit offers an awesome range of pricing plans designed to cater to different needs. Below are the prices for 1,000 subscribers:

NewsletterCreatorPro

$0
Billed monthlyBilled annuallyBilled monthlyBilled annually
$29$290$59$590

✅ Winner: Flodesk

Scalability

Kit offers superior scalability with its creator-focused plans that grow with your subscriber base. As your list expands, Kit provides flexible pricing options tailored to the size of your audience, ensuring that you only pay for what you need.

This approach allows for seamless scaling, accommodating both small and large subscriber counts without compromising functionality.

✅ Winner: Kit

Standout Features of Flodesk

While Flodesk is known for its simplicity, it offers several distinctive features that set it apart.

  • Effective Sales Funnels: Flodesk helps users create sales funnels that convert visitors into customers. It offers tools for designing sales pages, processing payments, and delivering products seamlessly. Custom discount codes and crossed-out pricing features enhance urgency and boost conversions.
  • Custom Sign-Up Forms: Flodesk provides customizable, attractive forms to grow email lists. Users can design on-brand sign-up forms, including popups, landing pages, and inline forms, to capture leads and expand their audience efficiently.

Standout Features of Kit

Kit distinguishes itself by catering specifically to content creators, bloggers, and small businesses. Its standout features include intuitive automation workflows tailored for these users.

The visual automation builder is a highlight, clearly mapping out the customer journey. Kit’s emphasis on simplicity combined with robust functionality sets it apart from many competitors.

Flodesk vs. Kit: SMB Guide’s Verdict

Overall, Kit stands out as the better choice, especially for creators looking to scale.

While Flodesk shines for beginners with its simple pricing, user-friendly interface, and basic automation features, Kit offers far more scalability, advanced analytics, and greater reach for growing businesses.

For creators wanting to streamline their marketing and expand their audience, Kit provides the tools to do so efficiently.

Kit

Setting up automated email sequences is as easy as a few clicks saving you time and hassle.

Start free trial

Beatrice is a seasoned productivity writer with a knack for uncovering game-changing productivity hacks that simplify life routines. Armed with a triple major in Commerce, Accounting, and Insurance, she also runs her own digital consulting firm. You'll usually find her immersed in crafting captivating literary novels and traveling the world.