ConvertKit: Tested, Reviewed & Explained

ConvertKit promises to focus primarily on creators. But besides being a great tool for creators, it also works well for musicians, bloggers, coaches, book authors and so on.

While it promises to be a go-to tool for creators, how much of it is true?

Take a look at the points below as we bring you a run-down of a user’s hands-on experience.

Key features: Reviewed & explained in detail

We’ve done the hard work, and the results are up here for you to see:

Signing up

Signing up for ConvertKit is easy.

Fill out the basic information, it’ll ask you a few questions and you’re all set.

It only takes a couple of minutes. You’ll have to enter the following details:

Where are you joining from?
How big is your audience?
Business name.
What do you hope to achieve?

You can choose your own custom domain, and then ConvertKit creates its own domain and landing page for you.

Then, you can go ahead and link your website or any social media pages.

And, it’s done!

Own & Grow feature

Although these might be just two features, I have my reasons for having a separate pointer just for these two.

The Grow feature allows you to organize your subscribers with tags and segments as well as import your current list.

You can also access the creator profile under the Grow tab.

In my opinion, it really feels like your own hub on the internet.

The Grow feature offers a network for the creators. This allows you to join the creator network to cross-promote your work with other creators and to grow your email list together.

In simpler terms, this means that you can find somebody on the network to partner with and they would send emails to their list telling their audience to subscribe to your email list.

A great way to grow your list, isn’t it?

And then vice versa, you can return the favor.

Check out what the option looks like when used:

(Source: Emailtooltester)

However, the catch is that this will likely only work if you have a newsletter. Which means that if you have a product, you’d need an email list to market it just right.

Needless to say, this barter would be counter-productive in cases of the other person selling a similar product in the same niche.

Another feature – the Own feature

Which leads us to the Recommendations feature found under the Grow tab. This is similar to the above feature, wherein you recommend people from your email list to subscribe to another person’s email list. And for doing so, you get paid instead of getting subscribers in return.

Either way, I found both features interesting, as creators have the flexibility to consider either of these options.

Generating revenue

The paid newsletter means that your subscribers pay you a monthly fee to be a part of your newsletter. This means monetizing the newsletter and creating exclusive content.

Speaking of monetization, you can also sell digital products right on ConvertKit. All you need to do is create a sales page and people can buy directly from there.

The sales page is pretty easy to set up and you have some templates to choose from.

Interface

The interface is super clean, but comes with some features, which take a bit of time to understand how the logic behind it works.

Though in a nutshell, I found it to be clean and minimal, which makes the process less overwhelming, especially if you are not a tech person.

Everything is laid out well, navigation on the top bar, quick access to broadcasts, automation, forms, and a simple dashboard to show subscriber growth at a glance.

Unlike other tools, you don’t have to watch tutorials to understand how the tool works, which can be particularly difficult for users who are not tech-savvy. On the flip side, if you still feel the need for a helping hand, it offers in-depth onboarding documentation, which makes understanding the tool a piece of cake.

Let’s take a look at the ConvertKit dashboard below:

(Source: ConvertKit)

However, you might find this simplicity a bit limiting at times, especially when trying to manage complex funnels or segmentations.

Landing pages & forms option

This is where you can gather subscribers by creating a landing page or a form embedded on your website.

You don’t need a website to start collecting subscribers, which is a big win for those getting started.

The built-in landing page builder is easy to use, with clean templates optimized for lead capture.

You can customize colors, fonts, images, and basic layout elements without the need to code. Forms are also equally intuitive; you can either embed them, use them as popups, or trigger them via automation.

However, in terms of highly customized multi-step forms or advanced design control, you might need deeper flexibility.

Broadcast & email templates

You can find the broadcast and email templates options in the ‘Send’ tab.

The email broadcast template helps you send an email to some or all of your audience, as well as your public feed.

We’d say there are not many templates to choose from. Some of them also don’t have a professional look compared to what the other email marketing tools offer. Additionally, the templates are also quite limited in number.

Despite the availability of the email editor, which is quite easy to use compared to the other alternatives, I still found it to be a bit limited.

In terms of ease, if you want to change the text, simply click on it and the job is done. And the same easy process follows for images, background images, and background colors.

Here’s what it looks like:

(Source: Emailtooltester)

ConvertKit offers almost 50-100 templates, and if you don’t like those, you can use the template editor to create your own.

In a nutshell, as ConvertKit proudly states that the tool is a perfect fit for creators, templates are designed keeping primarily the creators in mind.

Reports

ConvertKit offers reports for every email sequence.

You also get an overview of open rates, click rates, unsubscribes and new subscriber growth – all laid out in an easy format.

The broadcast and automation sequences come with their own performance metrics, so that you can decide between what’s working and what needs improvement.

However, if you are used to advanced reporting such as heat maps, revenue attribution, or time of day engagement trends, then ConvertKit might lack those features.

Another downside is that there are no visual funnel tracking or in-depth campaign comparison tools that are present in other enterprise-focused platforms.

Automations

Tagging is yet another option in the automation feature.

We can basically track if they have done a specific action, then we can add a tag and then add them into another automation just like this.

Besides that, sending out newsletters is one of the most crucial aspects for a brand’s marketing.

And this is where ConverKit shines the most.

It automatically generates newsletters via RSS feeds. Since a few brands can have a huge audience, it can be difficult to curate a newsletter every single month. It takes a while to find the right posts, which can be a full-time job.

This is where you can automate it and it allows you to create these newsletter digests, which you can connect to the RSS feeds of your preferred blogs, Reddit, or any website that has an RSS feed.

You can add it to ConvertKit and it automatically creates a newsletter!

And then, it goes out automatically – more like set it and forget it! What could be better than this for a marketer who is swamped with work around the clock?

Another benefit is keeping your audience engaged with your content automatically.

Snippets

Snippets allow you to create reusable content blocks. In simpler terms, snippets are the kind of common blocks that you use in your emails every time it is sent out.

For example, if you use a specific CTA in all your emails, you can create that as a snippet so you don’t have to rewrite it or recreate it every time you send an email.

This means that there is no back-and-forth working on the tasks that are carried out every day. The snippets load automatically and show up exactly when and where you want them to. Hence, no wasting time at the 11th hour, ensuring that everything looks right.

Pop ups

Pop-ups with ConvertKit offer interesting customizations and how you want the pop-ups to show up.

Be it a simple pop-up, CTA, exit-intent pop-up, or a lead magnet.

Having access to these types of pop-ups can significantly influence your conversions.

This will help you know if someone scrolls to a certain page to a certain page and for how long the visitor was on that page.

Integrations

ConvertKit offers a ton of integrations to its users.

So you can connect platforms like Shopify, Gumroad, Patreon, Zapier, Sparkloop and more. The Rules tab offers a simple way to automate things using basic if-then statements.

ConvertKit also provides a free migration service, which means that they offer expert help from their team to monitor your account and then transfer everything into ConvertKit. This includes all your subscribers, automations, workflows and forms.

Eventually, this means minimum hassle for you!

You can also add a CSV file to ConvertKit, and it automatically imports the data. You can also import the data from another provider such as MailChimp.

Check out more integrations that ConvertKit offers:

(Source: Emailtooltester)

Resources

Assistance from ConvertKit goes far and wide.

Their community and learn pages have an active community and if you have queries, you can get a quick and reasonable answer here.

Users who are a part of the community educate each other about building, growing and monetizing a business.

Besides that, ConvertKit also offers an in-depth onboarding course, documents, videos, and a live chat to help you out if you are stuck or confused about something.

Pricing plans

ConvertKit has three different pricing plans to fit anyone and everyone’s needs. They also have this little slider on their website that asks how many email subscribers you have, so you can see how much ConvertKit is going to cost for you, depending on the size of your audience.

And what’s really amazing is that you can have up to 10,000 subscribers and still be on their free plan, which is great if you’re just getting started. However, it is limited only to newsletters.

It’s also worth noting that you can get two months free when you prepay for an annual plan versus going the monthly route.

So on the free plan, you can have up to 10,000 subscribers, for free, including unlimited landing pages, unlimited forms, unlimited broadcasts, audience tagging and segmentation, the ability to sell digital products and subscriptions, as well as community support.

After that, the user is charged on the basis of the subscribers they have.

If you want to get started with ConvertKit and test it out, you can test out a lot of their features on their free plan.

Although the free plan doesn’t offer email marketing automation.

Now, moving over to the Creator Plan.

In the creator plan, you get everything that you get in the free plan, plus free recommendations, paid recommendations, free migration from another tool, and automated email sequences.

You also get visual automation builder, third-party integrations and one additional team member.

Now, I would say that the biggest upgrade here on the creator plan from the free plan is the fact that you can do automated email sequences. For most people looking to get started with email marketing, chances are that they want to create some sort of automated email sequence.

All this would be nice to have on the free plan, but most email marketing software requires a paid subscription for this feature anyway. And lastly, looking here at the Creator Pro plan, it gets you everything from the Creator plan.

Learn more about the ConvertKit pricing here.

Conclusion

That’s a wrap!

I‘ve got a lot covered, but not enough for you not to give it a try.

I am sure that with a profound tool like ConvertKit, there is a lot more waiting to be explored!

Test it out and let us know your experiences, opinions, suggestions, and other alternatives (if any).

Looking forward to speaking with you in the comments below!

P.S.: While you are on the lookout for a tool that can work for your email marketing operations, check out another prominent one in the market that is making waves in recent times.

Check out Icegram Express!

FAQ

Can I import subscribers from another email marketing tool?
Yes.

Does ConvertKit support transactional emails like order confirmations or password resets?
No, ConvertKit is focused on marketing emails, not transactional ones. For those, you’ll need a separate transactional email service..

Are there email scheduling options across different time zones?
Yes. You can schedule broadcasts to send at a specific time based on your own time zone. However, ConvertKit currently doesn’t support per-subscriber time zone optimization..

Does ConvertKit have a mobile app?
No, ConvertKit does not offer a fully functional mobile app. Some third-party tools offer partial functionality, but most campaign creation and analytics are best handled on a desktop.

Can you add multiple users or team members to a ConvertKit account?
Team access is available, but only on Creator Pro plans. You can assign user roles (Admin or Viewer), but there’s no granular permissions system.

How easy is it to cancel ConvertKit or switch to another platform?
Canceling is straightforward and can be done through your account settings. Exporting your subscribers, sequences, and reports is possible, though you’ll need to manually recreate automations and forms on the new platform.