The Best Email Marketing Tool for Creative Entrepreneurs: Flodesk vs. MailChimp

/

As a small creative business owner, I feel like I am always doing a little bit of everything, and it is really important to me to be using tools that make my life and business a little bit easier! When I first started sending emails out to my (extremely) small audience, I used the free version of MailChimp. It was simple enough to use (though clunkier than I would have liked) and got the job done. But, as my business started to level up, I wanted more from my email platform. I wanted to be able to send emails that looked really good with minimal effort, and I wanted to be able to set it and forget it for some aspects of my email marketing. I just don’t have time to spend hours and hours on my emails and I wanted to use the tool that would make it as simple as possible for me. 

For my business, there were two specific use cases that I wanted to use my email platform for, in addition to general newsletter / sale information that I send out periodically. The first was for my calligraphy classes. I teach calligraphy classes a few times a month and I wanted to be able to create a post-class email once and send it over and over again (changing just a couple of key details each time) to make it as easy as possible!

I also have been venturing into the world of wholesale for my paper goods and I wanted to have a wholesale sequence of emails sharing some information about my products that I could set and forget, so that I wasn’t reinventing the wheel every time I found a retailer that I wanted to reach out to or that was interested in my products. 

I had been hearing a lot of good things about Flodesk from fellow creatives, so I decided to give it a shot, and after I tried it out, I was totally sold on it for a couple of key reasons.

Before we get into why Flodesk was the winner for me, let’s look at some of the features of Flodesk and MailChimp and see how they compare.

Email Marketing Tool Features: Flodesk vs. MailChimp

Workflows

An automated series of emails. Streamline your messages and “set it and forget it” so there is less manual work for you to do.

Flodesk: Use existing templates or create your own. Easily design a welcome series, sales sequence, post-purchase follow-up, freebie delivery, and more.

MailChimp: With Mailchimp’s email marketing automation tools, you can create personalized, automated workflows for each customer segment by setting up trigger-based messages and scheduling emails at the best time to increase conversions. (Note: cannot use with free version of MailChimp)

Reporting & Analytics

Optimize your email marketing efforts with data.

Flodesk: Flodesk Analytics is a set of charts, graphs, and tables that gives you a detailed look at how your subscribers, emails, forms, workflows, and checkouts perform.

MailChimp: Your Mailchimp account contains data about your campaigns, website, audience, and more. Mailchimp compiles this data into various reports that provide powerful insights to help inform your next steps and marketing strategy. 

Price

Self-explanatory - the cost!

Flodesk: Has a flat monthly rate no matter how large your subscriber list becomes

*get your first month free and your first year 50% off with this link!

MailChimp: Rate goes up as your subscribers go up, and if you send more emails than allocated in your plan, you’ll get an upcharge that month

*there is a free version of MailChimp but it has very limited features (no workflows)

Forms

Use these to collect subscribers and grow your list

Flodesk:

  • Pop-up form: capture contact info with a pop-up that can be added to any site

  • Embedded form: can be embedded anywhere on your site

  • Link in bio: Create a link landing page that showcases up to six links, plus an opt-in form

  • Video forms: Embed a video (from YouTube or Vimeo)  directly on the opt-in form

  • Spinner forms: Include a spinning prize wheel that allows users to win an offer or coupon

MailChimp:

  • Pop-up form: capture contact info with a pop-up that can be added to any site

  • Embedded form: can be embedded anywhere on your site

  • Sign-up landing page: share this page anywhere to collect contact info

  • Contact form: respond to customers directly from your MailChimp inbox

Monetization

Generate sales from your emails!

Flodesk: Flodesk Checkout is the easiest way to sell online. You don’t need a website or a complicated setup with separate tools. Whether you’re launching a course, selling digital products or offering services, you can use Flodesk Checkout to accomplish this.

*Flodesk also has integrations with top platforms but they also have their own checkout function. The plan that includes checkout is a higher cost than the basic plan

MailChimp: MailChimp integrates with top e-commerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce and Squarespace to help you generate sales.

Why Did I Choose Flodesk?

As you can see, both platforms offer some of the same features. Don’t get me wrong; they’re both good platforms! You certainly can’t go wrong with either; but for me, a couple of things about Flodesk stood out for me and influenced my choice.

  • Pricing: Flodesk has a flat monthly rate; they don’t charge more as your audience grows. As a growing small business, that is so important to me. I don’t want to feel penalized for gaining email subscribers and I definitely don’t want my monthly bill to go up just to be able to send to more people. Flodesk is so much more affordable for me based on the number of subscribers I currently have, and the fact that my list is growing!

  • Ease of use to make beautiful emails: I found Flodesk a lot easier and more elegant to use. They have so many templates you can choose from that already look great and you can just drag, drop and customize your information as needed. They bill themselves as “the world’s most intuitive email platform” and while I haven’t tried every email platform in the world, I can definitely agree that it is intuitive and very easy to use their tools.

  • Workflows: While both platforms have a workflow feature, I think Flodesk’s is so easy and so visually appealing. I found it effortless and intuitive to create a workflow and just really appreciated how simple it was to do what I wanted to do - no jumping through hoops. 

    • I use a workflow for my wholesale email sequence that I mentioned earlier; it was easy to create the messages and map out the timing, and I like how it lays it out so that it visually makes sense. Now, if I want to trigger those messages to start sending to a prospective retailer, all I need to do is add their contact information to my wholesale segment and it starts rolling for me! No need for me to manually do anything else. 

  • The overall simplicity and intuitiveness of Flodesk: MailChimp has a TON of different features and uses and integrations with other tools and as a small business owner (keyword: small!!), it’s a bit overwhelming and confusing to see all of these options. I really like that Flodesk meets my needs in a straightforward way. I don’t have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to do something, or what other tool I need…I just use Flodesk and it is easy to do what I need to do. As I grow, I can see these features still fitting my growing business, too.

New Features & How I’ll Use Them

I also have to mention some of the new features (new as of this post’s writing in October 2024) that Flodesk has been rolling out that I think are really cool and are making Flodesk stand out. 

  • Link Actions: When a subscriber clicks a link, you can do the following:

    • Add them to segments

    • Remove them from segments

    • Add them to a workflow (this I am definitely going to be using!!)

    • Remove them from a workflow

    • Tag them with a custom field

These are all useful functions but the one I will use the most will be adding them to a workflow or adding them to a segment. Examples of this could be an interested retailer clicking a link that adds them to my wholesale workflow, triggering my wholesale sequence of emails to start sending to them…that actually takes away ANY manual work I have to do! Wouldn’t even need to add their contact information myself, which is pretty cool!

  • Video Forms: Seamlessly embed video into popup and landing page forms, leveraging the persuasive power of video to increase subscriber conversion!

    • Embed a YouTube or Vimeo video into popup and landing page forms

    • Show your offer in ways you can’t with just a still image

    • Make your forms look unique with visuals and design elements proprietary to Flodesk

    • Choose from 15 new video form templates to convert and make your brand stand out

As a calligrapher, I think video forms are a really cool addition because calligraphy is such a visual art! I always get comments on how fun it is to watch calligraphy so the value of adding video is a no-brainer!

  • Template Sharing: Share templates you’ve created in various ways, like:

    • Turn your email templates into a freebie to grow your list

    • Sell your top performing email designs to create a new revenue stream 

    • Swap newsletter styles with your business besties

This is really cool because I’ve created some specific templates for my post-class emails that could be useful for other creatives who teach classes. I like the idea of both just sharing it with business friends and adding it to my shop as an additional revenue stream!

Conclusion

Ultimately, it’s going to depend on the type of business you have and where you see yourself going, but for me, Flodesk is the winner. They just make it so easy to send good emails, and they don’t upcharge the more subscribers you have. They are straightword and intuitive to use, and using Flodesk makes it easy and saves my time and energy. It’s as simple as that! 

Try Flodesk free for a month and get 50% off your first year!