In the event you’re searching for your subsequent e mail advertising and marketing platform, and also you’re curious if Equipment is best for you, properly, you’re in the correct place! Right here’s our complete Equipment evaluation for 2024, which can cowl:
- What Is Equipment?
- Why do I want an e mail service supplier (ESP)?
- The rebrand from ConvertKit to Equipment
- Equipment Options
- Equipment Pricing
- Key Advantages of Equipment
- Drawbacks of Equipment
- Equipment & Electronic mail Advertising and marketing: Extra Assets to Learn, Pay attention & Study
What’s Equipment?
Equipment is an e mail service supplier (ESP). Primarily, it’s a know-how service that permits you to ship e mail campaigns to a listing of subscribers. Equipment is one in all actually lots of of ESPs on the market, and—full disclosure—it occurs to be the one we want and use at SPI.
Though we’re biased, we are able to nonetheless be goal! On this submit, we’ll cowl the options, advantages, and drawbacks of Equipment as we see them, that will help you resolve if it’s the correct ESP for your corporation.
Electronic mail advertising and marketing technique: Why you want an ESP
In the event you’re studying this, you may already know what an ESP is and why you want one. However in case you don’t, an ESP is a very powerful piece of know-how to help your e mail advertising and marketing technique.
Electronic mail advertising and marketing is without doubt one of the strongest strategies to construct relationships and market your services to your viewers. Let’s speak about why that’s.
In its most simple type, e mail advertising and marketing entails you sending emails to a bunch of people that’ve chosen to listen to from you by “subscribing” to obtain emails from you. You possibly can technically use a easy e mail program like Gmail to perform this—however we don’t advocate it, since you’ll shortly discover it inadequate (and since your private e mail account will get flagged as spam if you happen to ship too many emails from it!).
As your corporation grows and extra individuals subscribe to get your emails, you’ll need the flexibility to do extra subtle issues together with your e mail advertising and marketing, like customizing the emails individuals get in response to their pursuits, and utilizing studies and analytics to find out what’s working properly or not.
You additionally have to be sure to’re respecting individuals’s privateness and never spamming anybody. An e mail service supplier additionally lets you keep in compliance with authorities rules world wide, such because the CAN-SPAM act in the USA, the Normal Knowledge Safety Regulation within the European Union (GDPR), and the Canada Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL).
Issues can shortly get out of hand with out the assistance of a devoted e mail advertising and marketing platform. That’s the place an ESP like Equipment is available in.
Okay, let’s get into the nitty gritty of Equipment’s options!
Psst… Wish to develop your e mail listing and be taught highly effective segmentation and automation methods that permit your corporation to run by itself? Take a look at the Electronic mail Advertising and marketing Magic course.
Equipment options
These are the important thing options of Equipment, organized by the way you’ll use them.
Sending emails
- Autoresponders/drip campaigns (sequences): Ship a sequence of pre-written emails mechanically to a particular section of subscribers in your listing, triggered by a particular occasion or motion, with the purpose of guiding them to take a particular motion.
- Broadcast emails: Ship normal bulletins or one-time emails to your subscribers on a particular date.
- CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL compliance: CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL are legal guidelines that set the principles and necessities for business e mail messages, and provides recipients the correct to have you ever cease emailing them—so compliance is essential!
- Dynamic (personalised) e mail content material: Your e mail content material can show totally different textual content or photographs, in response to your buyer segmentation.
- Responsive e mail templates: Prepared-to-go e mail designs, in addition to the flexibility to create your personal customized templates. Equipment mechanically codecs your touchdown pages for varied units, comparable to desktop computer systems and cell phones.
- WYSIWYG e mail editor: The built-in e mail editor allows you to see how your e mail will look together with your template’s styling utilized when you’re composing it.
Accumulating new subscribers
- Customized responsive touchdown pages: Use the included software to shortly create a touchdown web page to gather e mail addresses. Equipment mechanically codecs your touchdown pages for varied units, comparable to desktop computer systems and cell phones.
- Embeddable varieties: Acquire e mail subscribers anyplace in your web site by dropping in a Javascript or HTML type, or by utilizing the WordPress plugin.
- Website builder: Create an internet site immediately on Equipment to publish newsletters, host a digital storefront to gather fee for one-time or subscription merchandise, and construct customized pages. Arrange a touchdown web page and gather fee for one-time or subscription merchandise proper inside Equipment.
- Visible automations: Equipment lets you create rule-based paths utilizing if-then logic, in order that when a subscriber takes a selected motion, you’ll be able to ship them pre-defined emails or add them to a section.
Studying about your subscribers
- A/B testing: Equipment allows you to check totally different topic traces in your emails, and mechanically determines the winner primarily based on their respective open charges.
- Reporting/analytics/ROI monitoring: Find out how typically your subscribers open your emails, click on on hyperlinks, and full varied actions.
- Segmentation/tagging: Segmenting your subscribers into totally different classes (just like however extra highly effective than different applications’ “lists”) lets you ship them emails which can be higher tailor-made to their wants and pursuits.
- Polls. Add polls on to emails to interact with and gather details about subscribers, which you’ll then use to construct segments.
Rising your revenue
- In 2022, Equipment Commerce was added to the platform, permitting customers to attempt promoting digital merchandise to their subscribers by creating personalized product pages that may be embedded in your emails, together with automated gross sales funnels.
- The present iteration of Equipment additionally contains a website builder. You’ll be able to create an internet site immediately on Equipment to publish newsletters, host a digital storefront to gather fee for one-time or subscription merchandise, and construct customized pages.
Connecting with and supporting different creators: The Creator Community
- In 2023, Equipment launched the Creator Community, which helps customers information their viewers members to find different creators and get found in flip.
- You may also receives a commission for Creator Community suggestions you make by way of the aptly named Paid Suggestions.
Increasing the platform’s capabilities: App retailer
- As a part of the 2024 rebrand, in addition they launched an app retailer, the place you could find customized apps to do extra with Equipment. The app retailer will launch with 5 apps: KitBoard (add CRM to your account), Wordsmith (flip YouTube movies into newsletters, SavvyCal (add reserving widgets to emails), Mighty (join your Mighty group and content material with Equipment), and SegMetrics (study the way you acquire, interact, and convert subscribers).
- Equipment additionally gives a self-service app builder to create your personal add-ons. (As of this writing, the service is at present in beta.)
Begin your Equipment account — free in your first 10,000 subscribers!
That is an affiliate hyperlink
From “ConvertKit” to “Equipment”: Behind the rebrand
In summer time 2024, the corporate beforehand often known as ConvertKit formally turned Equipment. The brand new title was introduced in July in the course of the Craft + Commerce Creator Convention and went stay in October. (They’d beforehand rebranded to Seva in 2018, however appreciable destructive suggestions to the brand new title prompted them to revert to ConvertKit till this yr.)
The change to Equipment was greater than a reputation change, although, as a result of the corporate launched a number of massive new capabilities to their platform as properly. We coated a number of the new options within the part above, however listed below are the highlights:
- An app retailer the place builders can create add-ons to reinforce Equipment’s capabilities
- A central information hub with enhanced reporting
- An expanded Creator Community to assist customers discover new collaboration companions
Equipment additionally made a degree of rebranding in public by sharing details about the rebranding course of by means of weblog updates, live-streamed design periods, and a four-part YouTube mini-documentary. This transparency provides an attention-grabbing perception into the corporate’s pondering. And we predict it’s a sensible transfer given how their earlier rebrand went.
With that out of the way in which, let’s speak about pricing.
Equipment pricing
For a very long time, Equipment solely provided paid plans. However in December 2019, the corporate introduced a brand new free tier you probably have fewer than 1,000 subscribers. They not too long ago expanded the free tier to incorporate creators with as much as 10,000 subscribers.
Listed below are Equipment’s pricing choices as of October 2024:
Equipment Publication Plan
- $0/month for as much as 10,000 subscribers
The Publication plan consists of:
- 1 primary Visible Automation
- 1 e mail Sequence
- 1 consumer
- Limitless touchdown pages, opt-in varieties, and e mail broadcasts
- Viewers tagging & segmentation
- Promote digital merchandise
- Run paid newsletters & subscriptions
- Publication feed & web site
- API Entry
- Free Suggestions (required—at the least one advice slot to develop your listing by cross-promoting with different creators)
- Good Suggestions (auto-recommendation of comparable creators that will help you develop your listing)
- 24/7 help
Equipment Creator Plan
- $9/month for as much as 300 subscribers (paid yearly; $15 if paid month-to-month)
- $25/month for as much as 1,000 subscribers (paid yearly; $29 if paid month-to-month)
- Tiered pricing as much as $1,916/month (paid yearly; $1,916 if paid month-to-month) for as much as 400,000 subscribers
The Creator plan consists of:
- All of the options of the Publication plan
- Limitless Visible Automations
- Limitless e mail Sequences
- 2 customers
- Free migration from one other software
- Free Suggestions
- Paid Suggestions
- Take away Equipment branding
- Third-party integrations
- RSS campaigns
- Polls
Equipment Creator Professional Plan
- $25/month for as much as 300 subscribers (paid yearly; $29 if paid month-to-month)
- $50/month for as much as 1,000 subscribers (paid yearly; $59 if paid month-to-month)
- Tiered pricing as much as $2,166/month (paid yearly; $2,599 paid month-to-month) for as much as 400,000 subscribers
The Creator Professional plan consists of:
- All of the options of the Creator plan
- Limitless Visible Automations
- Limitless e mail Sequences
- Limitless customers
- Fb customized audiences
- Publication referral system
- Edit hyperlinks in despatched broadcasts
- Subscriber engagement scoring
- Superior deliverability reporting
- Insights dashboard
- 24/7 Precedence help
Each the Creator and Creator Professional plans provide a 14-day free trial so you’ll be able to see if it’s best for you earlier than committing.
We’ll hold this submit up to date with the newest Equipment pricing, however you may as well go to the pricing web page on the Equipment web site.
Let’s get into the explanations we like Equipment subsequent!
Advantages of Equipment
We’ve used Equipment to energy Good Passive Earnings’s e mail advertising and marketing for a number of years. In that point, we’ve discovered it to be the perfect ESP for our wants. We additionally assume it’s a fantastic answer for a variety of entrepreneurs and digital creators searching for a sturdy, feature-rich e mail advertising and marketing platform.
The very best e mail service supplier for brand new entrepreneurs.
Simple to be taught, highly effective once you want it.
That is an affiliate hyperlink
From the place we sit, the facility of Equipment falls into two foremost classes: consumer advantages, and viewers advantages.
Equipment advantages from the consumer’s standpoint
First, Equipment has every part a enterprise proprietor wants to rise up and operating shortly:
- You’ll be able to gather emails.
- You’ll be able to arrange a easy touchdown web page to gather emails.
- You’ll be able to promote merchandise (one-time buy or subscription).
These options permit somebody to start out promoting even whereas they’re within the technique of organising an internet site some place else. It additionally makes it simple to execute on one of many foremost classes in our Good From Scratch course: utilizing promoting as a key step within the idea-validation course of.
Second, the Equipment group designed their platform to develop with the sophistication of the consumer. Whenever you begin, you in all probability simply need to gather e mail addresses and ship emails. However as you develop, you’ll need to begin tailoring your message and segmenting your viewers. At that time you’ll be able to make the most of issues like automations and dynamic content material. As you and your corporation change into extra superior, the Creator Professional Plan is the next move—you gained’t have to modify to a unique e mail service supplier 5 years down the street. This units Equipment other than another ESPs, notably Mailchimp.
Some individuals discover Equipment a bit daunting (see Drawbacks beneath), however if you happen to’re considerably tech-savvy we predict it’s fairly approachable. Particularly, we just like the accessibility of Equipment’s automation builder, which helps you to create automations in an easy, linear approach.
We tried Infusionsoft for a yr and located its automation builder modern however overwhelming. You needed to already perceive how automations work, in addition to the assorted symbols widespread in automation builders. We discover Equipment’s automation builder, then again, makes it simple to string automations collectively in a complicated approach. With a number of templates to select from, organising an automation for the primary time is simple for any consumer.
We additionally like Equipment’s strategy to subscriber administration. With Equipment, all of your subscribers go into one massive pool; there are not any lists. As a substitute, subscribers could be put into segments by assigning them attributes utilizing tags and customized fields. These allow you to deal with your subscribers as distinctive people with totally different wants; not all subscribers are created equal. The opposite good thing about the way in which Equipment treats subscribers? You’re solely charged as soon as for every distinctive subscriber, not like another ESPs.
Equipment’s not too long ago launched Creator Community can be an enormous plus in our eyes, from each a business-building and community-building perspective. It lets you develop your subscriber base whereas additionally fostering connections with different entrepreneurs and creators.
Final however not least, if you happen to’re shifting from one other ESP like Mailchimp or AWeber, Equipment gives a free migration service that may take a number of the headache out of switching.
Equipment advantages in your viewers
Equipment provides you the chance to tailor your messaging to your viewers. You’ll be able to have as many varieties and touchdown pages as you need. You’ll be able to have as many tags, customized fields, and segments as you need. You could be as particular in speaking to your viewers as you need to be.
As you gather details about your viewers, you can begin to section subscribers so that you don’t hassle individuals with issues they aren’t eager about. Equipment makes it simple to gather particulars about your viewers alongside the way in which, and also you aren’t penalized for that by means of increased prices, as you’d be with a list-based e mail platform.
Drawbacks of Equipment
No answer is ideal, after all. Listed below are a number of the drawbacks we and different Equipment customers have seen.
- Reasonably steep studying curve. The interface is usually a little overwhelming for a newbie. Taking full benefit of all of Equipment’s options—like segmentation, tagging, and automations—requires some studying (and doubtlessly coding). You’ll be able to shorten this studying curve by following their Getting Began video collection, in addition to the remainder of the content material on their well-organized help website
- No list-based group. Though we like the way in which Equipment allows you to manage subscribers utilizing tags (and doesn’t cost you for duplicate subscribers, as we talked about above), the shortage of a list-based group system could be complicated if you happen to’re coming from different platforms. Over time, although, we predict you’ll discover this method extra versatile than managing lists.
- Barebones e mail and touchdown web page templates. Equipment requires CSS coding to create customized superior e mail templates and touchdown pages past the included choices. Some customers report that the e-mail design software could be buggy.
- Analytics might be extra sturdy. The free and Creator plans don’t provide the identical superior deliverability reporting, subscriber scoring, and analytics options of the Perception function that the Creator Professional plan gives, which is smart however could also be a trouble to some customers.
Fortunately, one of many earlier drawbacks of Equipment, that there was no free possibility, hasn’t been the case since 2019. This free tier makes Equipment comparable on the entry stage to different widespread ESP choices like Mailchimp.
Lastly, that is certainly not a downside, however as Equipment continues to broaden its choices to incorporate issues just like the Creator Community and Equipment Commerce to its core e mail advertising and marketing capabilities, there’s an opportunity that the platform’s worth may get unfold skinny. To be clear, we don’t assume that is going to occur and have lots of confidence in Nathan and the Equipment group, nevertheless it’s price conserving in thoughts.
Our massive takeaway on Equipment
With the current updates, Equipment is coming nearer to being a one-stop store for creators who need to develop, nurture, and promote to their audiences with a platform that’s largely prepared to make use of and automatable. In the event you’re searching for your first or subsequent e mail advertising and marketing platform, we predict it’s a fantastic answer for rising your viewers and rising your revenue whereas retaining artistic management over what you place out into the world!
Equipment & e mail advertising and marketing: Extra sources to learn, hear & be taught
So there you might have it—our evaluation of Equipment’s e mail advertising and marketing platform! We’ll depart you with just a few extra sources if you happen to’re interested in Equipment, or need to dig additional into e mail advertising and marketing.
Equipment [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, we receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]
SPI 825: Behind the Scenes of a Main Rebrand & Classes Realized After a Laborious Fail—my dialog with Equipment CEO Nathan Barry about setting his firm’s sights on extra bold targets with the rebrand.
What Is Electronic mail Advertising and marketing? + Greatest Practices: An SPI How-to Information
Electronic mail Advertising and marketing Magic Course
Why I Switched from Aweber to Infusionsoft to ConvertKitI hope this submit has been useful in deciding whether or not Equipment is the correct ESP for your corporation. No matter e mail advertising and marketing platform you select, nothing is extra necessary than having the correct e mail advertising and marketing technique, so you’ll want to try our important information to e mail advertising and marketing and take into account the Electronic mail Advertising and marketing Magic course if you’d like extra hands-on help together with your e mail advertising and marketing, out there contained in the SPI Neighborhood. Good luck!
