Should you’re in search of your subsequent electronic mail advertising and marketing platform, and also you’re curious if Equipment is best for you, effectively, you’re in the fitting place! Right here’s our complete Equipment evaluate for 2024, which is able to cowl:
- What Is Equipment?
- Why do I want an electronic 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 Sources to Learn, Pay attention & Be taught
What Is Equipment?
Equipment is an electronic mail service supplier (ESP). Basically, it’s a expertise service that allows you to ship electronic mail campaigns to a listing of subscribers. Equipment is considered one of actually a whole bunch of ESPs on the market, and—full disclosure—it occurs to be the one we desire and use at SPI.
Though we’re biased, we will nonetheless be goal! On this submit, we’ll cowl the options, advantages, and drawbacks of Equipment as we see them, that can assist you resolve if it’s the fitting ESP for your corporation.
Electronic mail Advertising and marketing Technique: Why You Want an ESP
Should you’re studying this, you would possibly already know what an ESP is and why you want one. However in case you don’t, an ESP is crucial piece of expertise to help your electronic mail advertising and marketing technique.
Electronic mail advertising and marketing is likely one of the strongest strategies to construct relationships and market your services and products to your viewers. Let’s speak about why that’s.
In its most elementary kind, electronic mail advertising and marketing includes you sending emails to a bunch of people that’ve chosen to listen to from you by “subscribing” to obtain emails from you. You may technically use a easy electronic mail program like Gmail to perform this—however we don’t advocate it, since you’ll shortly discover it inadequate (and since your private electronic mail account will get flagged as spam in the event you ship too many emails from it!).
As your corporation grows and extra folks subscribe to get your emails, you’ll need the power to do extra refined issues along with your electronic mail advertising and marketing, like customizing the emails folks get in keeping with their pursuits, and utilizing experiences and analytics to find out what’s working effectively or not.
You additionally have to be sure you’re respecting folks’s privateness and never spamming anybody. An electronic mail service supplier additionally lets you keep in compliance with authorities rules around the globe, such because the CAN-SPAM act in the US, the Normal Information Safety Regulation within the European Union (GDPR), and the Canada Anti-Spam Regulation (CASL).
Issues can shortly get out of hand with out the assistance of a devoted electronic 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… Need to develop your electronic mail listing and be taught highly effective segmentation and automation methods that enable your corporation to run by itself? Try 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 selected section of subscribers in your listing, triggered by a selected occasion or motion, with the intention of guiding them to take a selected motion.
- Broadcast emails: Ship normal bulletins or one-time emails to your subscribers on a selected date.
- CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL compliance: CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL are legal guidelines that set the principles and necessities for business electronic mail messages, and provides recipients the fitting to have you ever cease emailing them—so compliance is essential!
- Dynamic (customized) electronic mail content material: Your electronic mail content material can show totally different textual content or pictures, in keeping with your buyer segmentation.
- Responsive electronic mail templates: Prepared-to-go electronic mail designs, in addition to the power to create your individual customized templates. Equipment mechanically codecs your touchdown pages for varied units, equivalent to desktop computer systems and cellphones.
- WYSIWYG electronic mail editor: The built-in electronic mail editor helps you to see how your electronic mail will look along with your template’s styling utilized whilst you’re composing it.
Amassing New Subscribers
- Customized responsive touchdown pages: Use the included device to shortly create a touchdown web page to gather electronic mail addresses. Equipment mechanically codecs your touchdown pages for varied units, equivalent to desktop computer systems and cellphones.
- Embeddable varieties: Accumulate electronic mail subscribers anyplace in your web site by dropping in a Javascript or HTML kind, or through the use of the WordPress plugin.
- Website builder: Create an internet site instantly 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 acquire fee for one-time or subscription merchandise proper inside Equipment.
- Visible automations: Equipment means that you can 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 helps 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 (much like however extra highly effective than different applications’ “lists”) means that you can ship them emails which can be higher tailor-made to their wants and pursuits.
- Polls. Add polls on to emails to interact with and acquire details about subscribers, which you’ll be able to then use to construct segments.
Rising Your Earnings
- In 2022, Equipment Commerce was added to the platform, permitting customers to strive 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 incorporates a web site builder. You may create an internet site instantly 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 as well receives a commission for Creator Community suggestions you make through the aptly named Paid Suggestions.
Increasing the Platform’s Capabilities: App Retailer
- As a part of the 2024 rebrand, additionally 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 (find out about the way you acquire, interact, and convert subscribers).
- Equipment additionally gives a self-service app builder to create your individual add-ons. (As of this writing, the service is at present in beta.)
From “ConvertKit” to “Equipment”: Behind the Rebrand
In summer time 2024, the corporate beforehand referred to as ConvertKit formally grew to become Equipment. The brand new identify was introduced in July throughout the Craft + Commerce Creator Convention and went reside in October. (They’d beforehand rebranded to Seva in 2018, however appreciable unfavourable suggestions to the brand new identify induced 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 large new capabilities to their platform as effectively. We coated a few of the new options within the part above, however listed here 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 weblog updates, live-streamed design periods, and a four-part YouTube mini-documentary. This transparency offers an fascinating perception into the corporate’s considering. And we expect 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 supplied paid plans. However in December 2019, the corporate introduced a brand new free tier when you’ve got fewer than 1,000 subscribers. They lately 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 E-newsletter Plan
- $0/month for as much as 10,000 subscribers
The E-newsletter plan contains:
- 1 primary Visible Automation
- 1 electronic mail Sequence
- 1 person
- Limitless touchdown pages, opt-in varieties, and electronic mail broadcasts
- Viewers tagging & segmentation
- Promote digital merchandise
- Run paid newsletters & subscriptions
- E-newsletter feed & web site
- API Entry
- Free Suggestions (required—no less than one suggestion slot to develop your listing by cross-promoting with different creators)
- Good Suggestions (auto-recommendation of comparable creators that can assist 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 contains:
- All of the options of the E-newsletter plan
- Limitless Visible Automations
- Limitless electronic mail Sequences
- 2 customers
- Free migration from one other device
- 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 contains:
- All of the options of the Creator plan
- Limitless Visible Automations
- Limitless electronic mail Sequences
- Limitless customers
- Fb customized audiences
- E-newsletter 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 maintain this submit up to date with the most recent Equipment pricing, however you can even 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 electronic mail advertising and marketing for a number of years. In that point, we’ve discovered it to be the best ESP for our wants. We additionally suppose it’s an amazing answer for a spread of entrepreneurs and digital creators in search of a strong, feature-rich electronic mail advertising and marketing platform.
From the place we sit, the facility of Equipment falls into two essential classes: person advantages, and viewers advantages.
Equipment Advantages from the Person’s Standpoint
First, Equipment has all the pieces a enterprise proprietor wants to stand up and working shortly:
- You may acquire emails.
- You may arrange a easy touchdown web page to gather emails.
- You may promote merchandise (one-time buy or subscription).
These options enable somebody to begin promoting even whereas they’re within the technique of organising an internet site elsewhere. It additionally makes it straightforward to execute on one of many essential classes in our Good From Scratch course: utilizing promoting as a key step within the idea-validation course of.
Second, the Equipment workforce designed their platform to develop with the sophistication of the person. If you begin, you in all probability simply need to acquire electronic 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 turn into extra superior, the Creator Professional Plan is the next move—you received’t have to modify to a unique electronic mail service supplier 5 years down the street. This units Equipment other than another ESPs, significantly Mailchimp.
Some folks discover Equipment a bit daunting (see Drawbacks under), however in the event you’re considerably tech-savvy we expect 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 revolutionary however overwhelming. You needed to already perceive how automations work, in addition to the assorted symbols frequent in automation builders. We discover Equipment’s automation builder, alternatively, makes it straightforward to string automations collectively in a sophisticated approach. With a number of templates to select from, organising an automation for the primary time is straightforward for any person.
We additionally like Equipment’s method to subscriber administration. With Equipment, all of your subscribers go into one large pool; there aren’t any lists. As an alternative, 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 advantage of the way in which Equipment treats subscribers? You’re solely charged as soon as for every distinctive subscriber, not like another ESPs.
Equipment’s lately launched Creator Community can be a giant plus in our eyes, from each a business-building and community-building perspective. It means that you can develop your subscriber base whereas additionally fostering connections with different entrepreneurs and creators.
Final however not least, in the event you’re shifting from one other ESP like Mailchimp or AWeber, Equipment gives a free migration service that may take a few of the headache out of switching.
Equipment Advantages for Your Viewers
Equipment offers you the chance to tailor your messaging to your viewers. You may have as many varieties and touchdown pages as you need. You may 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 acquire details about your viewers, you can begin to section subscribers so that you don’t trouble folks with issues they aren’t interested by. Equipment makes it straightforward to gather particulars about your viewers alongside the way in which, and also you aren’t penalized for that by larger prices, as you’ll be with a list-based electronic mail platform.
Drawbacks of Equipment
No answer is ideal, after all. Listed below are a few of the drawbacks we and different Equipment customers have observed.
- Reasonably steep studying curve. The interface generally is a little overwhelming for a newbie. Taking full benefit of all of Equipment’s options—like segmentation, tagging, and automations—requires some studying (and probably coding). You may shorten this studying curve by following their Getting Began video sequence, in addition to the remainder of the content material on their well-organized help web site
- No list-based group. Though we like the way in which Equipment helps you to manage subscribers utilizing tags (and doesn’t cost you for duplicate subscribers, as we talked about above), the dearth of a list-based group system could be complicated in the event you’re coming from different platforms. Over time, although, we expect you’ll discover this method extra versatile than managing lists.
- Barebones electronic mail and touchdown web page templates. Equipment requires CSS coding to create customized superior electronic mail templates and touchdown pages past the included choices. Some customers report that the e-mail design device could be buggy.
- Analytics could possibly be extra strong. 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 sensible however could also be a trouble to some customers.
Fortunately, one of many earlier drawbacks of Equipment, that there was no free choice, hasn’t been the case since 2019. This free tier makes Equipment comparable on the entry stage to different in style ESP choices like Mailchimp.
Lastly, that is certainly not a downside, however as Equipment continues to develop its choices to incorporate issues just like the Creator Community and Equipment Commerce to its core electronic mail advertising and marketing capabilities, there’s an opportunity that the platform’s worth might get unfold skinny. To be clear, we don’t suppose that is going to occur and have a variety of confidence in Nathan and the Equipment workforce, but it surely’s value retaining in thoughts.
Our Huge Takeaway on Equipment
With the latest 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. Should you’re in search of your first or subsequent electronic mail advertising and marketing platform, we expect it’s an amazing answer for rising your viewers and rising your revenue whereas retaining artistic management over what you set out into the world!
Equipment & Electronic mail Advertising and marketing: Extra Sources to Learn, Pay attention & Be taught
So there you have got it—our evaluate of Equipment’s electronic mail advertising and marketing platform! We’ll depart you with a couple of extra sources in the event you’re interested in Equipment, or need to dig additional into electronic 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 Exhausting Fail—my dialog with Equipment CEO Nathan Barry about setting his firm’s sights on extra formidable targets with the rebrand.
What Is Electronic mail Advertising and marketing? + Finest 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 fitting ESP for your corporation. No matter electronic mail advertising and marketing platform you select, nothing is extra necessary than having the fitting electronic mail advertising and marketing technique, so you should definitely try our important information to electronic mail advertising and marketing and contemplate the Electronic mail Advertising and marketing Magic course in order for you extra hands-on help along with your electronic mail advertising and marketing, out there contained in the SPI Neighborhood. Good luck!