MailerLite and Flodesk have both recently become quite popular. Both these email marketing tools are praised for their intuitive interfaces and easy to use features, which have made them go-to tools for thousands of marketers and bloggers.
However, these tools have slightly different capabilities and depending on your marketing goals, you might prefer one over the other. These platforms have different pricing structures as well which is certainly worth taking note of if you are a small business owner on a budget.
In this MailerLite vs. Flodesk guide, I discuss each platform’s features, affordability, and who each tool is best suited for.
What is MailerLite?
MailerLite is a cloud-based email marketing platform popular among small business owners and bloggers. In the email marketing industry where there are dozens of services that are extremely complex and not very user friendly, MailerLite shines when it comes to its easy to use interface. Although MailerLite still has all the necessary features for complex email marketing campaigns, it makes communicating with your subscribers extremely straightforward. Like many of its competitors, MailerLite’s features include:
- Email automation (drip campaigns)
- Segmentation for email subscribers
- Subscriber management (basic CRM)
- Reporting and analytics
- Drag-and-drop web form, landing page, and popup builder
- Integration with other marketing tools
MailerLite also stands out of the crowd when it comes to pricing. This email marketing platform provides many of the same features as many of its competitors and yet it is significantly more affordable.
What is Flodesk?
Flodesk was only founded in 2019, and yet despite the fact that it’s relatively new it has become incredibly popular. Judging from the distinctive templates that Flodesk provides, and given the dozens of influential female bloggers that advocate for Flodesk, this platform seems to be an excellent fit for female business owners.
Like MailerLite, Flodesk prides its self in being an extremely easy to use platform. Its customers really appreciate its well-designed templates which can save a ton of time if you are accustomed to making your own templates from scratch.
Flodesk’s features include:
- Workflow for automation
- Sign up form creator
- Stats and analytics
- Beautiful templates
- Email builder
Flodesk happens to have a very different pricing structure than MailerLite. It charges one flat fee no matter how many subscribers you have.
Pricing comparison chart
Ultimately, as far as price flexibility goes, MailerLite certainly has the upper hand. MailerLite’s pricing is determined by how many subscribers you market to. That being said, if you want to use MailerLite’s paid tool for its premium features, you can get started at just 10 dollars a month and market to 1,000 subscribers or less.
Flodesk on the other has fixed pricing at 38 dollars a month. However, after the free trial period, you can get half off (pay 19 dollars a month) for life by signing up for Flodesk through any links in this post that take you to Flodesk.com. You will pay 19 dollars a month regardless if you have 10 subscribers or 10,000. However, for small businesses on a budget, 19 dollars might be a bit steep if you don’t have many subscribers.
MailerLite also comes with a free version so you can use the tool to create marketing campaigns without paying a dime. Flodesk doesn’t have that option. Flodesk has a 30-day free trial, however, to use the tool after that must pay monthly.
Related: MailerLite vs MailPoet (and similar WP plugins)
MailerLite vs Flodesk: features and functionality
MailerLite and Flodesk both have the essential features needed for an effective email marketing strategy. However, there are certainly some considerable differences between them.
Newsletter editor
With MailerLite, for creating a new email campaign you have the option to select one of MailerLite’s premade templates, or you may build an email from scratch. You may also use templates you have made in the past. Needless to say, MailerLite gives you plenty of options for designing your emails.
Whether you build an email from scratch or use one of the templates, you can use the drag-and-drop builder to customize email designs with ease. You may also use the rich-text editor, legacy rich-text editor or the custom HTML editor.
Flodesk gives you slightly less flexibility in creating your email designs. With Flodesk, you must select an email template, and then you get taken to the editor to customize it. This editor isn’t drag-and-drop like MailerLite, however, it is equally easy to use in my opinion. Insert blocks (images, text, etc), and fields with ease by clicking the plus symbols at the end of existing blocks in the visual editor.
Form builder
MailerLite allows you to build a few types of forms including embedded forms and popups. You can also build landing pages and entire websites under the “sites” section. You can design these forms practically the same way you would with the email editor through the drag-and-drop interface. There are numerous templates for these forms you can use as well.
Flodesk’s form builder is slightly more limited. With Flodesk, you can build popups, inline forms, and full-page forms (practically landing pages). However, the only templates available for these forms are “with image” and “without image” templates. Once you select a template you can edit your form in the same style editor as the email builder.
Automation workflows
MailterLite allows you to build out complicated automation series easily. You may begin your automation series with a few different triggers including:
- When subscriber joins a group
- When subscriber completes a form
- When subscriber clicks a link
- Updated field
- The anniversary of a date
- The exact match of a date
You can then add a subsequent email, delay, condition or other action. Select emails for your automation by inserting emails you already made or create new emails as you build out your workflow. Your workflows are then presented in a very visual and aesthetically pleasing way.
Flodesk allows you to build workflows in a similar way but Flodesk only provides one trigger: when a subscriber is added to segments. However, once you select your segment, you can then add a subsequent email, delay, condition or other action the same way you would with MailerLite.
One automation feature that Flodesk has that MailerLite doesn’t is its premade workflows. These workflows are ready-made series of emails. For instance, you can choose a welcome sequence, a sales sequence and more.
MailerLite or Flodesk: Which is best for me?
Ultimately, if you are interested in an email marketing platform that is a bit more flexible and robust, MailerLite is undoubtedly the better choice. You have much more customizability in how you design your emails and your workflow automations that you don’t get with Flodesk.
On the other hand, if you want an email marketing platform that is a little bit more simple and straightforward, Flodesk would be your better bet. Additionally, given that Flodesk’s templates are designed generally for female small business owners and bloggers, if you fit that demographic, Flodesk may be more appealing to you.
One Response
Thanks this was helpful. I found mailerlite a bit overwhelming and I need something a bit more simple.