For those who’re in search of your subsequent electronic mail advertising and marketing platform, and also you’re curious if Equipment is best for you, nicely, you’re in the precise place! Right here’s our complete Equipment evaluate for 2024, which can 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 & E mail Advertising: Extra Sources to Learn, Pay attention & Study
What’s Equipment?
Equipment is an electronic mail service supplier (ESP). Primarily, it’s a know-how service that permits you to ship electronic mail campaigns to a listing of subscribers. Equipment is one among actually a whole lot 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 put up, we’ll cowl the options, advantages, and drawbacks of Equipment as we see them, that can assist you determine if it’s the precise ESP for your corporation.
E mail advertising and marketing technique: Why you want an ESP
For those who’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 know-how to assist your electronic mail advertising and marketing technique.
E mail advertising and marketing is among the strongest strategies to construct relationships and market your services and products to your viewers. Let’s discuss why that’s.
In its most simple kind, electronic mail advertising and marketing entails you sending emails to a gaggle of people that’ve chosen to listen to from you by “subscribing” to obtain emails from you. You might 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 case you ship too many emails from it!).
As your corporation grows and extra folks subscribe to get your emails, you’ll need the flexibility to do extra subtle issues together with your electronic mail advertising and marketing, like customizing the emails folks get in line with their pursuits, and utilizing experiences and analytics to find out what’s working nicely or not.
You additionally have to ensure you’re respecting folks’s privateness and never spamming anybody. An electronic mail service supplier additionally lets you keep in compliance with authorities laws all over the world, such because the CAN-SPAM act in the USA, the Basic 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 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!
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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 robotically to a selected phase of subscribers in your record, triggered by a selected occasion or motion, with the purpose 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 industrial electronic mail messages, and provides recipients the precise to have you ever cease emailing them—so compliance is essential!
- Dynamic (customized) electronic mail content material: Your electronic mail content material can show completely different textual content or pictures, in line with your buyer segmentation.
- Responsive electronic mail templates: Prepared-to-go electronic mail designs, in addition to the flexibility to create your individual customized templates. Equipment robotically codecs your touchdown pages for varied gadgets, resembling desktop computer systems and cell phones.
- WYSIWYG electronic mail editor: The built-in electronic mail editor helps you to see how your electronic mail will look together with your template’s styling utilized whilst you’re composing it.
Accumulating new subscribers
- Customized responsive touchdown pages: Use the included software to shortly create a touchdown web page to gather electronic mail addresses. Equipment robotically codecs your touchdown pages for varied gadgets, resembling desktop computer systems and cell phones.
- 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.
- Web site builder: Create a web 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 accumulate 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 possibly can ship them pre-defined emails or add them to a phase.
Studying about your subscribers
- A/B testing: Equipment helps you to take a look at completely different topic traces to your emails, and robotically determines the winner primarily based on their respective open charges.
- Reporting/analytics/ROI monitoring: Find out how usually your subscribers open your emails, click on on hyperlinks, and full varied actions.
- Segmentation/tagging: Segmenting your subscribers into completely different classes (much like however extra highly effective than different applications’ “lists”) means that you can ship them emails which are higher tailor-made to their wants and pursuits.
- Polls. Add polls on to emails to have interaction with and accumulate details about subscribers, which you’ll then use to construct segments.
Rising your earnings
- 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 incorporates a website builder. You may create a web 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 too can 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, in addition they launched an app retailer, the place you will discover 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 affords a self-service app builder to create your individual add-ons. (As of this writing, the service is at the moment in beta.)
Begin your Equipment account — free to 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 called ConvertKit formally grew to become Equipment. The brand new title 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 destructive suggestions to the brand new title precipitated them to revert to ConvertKit till this 12 months.)
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 nicely. We lined a number 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 enhance Equipment’s capabilities
- A central knowledge hub with enhanced reporting
- An expanded Creator Community to assist customers discover new collaboration companions
Equipment additionally made some extent 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 provides an fascinating 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 best way, let’s discuss 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 have fewer than 1,000 subscribers. They lately expanded the free tier to incorporate creators with as much as 10,000 subscribers.
Listed here are Equipment’s pricing choices as of October 2024:
Equipment Publication Plan
- $0/month for as much as 10,000 subscribers
The Publication plan contains:
- 1 fundamental 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
- Publication feed & web site
- API Entry
- Free Suggestions (required—no less than one suggestion slot to develop your record by cross-promoting with different creators)
- Good Suggestions (auto-recommendation of comparable creators that can assist you develop your record)
- 24/7 assist
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 Publication plan
- Limitless Visible Automations
- Limitless electronic 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 contains:
- All of the options of the Creator plan
- Limitless Visible Automations
- Limitless electronic 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 assist
Each the Creator and Creator Professional plans provide a 14-day free trial so you possibly can see if it’s best for you earlier than committing.
We’ll preserve this put up up to date with the newest Equipment pricing, however it’s also possible to 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 Revenue’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 assume it’s an awesome answer for a variety of entrepreneurs and digital creators in search of a sturdy, feature-rich electronic mail advertising and marketing platform.
The perfect electronic mail service supplier for brand new entrepreneurs.
Simple to be taught, highly effective whenever you want it.
That is an affiliate hyperlink
From the place we sit, the ability of Equipment falls into two major classes: person advantages, and viewers advantages.
Equipment advantages from the person’s standpoint
First, Equipment has every part a enterprise proprietor wants to stand up and operating shortly:
- You may accumulate emails.
- You may arrange a easy touchdown web page to gather emails.
- You may promote merchandise (one-time buy or subscription).
These options permit somebody to begin promoting even whereas they’re within the strategy of organising a web site some place else. It additionally makes it simple to execute on one of many major 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. Whenever you begin, you in all probability simply wish to accumulate electronic mail addresses and ship emails. However as you develop, you’ll wish to begin tailoring your message and segmenting your viewers. At that time you possibly can make the most of issues like automations and dynamic content material. As you and your corporation turn out to be extra superior, the Creator Professional Plan is the next step—you received’t have to change to a distinct electronic mail service supplier 5 years down the highway. This units Equipment aside from another ESPs, notably Mailchimp.
Some folks discover Equipment a bit daunting (see Drawbacks beneath), however in case you’re considerably tech-savvy we predict it’s fairly approachable. Specifically, we just like the accessibility of Equipment’s automation builder, which helps you to create automations in an easy, linear means.
We tried Infusionsoft for a 12 months and located its automation builder modern however overwhelming. You needed to already perceive how automations work, in addition to the varied symbols widespread in automation builders. We discover Equipment’s automation builder, alternatively, makes it simple to string automations collectively in a complicated means. 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 strategy to subscriber administration. With Equipment, all of your subscribers go into one large pool; there are not any lists. As a substitute, subscribers might 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 completely different wants; not all subscribers are created equal. The opposite good thing about the best way Equipment treats subscribers? You’re solely charged as soon as for every distinctive subscriber, in contrast to 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 case you’re shifting from one other ESP like Mailchimp or AWeber, Equipment affords a free migration service that may take a number of the headache out of switching.
Equipment advantages to your viewers
Equipment provides 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 might be as particular in speaking to your viewers as you wish to be.
As you accumulate details about your viewers, you can begin to phase subscribers so that you don’t trouble folks with issues they aren’t serious about. Equipment makes it simple to gather particulars about your viewers alongside the best way, and also you aren’t penalized for that by increased prices, as you’ll be with a list-based electronic mail platform.
Drawbacks of Equipment
No answer is ideal, after all. Listed here 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 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 assist website
- No list-based group. Though we like the best way Equipment helps 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 might be complicated in case you’re coming from different platforms. Over time, although, we predict 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 software might be buggy.
- Analytics could possibly be extra sturdy. The free and Creator plans don’t provide the identical superior deliverability reporting, subscriber scoring, and analytics options of the Perception characteristic that the Creator Professional plan affords, which is sensible however could also be a hassle 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 degree to different well-liked ESP choices like Mailchimp.
Lastly, that is in no way a disadvantage, 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 may get unfold skinny. To be clear, we don’t assume that is going to occur and have loads of confidence in Nathan and the Equipment workforce, but it surely’s price holding in thoughts.
Our large takeaway on Equipment
With the latest updates, Equipment is coming nearer to being a one-stop store for creators who wish to develop, nurture, and promote to their audiences with a platform that’s largely prepared to make use of and automatable. For those who’re in search of your first or subsequent electronic mail advertising and marketing platform, we predict it’s an awesome answer for rising your viewers and growing your earnings whereas retaining artistic management over what you place out into the world!
Equipment & electronic mail advertising and marketing: Extra sources to learn, hear & be taught
So there you’ve it—our evaluate of Equipment’s electronic mail advertising and marketing platform! We’ll go away you with just a few extra sources in case you’re inquisitive about Equipment, or wish 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 Onerous Fail—my dialog with Equipment CEO Nathan Barry about setting his firm’s sights on extra formidable objectives with the rebrand.
What Is E mail Advertising? + Greatest Practices: An SPI How-to Information
E mail Advertising Magic Course
AP 0712: How Do I Migrate an E mail Checklist from AWeber to Equipment? – Good Passive Revenue
Why I Switched from Aweber to Infusionsoft to ConvertKitI hope this put up has been useful in deciding whether or not Equipment is the precise ESP for your corporation. No matter electronic mail advertising and marketing platform you select, nothing is extra vital than having the precise electronic mail advertising and marketing technique, so be sure you take a look at our important information to electronic mail advertising and marketing and think about the E mail Advertising Magic course if you need extra hands-on assist together with your electronic mail advertising and marketing, obtainable contained in the SPI Neighborhood. Good luck!