If you happen to’re in search of your subsequent e-mail advertising platform, and also you’re curious if Equipment is best for you, effectively, you’re in the appropriate place! Right here’s our complete Equipment overview for 2024, which can cowl:
- What Is Equipment?
- Why do I would like an e-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 and marketing: Extra Assets to Learn, Hear & Study
What’s Equipment?
Equipment is an e-mail service supplier (ESP). Basically, it’s a expertise service that allows you to ship e-mail campaigns to an inventory 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 want and use at SPI.
Though we’re biased, we will nonetheless be goal! On this publish, we’ll cowl the options, advantages, and drawbacks of Equipment as we see them, that will help you resolve if it’s the appropriate ESP for your corporation.
E mail advertising technique: Why you want an ESP
If you happen to’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 an important piece of expertise to assist your e-mail advertising technique.
E mail advertising is among the strongest strategies to construct relationships and market your services to your viewers. Let’s speak about why that’s.
In its most elementary kind, e-mail advertising 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 may 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 power to do extra refined issues along with your e-mail advertising, like customizing the emails individuals 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 individuals’s privateness and never spamming anybody. An e-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 Common 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 e-mail advertising 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 e-mail checklist and be taught highly effective segmentation and automation methods that enable your corporation to run by itself? Try the E 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 routinely to a selected phase of subscribers in your checklist, triggered by a selected occasion or motion, with the purpose of guiding them to take a selected motion.
- Broadcast emails: Ship commonplace 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 e-mail messages, and provides recipients the appropriate 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 pictures, in keeping with your buyer segmentation.
- Responsive e-mail templates: Prepared-to-go e-mail designs, in addition to the power to create your personal customized templates. Equipment routinely codecs your touchdown pages for numerous units, corresponding to desktop computer systems and cell phones.
- WYSIWYG e-mail editor: The built-in e-mail editor permits you to see how your e-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 software to shortly create a touchdown web page to gather e-mail addresses. Equipment routinely codecs your touchdown pages for numerous units, corresponding to desktop computer systems and cell phones.
- Embeddable kinds: Accumulate e-mail subscribers wherever in your web site by dropping in a Javascript or HTML kind, or by utilizing the WordPress plugin.
- Web site builder: Create a web 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 acquire fee for one-time or subscription merchandise proper inside Equipment.
- Visible automations: Equipment permits you to create rule-based paths utilizing if-then logic, in order that when a subscriber takes a specific motion, you possibly can ship them pre-defined emails or add them to a phase.
Studying about your subscribers
- A/B testing: Equipment permits you to check totally different topic strains to your emails, and routinely determines the winner based mostly on their respective open charges.
- Reporting/analytics/ROI monitoring: Find out how typically your subscribers open your emails, click on on hyperlinks, and full numerous actions.
- Segmentation/tagging: Segmenting your subscribers into totally different classes (just like however extra highly effective than different packages’ “lists”) permits you to 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 revenue
- 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 website builder. You possibly can create a web 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, 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 achieve, interact, and convert subscribers).
- Equipment additionally presents 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 to your first 10,000 subscribers!
That is an affiliate hyperlink
From “ConvertKit” to “Equipment”: Behind the rebrand
In summer season 2024, the corporate beforehand often called ConvertKit formally grew to become Equipment. The brand new identify was introduced in July in the course of the Craft + Commerce Creator Convention and went stay in October. (That they had beforehand rebranded to Seva in 2018, however appreciable destructive suggestions to the brand new identify 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 large new capabilities to their platform as effectively. We lined 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 enhance Equipment’s capabilities
- A central information 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 means of 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 predict it’s a wise transfer given how their earlier rebrand went.
With that out of the best way, 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 if in case you have fewer than 1,000 subscribers. They just 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 consists of:
- 1 fundamental Visible Automation
- 1 e-mail Sequence
- 1 person
- Limitless touchdown pages, opt-in kinds, and e-mail broadcasts
- Viewers tagging & segmentation
- Promote digital merchandise
- Run paid newsletters & subscriptions
- E-newsletter feed & web site
- API Entry
- Free Suggestions (required—a minimum of one advice slot to develop your checklist by cross-promoting with different creators)
- Sensible Suggestions (auto-recommendation of comparable creators that will help you develop your checklist)
- 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 consists of:
- All of the options of the E-newsletter 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
- E-newsletter 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 supply a 14-day free trial so you possibly can see if it’s best for you earlier than committing.
We’ll maintain this publish up to date with the most recent Equipment pricing, however you too can 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 Sensible Passive Revenue’s e-mail advertising 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 ideal answer for a spread of entrepreneurs and digital creators in search of a sturdy, feature-rich e-mail advertising platform.
The perfect e-mail service supplier for brand new entrepreneurs.
Straightforward to be taught, highly effective if you want it.
That is an affiliate hyperlink
From the place we sit, the facility of Equipment falls into two predominant classes: person advantages, and viewers advantages.
Equipment advantages from the person’s standpoint
First, Equipment has every part a enterprise proprietor wants to rise up and working shortly:
- You possibly can acquire emails.
- You possibly can arrange a easy touchdown web page to gather emails.
- You possibly can promote merchandise (one-time buy or subscription).
These options enable somebody to start out promoting even whereas they’re within the strategy of establishing a web site some place else. It additionally makes it simple to execute on one of many predominant classes in our Sensible 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 person. If you begin, you in all probability simply wish to acquire e-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 benefit from 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 move—you received’t have to modify to a unique e-mail service supplier 5 years down the street. This units Equipment aside from 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. Specifically, we just like the accessibility of Equipment’s automation builder, which helps you to create automations in an easy, linear manner.
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 frequent in automation builders. We discover Equipment’s automation builder, then again, makes it simple to string automations collectively in a complicated manner. With a number of templates to select from, establishing 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 aren’t any lists. As a substitute, subscribers will 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 best way Equipment treats subscribers? You’re solely charged as soon as for every distinctive subscriber, not like another ESPs.
Equipment’s just lately launched Creator Community can also be an enormous plus in our eyes, from each a business-building and community-building perspective. It permits you to develop your subscriber base whereas additionally fostering connections with different entrepreneurs and creators.
Final however not least, if you happen to’re transferring from one other ESP like Mailchimp or AWeber, Equipment presents a free migration service that may take a few of the headache out of switching.
Equipment advantages to your viewers
Equipment offers you the chance to tailor your messaging to your viewers. You possibly can have as many kinds and touchdown pages as you need. You possibly can have as many tags, customized fields, and segments as you need. You will be as particular in speaking to your viewers as you wish to be.
As you acquire details about your viewers, you can begin to phase subscribers so that you don’t trouble individuals with issues they aren’t occupied with. Equipment makes it simple to gather particulars about your viewers alongside the best way, and also you aren’t penalized for that by means of increased prices, as you’ll be with a list-based e-mail platform.
Drawbacks of Equipment
No answer is ideal, in fact. Listed below are a few of the drawbacks we and different Equipment customers have observed.
- 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 possibly can 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 permits you to arrange subscribers utilizing tags (and doesn’t cost you for duplicate subscribers, as we talked about above), the shortage of a list-based group system will be complicated if you happen to’re coming from different platforms. Over time, although, we predict you’ll discover this technique 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 will be buggy.
- Analytics could possibly be extra sturdy. The free and Creator plans don’t supply the identical superior deliverability reporting, subscriber scoring, and analytics options of the Perception characteristic that the Creator Professional plan presents, 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 degree to different in style ESP choices like Mailchimp.
Lastly, that is not at all a disadvantage, however as Equipment continues to develop its choices to incorporate issues just like the Creator Community and Equipment Commerce to its core e-mail advertising 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 loads of confidence in Nathan and the Equipment group, however it’s value maintaining in thoughts.
Our large takeaway on Equipment
With the current 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. If you happen to’re in search of your first or subsequent e-mail advertising platform, we predict it’s an ideal answer for rising your viewers and growing your revenue whereas retaining artistic management over what you place out into the world!
Equipment & e-mail advertising: Extra assets to learn, hear & be taught
So there you may have it—our overview of Equipment’s e-mail advertising platform! We’ll go away you with a couple of extra assets if you happen to’re inquisitive about Equipment, or wish to dig additional into e-mail advertising.
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 Discovered After a Laborious Fail—my dialog with Equipment CEO Nathan Barry about setting his firm’s sights on extra formidable targets with the rebrand.
What Is E mail Advertising and marketing? + Finest Practices: An SPI How-to Information
E mail Advertising and marketing Magic Course
AP 0712: How Do I Migrate an E mail Listing from AWeber to Equipment? – Sensible Passive Revenue
Why I Switched from Aweber to Infusionsoft to ConvertKitI hope this publish has been useful in deciding whether or not Equipment is the appropriate ESP for your corporation. No matter e-mail advertising platform you select, nothing is extra vital than having the appropriate e-mail advertising technique, so make sure you try our important information to e-mail advertising and think about the E mail Advertising and marketing Magic course if you’d like extra hands-on assist along with your e-mail advertising, obtainable contained in the SPI Group. Good luck!
