In case 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 suitable place! Right here’s our complete Equipment overview for 2024, which can cowl:
- What Is Equipment?
- Why do I would like 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 Assets to Learn, Hear & Study
What’s Equipment?
Equipment is an electronic mail service supplier (ESP). Primarily, it’s a expertise service that allows you to ship electronic mail campaigns to a listing of subscribers. Equipment is one among actually a whole bunch of ESPs on the market, and—full disclosure—it occurs to be the one we favor 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 can assist you determine if it’s the suitable ESP for your online business.
E-mail advertising and marketing technique: Why you want an ESP
In case 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 a very powerful piece of expertise to help 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 speak about 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 possibly can technically use a easy electronic mail program like Gmail to perform this—however we don’t suggest it, since you’ll rapidly discover it inadequate (and since your private electronic mail account will get flagged as spam when you ship too many emails from it!).
As your online business 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 effectively or not.
You additionally have to be sure to’re respecting folks’s privateness and never spamming anybody. An electronic mail service supplier additionally lets you keep in compliance with authorities rules all over the world, such because the CAN-SPAM act in the US, the Basic Information Safety Regulation within the European Union (GDPR), and the Canada Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL).
Issues can rapidly 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 mechanically to a particular section of subscribers in your checklist, triggered by a particular occasion or motion, with the purpose of guiding them to take a particular motion.
- Broadcast emails: Ship commonplace 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 industrial electronic mail messages, and provides recipients the suitable to have you ever cease emailing them—so compliance is essential!
- Dynamic (personalised) electronic mail content material: Your electronic mail content material can show totally different textual content or photos, in line with your buyer segmentation.
- Responsive electronic mail templates: Prepared-to-go electronic mail designs, in addition to the flexibility to create your personal customized templates. Equipment mechanically codecs your touchdown pages for numerous gadgets, comparable to desktop computer systems and cellphones.
- WYSIWYG electronic mail editor: The built-in electronic mail editor allows you to see how your electronic mail will look together with your template’s styling utilized when you’re composing it.
Amassing new subscribers
- Customized responsive touchdown pages: Use the included instrument to rapidly create a touchdown web page to gather electronic mail addresses. Equipment mechanically codecs your touchdown pages for numerous gadgets, comparable to desktop computer systems and cellphones.
- Embeddable types: Accumulate electronic mail subscribers wherever 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 cost for one-time or subscription merchandise, and construct customized pages. Arrange a touchdown web page and accumulate cost 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 selected motion, you possibly can 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 strains to your emails, and mechanically determines the winner primarily based on their respective open charges.
- Reporting/analytics/ROI monitoring: Learn the way 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 have interaction with and accumulate 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 custom-made 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 possibly can create an internet site instantly on Equipment to publish newsletters, host a digital storefront to gather cost 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 can too 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 neighborhood and content material with Equipment), and SegMetrics (study the way you achieve, interact, and convert subscribers).
- Equipment additionally affords a self-service app builder to create your personal add-ons. (As of this writing, the service is presently 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 generally 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. (That they had beforehand rebranded to Seva in 2018, however appreciable adverse suggestions to the brand new title brought on 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 effectively. We coated a few 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 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 via weblog updates, live-streamed design classes, 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 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 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 contains:
- 1 fundamental Visible Automation
- 1 electronic mail Sequence
- 1 consumer
- Limitless touchdown pages, opt-in types, 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 checklist by cross-promoting with different creators)
- Good Suggestions (auto-recommendation of comparable creators that can assist you develop your checklist)
- 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 instrument
- 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 supply a 14-day free trial so you possibly can 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 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 Revenue’s electronic 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 terrific answer for a variety of entrepreneurs and digital creators in search of a strong, feature-rich electronic mail advertising and marketing platform.
One of the best electronic mail service supplier for brand spanking new entrepreneurs.
Simple to study, highly effective once you want it.
That is an affiliate hyperlink
From the place we sit, the ability of Equipment falls into two predominant classes: consumer advantages, and viewers advantages.
Equipment advantages from the consumer’s standpoint
First, Equipment has the whole lot a enterprise proprietor wants to stand up and operating rapidly:
- You possibly can accumulate 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 begin promoting even whereas they’re within the strategy of organising an internet site someplace else. It additionally makes it simple to execute on one of many predominant 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 consumer. Once you begin, you most likely simply need to accumulate 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 possibly can reap the benefits of issues like automations and dynamic content material. As you and your online business develop into extra superior, the Creator Professional Plan is the next move—you gained’t have to change to a distinct electronic mail service supplier 5 years down the street. This units Equipment aside from another ESPs, significantly Mailchimp.
Some folks discover Equipment a bit daunting (see Drawbacks under), however when you’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 a simple, linear approach.
We tried Infusionsoft for a yr and located its automation builder progressive 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, however, makes it simple to string automations collectively in a sophisticated 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 method to subscriber administration. With Equipment, all of your subscribers go into one massive pool; there are not any lists. As an alternative, 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 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 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, when you’re shifting from one other ESP like Mailchimp or AWeber, Equipment affords a free migration service that may take a few of the headache out of switching.
Equipment advantages to your viewers
Equipment provides you the chance to tailor your messaging to your viewers. You possibly can have as many types 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 need to be.
As you accumulate details about your viewers, you can begin to section subscribers so that you don’t hassle folks with issues they aren’t serious about. Equipment makes it simple to gather particulars about your viewers alongside the way in which, and also you aren’t penalized for that via 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 seen.
- Reasonably steep studying curve. The interface could be 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 collection, 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 allows you to set up 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 when you’re coming from different platforms. Over time, although, we predict you’ll discover this technique 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 instrument 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 affords, which is smart 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 stage to different standard ESP choices like Mailchimp.
Lastly, that is under no circumstances 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 might get unfold skinny. To be clear, we don’t assume that is going to occur and have a number of confidence in Nathan and the Equipment workforce, but it surely’s price conserving in thoughts.
Our massive 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. In case you’re in search of your first or subsequent electronic mail advertising and marketing platform, we predict it’s a terrific answer for rising your viewers and growing your revenue whereas retaining artistic management over what you set out into the world!
Equipment & electronic mail advertising and marketing: Extra assets to learn, pay attention & study
So there you may have it—our overview of Equipment’s electronic mail advertising and marketing platform! We’ll depart you with a number of extra assets when you’re interested by 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 Discovered After a Arduous 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? + Finest 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 submit has been useful in deciding whether or not Equipment is the suitable ESP for your online business. No matter electronic mail advertising and marketing platform you select, nothing is extra essential than having the suitable electronic mail advertising and marketing technique, so you should definitely try our important information to electronic mail advertising and marketing and think about the E-mail Advertising Magic course if you need extra hands-on help together with your electronic mail advertising and marketing, accessible contained in the SPI Group. Good luck!
