Perhaps you’re considering ConvertKit for your email marketing. You might also be interested in their automation. Then you begin digging further into the pricing plans and you hesitate.
As a small business or startup on a bootstrap budget, ConvertKit might be outside of your comfort zone. Fortunately, it’s far from your only option.
In today’s post, we’ll discuss 4 cheaper and better ConvertKit alternatives your small business should look into instead. These include the contenders EngageBay, Mailchimp, AWeber, and GetResponse.
We’ll go over each alternative to ConvertKit one by one, covering areas such as features and pricing. By the time you’re done reading, your small business or startup should have the right email marketing software solution for your budget.
Table of Contents
What Is ConvertKit?
Let’s begin by discussing ConvertKit, including the service’s own features and pricing. This way, we can make an accurate comparison against the above-mentioned ConvertKit competitors.
ConvertKit is an email marketing service that caters its audience towards online creators. That’s a rather open-ended term that means ConvertKit’s services are supposed to fit a myriad of users. To determine whether that’s true, let’s examine the product features.
Features
The following features are included with a membership to ConvertKit:
- ConvertKit Community: As part of the ConvertKit Community, you can link up with other ConvertKit users to ask questions, discuss milestones, and stay motivated.
- Live training every week: With weekly workshops, you can learn more about how to use ConvertKit efficiently for your business.
- Free integration: When getting started with ConvertKit, you can switch from your previous software with free integration on their part.
- Automation: Automate areas of your business such as selling services, webinar hosting, product launches, and audience surveys.
- Email automation: With automated RSS feeds that take into account subscriber targeting and digest timing, your audience could grow.
- Email builder: Create emails using CTAs and instant images with or without custom coding.
- Sign-up form builder: Make as many sign-up forms as you wish with lead magnets, custom fields, and customizable designs. The forms are all compliant with GDPR.
- Landing page builder: Choose and edit your favorite landing page templates or automate them.
- Integrations: Many tools and services integrate with ConvertKit, including Shopify, Teachable, Crowdcast, Zapier, Stripe, Gumroad, and CourseCats.
Pricing
Next, let’s more closely examine ConvertKit pricing.
You can choose from three plans: Free, Creator, or Creator Pro. The Creator and Creator Pro plans do have two-week free trials before you commit to one.
Some of the features available with the Free plan, which is $0 a month, include:
- 1,000 subscribers
- Subscriber tagging
- Customizable web domain
- Unlimited sign-up forms and landing pages
- Email broadcasting
- Unlimited traffic
You are missing integrations, premium support, and email sequences and funnels automation with the Free plan.
The Creator plan adds those missing features. You also get free migration from ConvertKit.
When billed monthly, the Creator plan is priced as follows:
- 1,000 contacts – $29 a month
- 3,000 contacts – $49 a month
- 5,000 contacts – $79 a month
- 10,000 contacts – $119 a month
- 15,000 contacts – $149 a month
- 20,000 contacts – $179 a month
You can see how even the Creator plan from ConvertKit gets pricy fast.
The last plan is Creator Pro. You get every ConvertKit feature, including these:
- Priority support
- Subscriber engagement scoring
- Team invitations
- Newsletter referral system
- Email broadcast redirect links
- Deliverability reporting
- Facebook custom audiences
- Free migration
Here’s the price breakdown for the Creator Pro plan by the number of contacts when billed monthly:
- 1,000 contacts – $59 a month
- 3,000 contacts – $79 a month
- 5,000 contacts – $111 a month
- 10,000 contacts – $167 a month
- 15,000 contacts – $209 a month
- 20,000 contacts – $251 a month
4 Cheaper ConvertKit Alternatives
Yes, at 20,000 contacts for ConvertKit’s most comprehensive plan, Creator Pro, you’d pay more than $250 a month. That’s way outside the budget of many a startup and small business.
With the ConvertKit alternatives, we’re about to discuss, you won’t miss ConvertKit, as you’ll have far better options to choose from.
1. EngageBay
The all-in-one sales and marketing suite that is EngageBay arose out of a need for more affordable small business and startup services. Although originally started as a HubSpot competitor, EngageBay is more reliably affordable than ConvertKit as well.
The Marketing Bay has the features your startup or small business needs. You can also use EngageBay’s CRM for free forever.
Features
Here are the features available in EngageBay’s Marketing Bay:
- Marketing automation: The advanced marketing automation EngageBay offers lets you create full marketing funnels, and often in just a few minutes, not hours. You can now more easily engage with and nurture your growing audience. You can also automate tasks like lead segmenting, email or SMS marketing, lead management, CRM, and live chat.
- Landing page builder: The simple drag and drop landing page builder lets you put together enticing landing pages that’ll increase your conversions. You can customize all parts of your landing page, including headers, footers, content, CTAs, pop-ups, and more.
- Email broadcasting: Send the right emails to your audience segments, including newsletters, welcome emails, offers, promotions, thank-you emails, and more with EngageBay.
- Email builder: EngageBay’s rich variety of responsive, appealing email templates look great, and all are customizable if you so desire. You may even like using the templates as-is.
- Lead capture form builder: You can also customize the pop-ups that appear on your website with EngageBay’s lead capture form builder. These pop-ups will grab the attention of your audience segments.
- Subscriber targeting: To automatically segment your contacts in EngageBay, use filters. This will let you instantly go from one audience group to another. Sort through your filters by tags, source, date created, and country.
- Email personalization: Make your communications with customers even more tailored through email personalization features. Your audience will feel like you’re writing emails just for them!
- Site messaging: Post announcements or simply greet your audience with site messaging. Take this feature further by segmenting your audience and personalizing interactions with leads and customers.
- Email sequences: Create winning drip email sequences for the betterment of your campaign, automating when necessary to free up more of your valuable time.
- Video Marketing Templates: The unique Video Marketing Templates through EngageBay let you select thumbnails from your Vimeo or YouTube content and then embed these thumbnails right into your emails or other communications with your audience.
Pricing
EngageBay’s Marketing Bay includes four pricing plans. These are Free, Basic, Growth, and Pro plans. You can also try a free trial.
The Free plan is $0 forever. Here are the available features of this plan:
- 1,000 branded emails
- 1,000 contacts
- Segmentation and lists
- Embedded forms
- Predictive lead scoring
- Email sequences
- Newsletter sending
- Landing page builder
- Email broadcasting
- Facebook Ads
- SSL-enabled landing pages
- Desktop notifications
- Video marketing
- Tag management
- Email templates
- Autoresponders
- Social suite
- Reporting dashboard
- Integrations
- Live chat
- Custom fields
- File storage up to 1 gigabyte
- Chat and email support
The Basic plan begins at $7.79 a month when billed monthly. Besides the above features, you also have 10,000 contacts and 10,000 branded emails.
If your small business continues expanding, you’ll need the Growth plan, which starts at $14.99 a month. You get even more exclusive features, such as:
- 20,000 branded emails
- 20,000 contacts
- Web rules
- Push notifications
- Site messaging
- A/B testing
- Automation and workflows
- SSO
- Email delivery based on the time zone
- 5 gigabytes of file storage
EngageBay’s most expansive plan within the Marketing Bay is the Pro plan starting at $29.99 a month. Now you can use every EngageBay marketing feature, including:
- Role management
- Web analytics
- Custom landing page domains
- Phone support
- Chat and email support
- Free onboarding
- Team hierarchy
- 20 gigabytes of file storage
- 30,000 branded emails
- 30,000 contacts
2. Mailchimp
Another ConvertKit alternative you might try is Mailchimp. This well-known email marketing platform was founded in 2001. You can also use other integrated marketing services through Mailchimp, so let’s take a closer look.
Features
Mailchimp’s features are as follows:
- Business card scanning: Since business cards are still in use today, scan them instantly and save the contact info for later.
- Lookalike audience finder: Grow your audience with this feature that combs through your social posts and interactions for other audience groups to target.
- Landing page builder: Mailchimp’s landing page builder includes mobile landing page design as well.
- Sign-up form builder: Make individual pop-ups or embed them on your site for more traffic and growth.
- Insights and predictions: From current analytics to predicted demographics, you’ll learn more about your audience and your campaigns than ever before.
- Behavioral targeting: Send tailored content based on the behavior of your customers to drive more engagement.
- Pre-built segments: Mailchimp will build audience segments for you if necessary, such as if you’re just starting out.
- Marketing CRM: Organize, personalize, and review customer interactions within this CRM.
- Integrations: Mailchimp integrates with nearly any service, including WooCommerce, Stripe, Calendly, and Zapier.
Pricing
Mailchimp’s marketing platform has four pricing plans available: Free, Essentials, Standard, or Premium. Keep in mind transactional email services are priced separately.
The Free plan is $0 and includes these features:
- 10,000 emails a month
- 2,000 contacts
- Basic segmentation
- Contact profiles and tags
- Audience dashboard with campaign engagement, surveys, and behavioral targeting
- Basic templates and a creative assistant
- Website publishing and analytics
- Mailchimp domain or custom domain
- Landing page, email, social, and pop-up marketing
- Single-step automation
- Basic reports
- Campaign insights like subject line helper, next best action, and product recommendations
- Basic support, including tips, a marketing glossary, and email support for a month
The Essentials plan starts at $9.99 a month with these additional features:
- 50,000 contacts
- Access to every template
- No Mailchimp footers
- Custom Journey Builder
- A/B testing
- Chat and email support available 24/7
Starting at $14.99 a month (to start), the Standard plan has everything above as well as:
- More audience insights, including behavior-based automation, customer lifetime value, lookalike audience finder, predicted demographics, purchase likelihood, and address finder
- Custom-coded templates
- Retargeting
- Social media post scheduling
- Multiple starting points for a customer journey
- Delivery by time zone and send time optimization
The Premium plan is the costliest, starting at $299 a month. You can use every Mailchimp feature with this plan, including:
- Advanced segmentation
- Comparative reporting
- Multivariate testing
- Phone support
3. AWeber
Our third ConvertKit alternative is AWeber. Founded in 1998, AWeber is known mostly for its automation, which is catered towards small businesses. Another service AWeber gets acclaim for is its email marketing, even more so than ConvertKit.
Features
Surely, you’ll want to take a closer look at AWeber’s features, so let’s do that now.
- Smart Designer: When designing emails, AWeber uses artificial intelligence to craft email templates that should suit your small business or startup.
- Templates and drag and drop builders: For everything else, including newsletters templates and landing pages, you can use drag and drop and even some automation. Templates also simplify the process.
- Marketing automation: Select the flows and triggers that activate your automation workflow, including for tagging contacts, personalizing emails, or sending those emails to specific audience segments.
- Analytics and reporting: The best practices included in AWeber’s reports help you improve. You can even view data and KPIs on the go with mobile reports.
- Subscriber management: Segment your audience within AWeber by category or list, even both.
- Mobile apps: Use AWeber Stats, Curate, or AWeber Atom to do more marketing tasks even if you’re away from your computer and the office.
- Integrations: The breadth of integrations from AWeber includes GoToWebinar, PayPal, Raven Tools, Clickfunnels, Facebook, and
Pricing
If you’d rather not pay for AWeber, you can opt for their Free plan, which is $0. You can only add 500 subscribers, but until you reach that point, this is a good plan. Here are the features:
- 3,000 emails a month
- Newsletters
- Drag and drop email creation
- Image library for building newsletters, emails, and more
- HTML emails
- AMP emails
- Email and landing page templates
- RSS to email
- Hosted broadcast archives
- Video landing pages
- Facebook Pixel tracking
- WordPress plugins for sign-up forms
- Automation, including email
- Segmentation features like basic segments and subscriber tagging
- Basic analytics
- Integrations
AWeber’s Pro plan lets you add unlimited contacts and send as many emails as you wish. You also unlock these exclusive features:
- No AWeber branding
- Behavioral automation
- A/B testing for emails and landing pages
- Branded click-tracking links
- Custom segments
- Webpage tracking, advanced audience data, and advanced messaging analytics
- Sales tracking
- Web-push messages
How much does the Pro plan cost? That depends on how many contacts your company has. When billed monthly, here’s what the pricing looks like:
- 500 contacts – $19 a month
- 2,500 contacts – $29 a month
- 5,000 contacts – $49 a month
- 10,000 contacts – $69 a month
- 25,000 contacts – $149 a month
4. GetResponse
The last ConvertKit alternative on our list is GetResponse, an inbound marketing, and email marketing software. Founded over 15 years ago, GetResponse has grown to offer its services in more than 180 countries.
Features
If you’re thinking of using GetResponse, here are the features you’d get:
- Marketing automation: Automate by filters, actions, and conditions, setting up a customizable workflow.
- Webinars: Host webinars with up to 1,000 attendees, and all through GetResponse.
- Landing pages: Create landing pages with mobile responsiveness and an included image editor with photos courtesy of Shutterstock.
- Email marketing: Segment your audience, send automated blog digests, schedule your emails, automate marketing tasks, and mail autoresponders and newsletters through GetReponse’s email marketing services.
- Paid advertising: Post compelling banners and video ads across social media, especially Facebook and Instagram.
- Conversion funnel: Connect your sales team into your marketing efforts with list-building funnels, lead magnet funnels, and sales funnels.
Pricing
GetResponse lets you try their software free for a month. After that, you can select from the Basic, Plus, Professional, or Max plan. None are free.
The Basic plan starts at $15 for 1,000 contacts and $65 a month for 10,000 contacts. This plan earns you the following features:
- E-product selling
- Facebook Ads
- Unlimited lead funnels
- One sales funnel
- Unlimited automation templates and landing pages
- Autoresponders
- Basic email marketing
The Plus plan starts at $49 a month for 1,000 contacts and $95 a month for 10,000 contacts. Here’s what your money gets you:
- Email marketing features such as inbox previews, email timing, A/B testing, visual email editing, RSS-to-email, autoresponders, and newsletters
- Landing page custom domains and A/B testing
- 5 webinar funnels and 5 sales funnels
- 100 attendees for webinars and 3 hours of recorded storage
- Form surveys
- Automation, including contact scoring and 5 custom workflows
- Ecommerce tools like e-product delivery and custom order forms
You might also look into the Professional plan, which is $99 a month for 1,000 contacts and $165 a month for 10,000 contacts. This plan includes the above features and:
- Unlimited sales funnels, lead funnels, and webinar funnels
- 300 webinar attendees and 6 hours of recorded storage
- Unlimited custom workflows and automation like segmentation, event tracking, and contact scoring
- Ecommerce tools like payment gateway integration and abandoned order recovery
- Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads
The last plan, the Max plan, features customizable pricing, and these features:
- Unlimited landing pages
- 500 webinar attendees and 10 hours of recorded storage
- On-demand webinars
- 10 teams
- 5,000 stock photos
- 40 funnel templates
- 700 form templates
- 180 landing page templates
- 220 email templates
Conclusion
ConvertKit might seem like the right solution for you, but the costs associated with its services exclude small businesses and startups on a budget. Although the alternatives we covered are viable options to use instead of ConvertKit, we most recommend EngageBay.
With EngageBay’s free forever service, you can use more of what you’d pay heavily for if you were a ConvertKit subscriber. Saving money like this is crucial for small businesses and startups who need to pinch pennies until revenue begins streaming in.
Even if you do outgrow EngageBay’s free plan, the monthly pricing on their other plans never skyrockets. That makes EngageBay a very reasonable option for any new business still trying to find their financial footing!