Is Flodesk Worth It? Our honest experience
I switched to Flodesk years ago and I haven't looked back once. But I know a lot of you are sitting on the fence about it, because I see the conversations in communities like this one all the time. Some not sure whether to get an email platform altogether, some not sure whether to switch (even though they aren’t in love with their current platform), others swearing by it.
So I thought I’d give my honest breakdown of what I actually use, what it's actually like, and who it makes sense for.
Why I left the clunky life (aka Mailchimp)
Mailchimp wasn't terrible. I want to be fair about that. But every time I sat down to send an email, I felt like I was fighting the tool. The templates felt clunky, getting things to look the way I wanted took forever, and there was this constant low-level friction that made the whole thing feel like a chore.
It’s wild how this low-level friction really puts you off sending an email and getting your message out there.
I switched to Flodesk pretty quickly after discovering it and the difference was immediate. It just felt like it had been built for someone like me. A creative, running their own thing, who cares about how their brand looks and doesn't have hours to spend wrestling with design tools.
So here's what I'm going to cover
I thought it would be valuable to take you bts on the three things I use most and what they're actually like day to day. Templates, checkouts, and segmentation. I'll also tell you honestly who it works well for and who it probably doesn't, including a couple of things I wish I'd known going in.
The templates
This is the first thing I tell anyone who asks me about Flodesk. The templates are genuinely stunning and nothing else at this level comes close. They're clean, considered, and they actually feel like something you'd want to land in your inbox rather than something you'd immediately archive.
You can also purchase templates from external designers (checkout places like Etsy) so you can get sweet emails out immediately.
The customisation is proper customisation too. You're not just swapping a logo and changing a font colour and hoping for the best. You can build something that looks and feels exactly like your brand without it taking your entire afternoon.
As someone who cares a lot about how The New Kind looks and feels, this matters. Your emails are part of your brand experience. They're often the most direct, personal touchpoint you have with your audience and they should look like you. With Flodesk, mine finally do.
The checkouts
This is the part people don't talk about enough and it's become a big part of how I sell.
Flodesk Checkouts lets you sell digital products, services, and downloads directly through Flodesk without needing a separate tool. The checkout pages have the same considered, clean feel as the email templates, they're straightforward to set up, and they connect directly to your email workflows so that when someone buys, they automatically get added to the right sequence.
For a one-person business that matters a lot. You're not stitching together five different tools and hoping they all talk to each other. It lives in one place and it runs without you having to be involved every time.
One thing worth knowing though: Flodesk Checkouts doesn't have built-in storage for digital downloads. So if you're selling something like a PDF, a template, or a digital product that needs to be downloaded after purchase, you'll need to host it somewhere else, whether that's Google Drive, Dropbox, or a dedicated platform, and set up the delivery yourself. It's not complicated but it's worth knowing before you dive in so you're not caught out.
If you want to try Flodesk for yourself, I have a discount link that gets you 25% off your first year. Grab it [here 🔗] (this gives us a small affiliate bounceback, we only reccomend software we love).
The segmentation
Honest answer: Flodesk's segmentation does what I need and nothing more.
If you're coming from a tool with very advanced segmentation and you rely heavily on complex tagging, behaviour-based triggers, and granular audience splits, you might find it limited. It's worth knowing that going in.
But for most solo founders and small creative businesses it does the job well. You can segment by interest, by how someone joined your list, by what they've bought, and use that to make sure the right people are getting the right emails. It's intuitive and it doesn't require a manual to figure out. I've never hit a wall with it for what I need, but I also don't need enterprise-level functionality and if that's you, Flodesk probably isn't your tool.
Who it works well for
Flodesk makes a lot of sense if you're a creative, a freelancer, or a solo founder (service based) who wants their email marketing to actually look like them. If aesthetics matter to you, if simplicity matters to you, and if you want something that feels built for a one-person business rather than a corporate marketing department, it's worth a proper look.
It's especially good if you're selling digital products or want to keep your tech stack lean. Having emails, automations, and checkouts all sitting in one place is genuinely useful when you're running everything yourself.
Who it probably isn't for
If you need very advanced segmentation, complex multi-branch automations, or deep CRM-style functionality, there are more powerful tools out there. They're more complicated and more expensive, but if you genuinely need that level of sophistication, Flodesk will likely feel limiting.
I would also say if you are an e-ccomerce brand, selling physical products there are probably better options. But I only sell one physical product through the checkouts, and it hasn’t been the easiest with fidning addresses etc (and auto overriding addresses when a customer pays with Apple pay etc. There may be a way to get round this but I haven’t found it yet)
To sum it up…
I switched years ago and I'd do it again. It's made email marketing feel like something I actually want to sit down and do, which means I show up more consistently for my list (ofc, I’m definitely not perfect, but at least it doesnt feel like a chore). For the kind of business most of you are building, that consistency is worth more than a feature you'll never use.
Ready to give it a go? Use my link for 25% off your first year: [grab is here 🔗 aff link]. And if you have questions about how I've set things up or what my workflows look like, come find me in The New Kind community.
