Email Expert Thoughts on Kit’s Price Increase: Should you stay or should you move?

If you’ve raised an eyebrow (or wrote a rage email) about Kit’s recent price increase, you’re not alone — and everyone has their different reasons why maybe it’s causing you to pause and reconsider which email platform you’re using.

And you’ve probably noticed other changes in the email platform world too — like Flodesk ending their unlimited pricing, which makes it look enticing.

It’s natural (and smart!) to evaluate the tools you’re using in your business — the costs can add up, so you’ve got to make it worth it to keep those tools in your tech stack. I do this review every year to make sure I like what I’m paying for.

So if you’re asking yourself —

“Is Kit still worth it for me, my business, and my subscribers?”

Please also think about —

“Am I using this tool to reach a specific goal? If so, what is that goal?”

Because that’s what will help you answer question #1.

If you’re a blogger, your goals may be traffic-related, and it could mean these things are very important to you —

• Automations that send traffic to your website (something Substack doesn’t offer)
• An automated RSS email that sends without you having to touch it (Flodesk doesn’t have this option)
• Selling products and knowing who’s bought, who needs pitched, and how many subscribers converted

Whatever your goals may be, let me be a light to some of the features Kit has that others don’t, that way you can make a clear-headed choice.

So if you’re considering changing email platforms, let me help you do that: Consider.

5+ Kit Features You’d Miss Out On by Moving to Another Email Platform

I want to talk through some of what you’d actually lose if you switched away from Kit.

These aren’t abstract features. I believe these are the things that impact your time, your money, your email STRATEGY, and your ability to keep email simple and effective.

And that totally depends on your business, so weight this against your own intuition and wisdom. You can always DM me or send me an email if you have specific questions 🙂

This blog post is based on this video I shared on Instagram and Threads. 

Watch it here if that feels easier:

01 | Automatic List Cleaning

One of the biggest cost-savers in Kit is how easy it is to keep your list clean.

With Kit, you can set up two simple automations that check every 90 days whether a subscriber has clicked an email. If not, they’re sent a re-engagement sequence. If they still don’t engage, they’re unsubscribed.

That means:

• You’re not paying for disengaged subscribers.
  
• Your open + click rates stay strong.
  
• Your list size (and your bill) reflect your real audience, not ghost subscribers.

By contrast, in Flodesk? This process is manual and clunky, same goes for MailerLite (though I’d say it’s still easier than Flodesk). Once we set up a Cold Subscriber Clean-Up for our clients in Kit, it runs forever — keeping their lists fresh in the background, in perpetuity.

02 | Emails with a Mobile-Responsive Design

Emails designed in Kit adapt beautifully to mobile. 

And if you’ve had issues with that, I suggest using this one and only layout option; it doesn’t let me down. The one with the photo on the left, text and button on the right; under Mobile, toggle the option to make sure it stacks. Here are two examples:

In Flodesk, layouts render as static images. On desktop, they look great as long as your subscriber clicks to “view images.” But on mobile? These layouts show up as tiny, unreadable, and impossible to search in an inbox later (unless maybe you have stellar alt-text).

Kit’s editor ensures your content stacks and scales properly — and that your text is still searchable — so your subscribers can read your emails (and find them again later).

03 | Smarter Automations + Time-Saving Sequences

Kit’s automations are not only powerful, but they’re fast. You can:

• Branch automations based on tags, purchases, or behaviors.
  
• Automatically skip emails for people who’ve already bought or joined.
  
• Relax knowing subscribers won’t accidentally get the same automation email twice (unless you explicitly turn that on).

Even the interface itself saves time. You can toggle between emails in a sequence with one click — no waiting for pages to load or clicking 3 times to get from one email to another. It’s a small feature, but when you or your VA are building emails weekly, it matters — saving you time and headaches.

04 | Flexible Segmentation

Segmentation in Kit is dynamic. You can create reusable groups (called “segments”) that automatically update to include or exclude subscribers when they click, buy, or update their preferences.

Flodesk’s segmentation is one-dementional. What they call a “segment” is like a “tag” in Kit and it’s a list of people with one tag. There’s no way to keep track of a group of subscribers with more than one variable, for instance “people with X segment and Y segment, but none with Z segment” — which gets tricky when you’re trying to personalize the content you send to your list or run a campaign.

Segments in Kit are dynamic, which means:

• Weekly emails can go to one list of subscribers, while some don’t get it because they’ve asked you to skip sending that email to them.
  
• Promo sequences can exclude paying members or customers, so they don’t get news or promotions for something they already have.
  
• You avoid messy “all subscriber” newsletters that aren’t meant to send to everyone.
  

05 | Reporting That Drives Strategy

Kit’s reporting doesn’t just show you who clicked — it lets you do something with that data.

Example: 350 people click your Crockpot affiliate link. In Kit, you can select them all, add a tag (“Interested in Crockpot”), and send a follow-up to those subscribers.

It looks like this.

In Flodesk, you can view the list but not take meaningful next steps. You can actually see the list of those who’ve clicked, but you can’t “select all” and add them to a segment. If you remember to add the segment to those who click BEFORE you send the email, then you’re good, you just can’t do it afterwards.

If you’re used to having this kind of control over your email list with Kit, moving to Flodesk will only cause you to feel friction. It’s not impossible to do without it, but something to consider!

A Few More Reasons to Consider Staying with Kit

Of course, after I recorded that video above, I came up with a few more reasons I’d consider staying with Kit —

• They’ve got the Creator Network for growing your list with other creators through recommendations
  
• They have a one-toggle option to add UTM link tracking for each link, so you can see your email traffic more accurately in Google Analytics.
  
• Also a one-toggle option: Hashed subscriber tracking that can increase ad revenue because you’re better communicating who’s on your list to your ad network like Raptive and Mediavine

Right now, Flodesk doesn’t have any of those. 

The Bottom Line

Switching platforms isn’t just about comparing monthly fees. It’s about weighing:

• The time you’ll save using the platform
  
• The money you’ll make from better tracking and segmentation for promoting products or affiliates
  
• The control you can have with your email platform to keep a clean list, manage your subscribers the way you’d expect, and that your emails send the way they should be viewed

If those things matter to you, Kit is still one of the best tools on the market.

In my case, email marketing doesn’t look like funnels and LeadPages and countdown timers. As a service provider, it’s more suitable for brand awareness, content creation (that’s then shared in other places), and overall building an audience of subscribers that won’t go away if Instagram disappears tonight. 

I’m staying with Kit, even though it doesn’t “make” me money in the funnel or ad-traffic type revenue streams. I’m okay with that. It’s an easy tool for me to use, even if I don’t use ALL of the features they’ve created for us.

How can we improve your email marketing strategy?

To learn more about our done-for-you email marketing services, visit our Services page here and explore our case studies.

Book a free Discovery Call with me here to chat specifically about how we can do this type of work for you!

I’m a proud affiliate of Kit — and have been a happy user since 2017. There are affiliate links in this email, which means I will receive a small commission if you choose to sign up using any of them (at no additional cost to you!).