| Functionality | 4 <p>AWeber offers some, but not all, of the features that a business might need.</p><p><br></p><p>While you can create basic flows and email campaigns with the tool, there are practically no templates for flows, meaning they all have to be built from scratch.</p><p><br></p><p>On top of this, there are no Al-enhanced features, advanced segmentation, or surveys - making this a more meagrely kitted out marketing automation customers</p> | 5 <p><span style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">For small ecommerce businesses, Flodesk’s features are just right. The team has clearly chosen to focus on certain things and do them well.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">We are concerned that custom fields can only take values of ‘string’ data type, so you can’t validate entries to, say, date or location type fields. Nor can you filter / segment according to the value of custom fields.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">As your needs grow and you want A/B testing, custom dashboards etc, you may outgrow the platform but it is solid for what it is.</span></p> |
| Ease of Use | 2 <p>AWeber was not particularly easy to pick up. Buttons and key calls to action were hidden in a hamburger menu, adding more clicks to get to basic sections of the program. However, given the simplicity of most of the features, this wasn't a huge issue.</p> | 10 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent;">Flodesk is one of the user-friendly email marketing platforms we have tested. With a simple interface and just 6 clearly labeled tabs, it's super easy to navigate between designing emails, creating forms and building out workflows. We particularly like its workflow builder, which makes it straightforward even for complete beginners to build an email series without guidance.</span></p> |
| Look and feel | 4 <p>Overall, AWeber's look and feel is outdated and a little tired. For those who don't mind the old-school look, AWeber could be a good fit. However, for those who want a more delightful interface and user experience, some other marketing platforms would be better options.</p> | 9 <p>Flodesk offers a delightfully pleasant, modern, uncluttered interface that is straightforward to navigate. In addition, page load times were incredibly fast.</p> |
| Customisability | 3 <p>AWeber's email automation and customisation system is one of the weaker ones we tested. While its competitors offer robust customisation options, including templates and conditional logic, AWeber loses out on this regard.</p> | 4 <p>There's a classic trade-off between ease of set-up and customisability. No surprises that there is little to customise with Flodesk. That should not be an issue for small businesses looking to grow via email automation. The time may come when you wish to have more control over custom dashboards and analytics but until then we are not concerned.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 2 <p>While AWeber does have a free trial, which allows you to perform basic setup and product testing, we still found that it was missing a large number of onboarding processes (e.g., tutorials). As such, basic setup takes 1+ hour to complete, and fully customising would take quite a few days.</p> | 10 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">We loved how quickly we could self-serve to create an account with very few clicks (via a Google account) and start creating emails, forms and workflows. Thanks to the 'forever free' tier, there is also no need to enter payment card details to access full functionality for the first 30 days.</span></p> |
| Customer Support | 7 <p>Live chat, email support, and help centre articles are available. Live chat isn't 24/7 however - but they serve US hours. Just something to be aware of if you're based in Europe/anywhere else.</p> | 8 <p>There is no live-chat functionality but our email query was helpfully answered in just 8 minutes. In addition the knowledge base of 'how to' articles is high-quality and easily searchable.</p> |
| Integratability | 7 <p>Most integrations that businesses would need are offered by AWeber - including integrations for CRM, e-commece, lead generation, social media, and more.</p> | 3 <p>Direct integration is supported only for Instagram and Shopify. The Zapier store has a number of other integrations which may be useful and depending on your needs, you may have to create your own private connection via the Flodesk API.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 7 <p>As with most marketing automation platforms, AWeber allows you to export your subscriber list. Anything else requires either an API or contacting customer support.</p> | 9 <p>In testing we could easily export the mailing list, a specific segment, and analytics (such as daily opt-in and visitor activity) to CSV without needing tech support.</p> |
