| Functionality | 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> | 8 <p>Salesforce Marketing Editions is a powerful, highly customizable marketing tool with a strong focus on CRM and customer segmentation. It’s a heavyweight platform, packed with features, but leans more toward data-driven marketing than sleek design.</p><p><br></p><p>You get the essentials – marketing automation, email marketing, and deep CRM integration – but there are some notable gaps:</p><ul><li>No modern, visually polished email templates</li><li>No built-in landing page builder</li><li>No native SMS sending (SMS requires an integration)</li></ul><p><br></p><ul><li>If you need a marketing tool that’s tightly connected to Salesforce and built for segmentation, it delivers. But if design and ease of use matter most, you might find it lacking.</li></ul> |
| Ease of Use | 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> | 3 <p>Salesforce Marketing Editions is not particularly beginner friendly - we'd recommend it to those with previous Salesforce or CRM experience, simply because its marketing automation functions also rely heavily on the same interface.</p> |
| Look and feel | 9 <p>Flodesk offers a delightfully pleasant, modern, uncluttered interface that is straightforward to navigate. In addition, page load times were incredibly fast.</p> | 6 <p>While relatively straightforward to navigate, the interface does not deliver delight. This is mostly due to the fact that many buttons and fields feel crowded - unless you know your way around Salesforce software already, this may be hard to wrap your head around.</p> |
| Customisability | 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> | 9 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Salesforce Marketing Editions offers some of the best customisation options we've seen. Specifically, it offers: </span></p><ul><li><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Analytics customisation, allowing you to see the key details for key customer segments </span></li><li><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Email customisation, based on customer behaviour and traits </span></li><li><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Flow customisation, allowing you to build complex and conditional flows. </span></li></ul> |
| Ease of Setup | 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> | 3 <p>Salesforce Marketing Editions offers a self-serve free trial, but setup takes time – expect at least 45 minutes just to get started.</p><p>Even basic tasks, like setting up automations or email campaigns, take more steps than most other marketing platforms, since there are more fields to fill out. Full customization and implementation can stretch to weeks or even months. And, just like with Salesforce CRM, you may need dedicated consultants or technical experts to handle data migration.</p> |
| Customer Support | 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> | 8 <p>Depending on your subscription level, different customer support channels are available.</p><p>Phone support is offered to most customers, and live chat is offered to limited segments of customers. Online support (i.e., via email) is always available.</p> |
| Integratability | 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> | 5 <p>Salesforce Marketing Editions doesn’t quite live up to Salesforce’s reputation for integrations. While the broader platform connects well with other tools, Marketing Editions has more limitations. If you rely on multiple apps, it’s worth double-checking whether Salesforce Marketing Editions supports the integrations you need before committing.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 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> | 8 <p>Salesforce Marketing Editions offers solid export options – you can easily export contacts as CSV files, as you’d expect.</p><p>If you ever need to handle data portability requests for compliance reasons, Salesforce Marketing Editions provides a clear process for exporting all customer-related information, making it easier to stay on top of data protection requirements.</p> |
