For those who’re on the lookout for your subsequent e-mail advertising platform, and also you’re curious if Package is best for you, nicely, you’re in the suitable place! Right here’s our complete Package evaluation for 2024, which is able to cowl:
- What Is Package?
- Why do I would like an e-mail service supplier (ESP)?
- The rebrand from ConvertKit to Package
- Package Options
- Package Pricing
- Key Advantages of Package
- Drawbacks of Package
- Package & E-mail Advertising: Extra Sources to Learn, Hear & Study
What’s Package?
Package is an e-mail service supplier (ESP). Basically, it’s a expertise service that allows you to ship e-mail campaigns to an inventory of subscribers. Package is considered one of actually lots of of ESPs on the market, and—full disclosure—it occurs to be the one we favor and use at SPI.
Though we’re biased, we will nonetheless be goal! On this put up, we’ll cowl the options, advantages, and drawbacks of Package as we see them, that will help you determine if it’s the suitable ESP for your corporation.
E-mail advertising technique: Why you want an ESP
For those who’re studying this, you may already know what an ESP is and why you want one. However in case you don’t, an ESP is an important piece of expertise to assist your e-mail advertising technique.
E-mail advertising is without doubt one of the strongest strategies to construct relationships and market your services to your viewers. Let’s speak about why that’s.
In its most elementary kind, e-mail advertising entails you sending emails to a bunch of people that’ve chosen to listen to from you by “subscribing” to obtain emails from you. You may technically use a easy e-mail program like Gmail to perform this—however we don’t advocate it, since you’ll shortly discover it inadequate (and since your private e-mail account will get flagged as spam if you happen to ship too many emails from it!).
As your corporation grows and extra individuals subscribe to get your emails, you’ll need the power to do extra subtle issues along with your e-mail advertising, like customizing the emails individuals get in response to their pursuits, and utilizing studies and analytics to find out what’s working nicely or not.
You additionally have to be sure you’re respecting individuals’s privateness and never spamming anybody. An e-mail service supplier additionally lets you keep in compliance with authorities rules world wide, such because the CAN-SPAM act in the US, the Basic Knowledge Safety Regulation within the European Union (GDPR), and the Canada Anti-Spam Regulation (CASL).
Issues can shortly get out of hand with out the assistance of a devoted e-mail advertising platform. That’s the place an ESP like Package is available in.
Okay, let’s get into the nitty gritty of Package’s options!
Psst… Need to develop your e-mail listing and study highly effective segmentation and automation methods that enable your corporation to run by itself? Try the E-mail Advertising Magic course.
Package options
These are the important thing options of Package, organized by the way you’ll use them.
Sending emails
- Autoresponders/drip campaigns (sequences): Ship a sequence of pre-written emails mechanically to a particular section of subscribers in your listing, triggered by a particular occasion or motion, with the purpose of guiding them to take a particular motion.
- Broadcast emails: Ship customary bulletins or one-time emails to your subscribers on a particular date.
- CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL compliance: CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL are legal guidelines that set the foundations and necessities for business e-mail messages, and provides recipients the suitable to have you ever cease emailing them—so compliance is essential!
- Dynamic (customized) e-mail content material: Your e-mail content material can show completely different textual content or photographs, in response to your buyer segmentation.
- Responsive e-mail templates: Prepared-to-go e-mail designs, in addition to the power to create your personal customized templates. Package mechanically codecs your touchdown pages for numerous gadgets, akin to desktop computer systems and cell phones.
- WYSIWYG e-mail editor: The built-in e-mail editor helps you to see how your e-mail will look along with your template’s styling utilized when you’re composing it.
Gathering new subscribers
- Customized responsive touchdown pages: Use the included device to shortly create a touchdown web page to gather e-mail addresses. Package mechanically codecs your touchdown pages for numerous gadgets, akin to desktop computer systems and cell phones.
- Embeddable kinds: Gather e-mail subscribers anyplace in your web site by dropping in a Javascript or HTML kind, or by utilizing the WordPress plugin.
- Website builder: Create an internet site immediately on Package to publish newsletters, host a digital storefront to gather cost for one-time or subscription merchandise, and construct customized pages. Arrange a touchdown web page and accumulate cost for one-time or subscription merchandise proper inside Package.
- Visible automations: Package permits you to create rule-based paths utilizing if-then logic, in order that when a subscriber takes a specific motion, you’ll be able to ship them pre-defined emails or add them to a section.
Studying about your subscribers
- A/B testing: Package helps you to check completely different topic traces on your emails, and mechanically determines the winner primarily based on their respective open charges.
- Reporting/analytics/ROI monitoring: Find out how typically your subscribers open your emails, click on on hyperlinks, and full numerous actions.
- Segmentation/tagging: Segmenting your subscribers into completely different classes (much like however extra highly effective than different packages’ “lists”) permits you to ship them emails which are higher tailor-made to their wants and pursuits.
- Polls. Add polls on to emails to have interaction with and accumulate details about subscribers, which you’ll then use to construct segments.
Rising your earnings
- In 2022, Package Commerce was added to the platform, permitting customers to strive promoting digital merchandise to their subscribers by creating custom-made product pages that may be embedded in your emails, together with automated gross sales funnels.
- The present iteration of Package additionally contains a web site builder. You possibly can create an internet site immediately on Package to publish newsletters, host a digital storefront to gather cost for one-time or subscription merchandise, and construct customized pages.
Connecting with and supporting different creators: The Creator Community
- In 2023, Package launched the Creator Community, which helps customers information their viewers members to find different creators and get found in flip.
- It’s also possible to receives a commission for Creator Community suggestions you make through the aptly named Paid Suggestions.
Increasing the platform’s capabilities: App retailer
- As a part of the 2024 rebrand, in addition they launched an app retailer, the place you’ll find customized apps to do extra with Package. The app retailer will launch with 5 apps: KitBoard (add CRM to your account), Wordsmith (flip YouTube movies into newsletters, SavvyCal (add reserving widgets to emails), Mighty (join your Mighty neighborhood and content material with Package), and SegMetrics (find out about the way you acquire, interact, and convert subscribers).
- Package additionally presents a self-service app builder to create your personal add-ons. (As of this writing, the service is at present in beta.)
Begin your Package account — free on your first 10,000 subscribers!
That is an affiliate hyperlink
From “ConvertKit” to “Package”: Behind the rebrand
In summer season 2024, the corporate beforehand often known as ConvertKit formally turned Package. The brand new identify was introduced in July in the course of the Craft + Commerce Creator Convention and went reside in October. (They’d beforehand rebranded to Seva in 2018, however appreciable adverse suggestions to the brand new identify induced them to revert to ConvertKit till this yr.)
The change to Package was greater than a reputation change, although, as a result of the corporate launched a number of large new capabilities to their platform as nicely. We coated a few of the new options within the part above, however listed below are the highlights:
- An app retailer the place builders can create add-ons to enhance Package’s capabilities
- A central information hub with enhanced reporting
- An expanded Creator Community to assist customers discover new collaboration companions
Package additionally made a degree of rebranding in public by sharing details about the rebranding course of by means of weblog updates, live-streamed design classes, and a four-part YouTube mini-documentary. This transparency provides an fascinating perception into the corporate’s pondering. And we predict it’s a sensible transfer given how their earlier rebrand went.
With that out of the best way, let’s speak about pricing.
Package pricing
For a very long time, Package solely supplied paid plans. However in December 2019, the corporate introduced a brand new free tier when you’ve got fewer than 1,000 subscribers. They lately expanded the free tier to incorporate creators with as much as 10,000 subscribers.
Listed below are Package’s pricing choices as of October 2024:
Package E-newsletter Plan
- $0/month for as much as 10,000 subscribers
The E-newsletter plan contains:
- 1 fundamental Visible Automation
- 1 e-mail Sequence
- 1 person
- Limitless touchdown pages, opt-in kinds, and e-mail broadcasts
- Viewers tagging & segmentation
- Promote digital merchandise
- Run paid newsletters & subscriptions
- E-newsletter feed & web site
- API Entry
- Free Suggestions (required—a minimum of one suggestion slot to develop your listing by cross-promoting with different creators)
- Sensible Suggestions (auto-recommendation of comparable creators that will help you develop your listing)
- 24/7 assist
Package Creator Plan
- $9/month for as much as 300 subscribers (paid yearly; $15 if paid month-to-month)
- $25/month for as much as 1,000 subscribers (paid yearly; $29 if paid month-to-month)
- Tiered pricing as much as $1,916/month (paid yearly; $1,916 if paid month-to-month) for as much as 400,000 subscribers
The Creator plan contains:
- All of the options of the E-newsletter plan
- Limitless Visible Automations
- Limitless e-mail Sequences
- 2 customers
- Free migration from one other device
- Free Suggestions
- Paid Suggestions
- Take away Package branding
- Third-party integrations
- RSS campaigns
- Polls
Package Creator Professional Plan
- $25/month for as much as 300 subscribers (paid yearly; $29 if paid month-to-month)
- $50/month for as much as 1,000 subscribers (paid yearly; $59 if paid month-to-month)
- Tiered pricing as much as $2,166/month (paid yearly; $2,599 paid month-to-month) for as much as 400,000 subscribers
The Creator Professional plan contains:
- All of the options of the Creator plan
- Limitless Visible Automations
- Limitless e-mail Sequences
- Limitless customers
- Fb customized audiences
- E-newsletter referral system
- Edit hyperlinks in despatched broadcasts
- Subscriber engagement scoring
- Superior deliverability reporting
- Insights dashboard
- 24/7 Precedence assist
Each the Creator and Creator Professional plans provide a 14-day free trial so you’ll be able to see if it’s best for you earlier than committing.
We’ll hold this put up up to date with the most recent Package pricing, however you can even go to the pricing web page on the Package web site.
Let’s get into the explanations we like Package subsequent!
Advantages of Package
We’ve used Package to energy Sensible Passive Earnings’s e-mail advertising for a number of years. In that point, we’ve discovered it to be the perfect ESP for our wants. We additionally assume it’s an ideal answer for a variety of entrepreneurs and digital creators on the lookout for a sturdy, feature-rich e-mail advertising platform.
The most effective e-mail service supplier for brand spanking new entrepreneurs.
Simple to study, highly effective once you want it.
That is an affiliate hyperlink
From the place we sit, the ability of Package falls into two most important classes: person advantages, and viewers advantages.
Package advantages from the person’s standpoint
First, Package has the whole lot a enterprise proprietor wants to rise up and working shortly:
- You possibly can accumulate emails.
- You possibly can arrange a easy touchdown web page to gather emails.
- You possibly can promote merchandise (one-time buy or subscription).
These options enable somebody to start out promoting even whereas they’re within the strategy of establishing an internet site some place else. It additionally makes it simple to execute on one of many most important classes in our Sensible From Scratch course: utilizing promoting as a key step within the idea-validation course of.
Second, the Package crew designed their platform to develop with the sophistication of the person. Whenever you begin, you in all probability simply wish to accumulate e-mail addresses and ship emails. However as you develop, you’ll wish to begin tailoring your message and segmenting your viewers. At that time you’ll be able to make the most of issues like automations and dynamic content material. As you and your corporation develop into extra superior, the Creator Professional Plan is the next step—you gained’t have to change to a special e-mail service supplier 5 years down the highway. This units Package other than another ESPs, notably Mailchimp.
Some individuals discover Package a bit daunting (see Drawbacks beneath), however if you happen to’re considerably tech-savvy we predict it’s fairly approachable. Particularly, we just like the accessibility of Package’s automation builder, which helps you to create automations in an easy, linear approach.
We tried Infusionsoft for a yr and located its automation builder progressive however overwhelming. You needed to already perceive how automations work, in addition to the varied symbols frequent in automation builders. We discover Package’s automation builder, however, makes it simple to string automations collectively in a complicated approach. With a number of templates to select from, establishing an automation for the primary time is straightforward for any person.
We additionally like Package’s method to subscriber administration. With Package, all of your subscribers go into one large pool; there are not any lists. As an alternative, subscribers may be put into segments by assigning them attributes utilizing tags and customized fields. These allow you to deal with your subscribers as distinctive people with completely different wants; not all subscribers are created equal. The opposite good thing about the best way Package treats subscribers? You’re solely charged as soon as for every distinctive subscriber, not like another ESPs.
Package’s lately launched Creator Community can be a giant plus in our eyes, from each a business-building and community-building perspective. It permits you to develop your subscriber base whereas additionally fostering connections with different entrepreneurs and creators.
Final however not least, if you happen to’re transferring from one other ESP like Mailchimp or AWeber, Package presents a free migration service that may take a few of the headache out of switching.
Package advantages on your viewers
Package provides you the chance to tailor your messaging to your viewers. You possibly can have as many kinds and touchdown pages as you need. You possibly can have as many tags, customized fields, and segments as you need. You may be as particular in speaking to your viewers as you wish to be.
As you accumulate details about your viewers, you can begin to section subscribers so that you don’t trouble individuals with issues they aren’t eager about. Package makes it simple to gather particulars about your viewers alongside the best way, and also you aren’t penalized for that by means of greater prices, as you’d be with a list-based e-mail platform.
Drawbacks of Package
No answer is ideal, in fact. Listed below are a few of the drawbacks we and different Package customers have observed.
- Reasonably steep studying curve. The interface is usually a little overwhelming for a newbie. Taking full benefit of all of Package’s options—like segmentation, tagging, and automations—requires some studying (and doubtlessly coding). You possibly can shorten this studying curve by following their Getting Began video sequence, in addition to the remainder of the content material on their well-organized assist web site
- No list-based group. Though we like the best way Package helps you to arrange subscribers utilizing tags (and doesn’t cost you for duplicate subscribers, as we talked about above), the dearth of a list-based group system may be complicated if you happen to’re coming from different platforms. Over time, although, we predict you’ll discover this technique extra versatile than managing lists.
- Barebones e-mail and touchdown web page templates. Package requires CSS coding to create customized superior e-mail templates and touchdown pages past the included choices. Some customers report that the e-mail design device may be buggy.
- Analytics might be extra sturdy. The free and Creator plans don’t provide the identical superior deliverability reporting, subscriber scoring, and analytics options of the Perception function that the Creator Professional plan presents, which is smart however could also be a hassle to some customers.
Fortunately, one of many earlier drawbacks of Package, that there was no free choice, hasn’t been the case since 2019. This free tier makes Package comparable on the entry stage to different standard ESP choices like Mailchimp.
Lastly, that is on no account a disadvantage, however as Package continues to develop its choices to incorporate issues just like the Creator Community and Package Commerce to its core e-mail advertising capabilities, there’s an opportunity that the platform’s worth may get unfold skinny. To be clear, we don’t assume that is going to occur and have a variety of confidence in Nathan and the Package crew, nevertheless it’s price maintaining in thoughts.
Our large takeaway on Package
With the current updates, Package is coming nearer to being a one-stop store for creators who wish to develop, nurture, and promote to their audiences with a platform that’s largely prepared to make use of and automatable. For those who’re on the lookout for your first or subsequent e-mail advertising platform, we predict it’s an ideal answer for rising your viewers and rising your earnings whereas retaining artistic management over what you set out into the world!
Package & e-mail advertising: Extra assets to learn, hear & study
So there you’ve got it—our evaluation of Package’s e-mail advertising platform! We’ll depart you with just a few extra assets if you happen to’re interested by Package, or wish to dig additional into e-mail advertising.
Package [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, we receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]
SPI 825: Behind the Scenes of a Main Rebrand & Classes Realized After a Onerous Fail—my dialog with Package CEO Nathan Barry about setting his firm’s sights on extra formidable objectives with the rebrand.
What Is E-mail Advertising? + Finest Practices: An SPI How-to Information
E-mail Advertising Magic Course
AP 0712: How Do I Migrate an E-mail Listing from AWeber to Package? – Sensible Passive Earnings
Why I Switched from Aweber to Infusionsoft to ConvertKitI hope this put up has been useful in deciding whether or not Package is the suitable ESP for your corporation. No matter e-mail advertising platform you select, nothing is extra vital than having the suitable e-mail advertising technique, so be sure you try our important information to e-mail advertising and contemplate the E-mail Advertising Magic course if you need extra hands-on assist along with your e-mail advertising, accessible contained in the SPI Group. Good luck!
