ConvertKit vs Zoho Campaigns
Trying to choose between ConvertKit vs Zoho Campaigns as your email marketing software? Here's when to choose each tool – and the pros and cons to know about.
- 4.7 GetApp
- 4.7 Capterra
- 2 TrustPilot
Average 3.8 / 5
ConvertKit
ConvertKit is a tool for marketing automation and monetization for independent creators.
Pricing
- Email marketing automation
- Landing pages
- Sign-up forms
- Analytics
- A/B testing
- Tools for content monetization
Key features
- Email marketing automation
- Landing pages
- Sign-up forms
- Analytics
- A/B testing
- Tools for content monetization
Support
Community support for all users, email and chat support for paid users
- 4.3 GetApp
- 4.2 Capterra
- 4.3 G2
Average 4.3 / 5
Zoho Campaigns
A complex marketing solution with email campaigns. Features include automations, integrations, and SMS marketing.
Pricing
Starts at $3 a month for 500 contacts (billed yearly)
Key features
- Email automation
- E-commerce workflows
- Mobile app for email sending, reporting, and contacts import
- Integrations with various services
- Drag-and-drop email builder
- Signup forms
Support
Weekdays support during working hours via email, live chat, and phone by default. Limited support during weekends. On the free plan, the support is only available for the first 14 days.
General info about company
ConvertKit
ConvertKit was founded in 2013 and is based in Idaho, the US. It was created by Nathan Barry, a blogger and creator who needed a better way to promote his books and courses.
Zoho Campaigns
Zoho Campaigns is the product of Zoho Corporation — an Indian-American company. The company was founded in 1996 by Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas. Global headquarters in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, and corporate headquarters outside of Austin in Del Valle, Texas.
Difficulty
ConvertKit
Not beginner-friendly, since you need to code while creating emails.
Zoho Campaigns
Possible to create emails and automations without coding or design skills. At the same time, many people find the interface to be not very user-friendly.
Best for
ConvertKit
Bloggers, coaches, course creators, writers, and everyone who makes content for living.
Zoho Campaigns
E-commerce businesses that require simple, essential workflows like post-purchase emails or digital marketing agencies working with different clients.
Free plan
ConvertKit
The forever free plan includes the contact list of up to 1,000 subscribers and the following features:
- Unlimited landing pages
- Unlimited forms
- Unlimited “broadcasts”, or one-off email campaigns, sent right away or scheduled
- Audience tagging and segmentation
- Selling digital products & subscriptions
- Community support
- Free recommendations
Zoho Campaigns
Has a free plan for up to 2,000 subscribers and 6,000 emails a month. The support is only available for the first 14 days. The features are limited. Segmentation, scheduling, and automation are excluded.
Pricing
ConvertKit
Dynamic pricing depends on the size of your contact list and the features of interest.
Creator: $9–1,916/month billed yearly for 300–400,000 subscribers. Includes all the free features plus:
- Live chat & email support
- Paid recommendations
- Free migration from another tool
- Automated email sequences
- Visual automation builders
- Third-party integrations
- One additional team member
Creator Pro: $25–2,166/month billed yearly for 300–400,000 subscribers. Includes all the Creator features plus:
- Newsletter referral system
- Subscriber scoring
- Advanced reporting
Zoho Campaigns
For up to 500 contacts, billed yearly/monthly:
- Standard $3 / $4
- Professional $4.50 / $6
Other pricing features:
- 14 days free trial with all the features
- A Pay As You Go plan
- Discounts for non-profit organizations
Support
ConvertKit
Community support:
- The internal forum where you can ask questions and receive answers from ConvertKit support specialists and other platform users
- Available even on the free plan
Email and live chat support:
- Available for Creator users
- Priority support via email and live chat available for Creator Pro users
ConvertKit also provides a knowledge base and a YouTube channel with tutorials. The platform also runs online workshops for newbies in marketing.
Zoho Campaigns
Weekdays support during working hours via email, live chat, and phone by default. Limited support during weekends. The response time is 8 hours depending on the pricing plan.
On the free plan, the support is only available for the first 14 days.
Offers paid additional support packages.
The Premium plan (an additional 20% of the Zoho subscription) includes 24/5 support and a three-hour response time.
The Enterprise plan (an additional 25% of the annual Zoho subscription with additional requirements) includes 24/7 support, one-hour response time, a dedicated technical account manager, a quarterly report, and early access to new features.
Knowledge Base, community forums, text and video guides, virtual classrooms, and self-service support portal.
Features
ConvertKit
- Email builder
- Email marketing automation
- Landing pages
- Sign-up forms
- Tools for selling digital products and paid subscriptions
- List segmentation
- Lead scoring
- A/B testing
- Reporting and analytics
- Internal referral systems for creators to earn off putting links in your newsletter or paying to get promoted by other creators
Zoho Campaigns
- Email automation in a drag-and-drop builder
- Integrations with various services
- SMS campaigns
- E-commerce workflows with content sync between the store and email campaigns and AI product recommendations
- Signup forms
- Drag-and-drop email builder and templates
- A mobile app for Android and iOS to send emails, see reporting, and import contacts
Templates
ConvertKit
25 email templates made for content creators by content creators, includes templates for:
- Newsletters
- Content promotion
- Product sales pitch
- Waitlist
The templates are sourced from other users and you can create and share your own.
ConvertKit also offers 50+ landing page templates not specified by purpose.
Zoho Campaigns
240+ email templates including responsive email templates
The free plan doesn’t have advanced responsive templates
Templates for:
- Welcome messages
- Deals and offers
- Newsletter
- Webinars
- E-commerce
- Emergencies and crises
Video/screenshots
ConvertKit
Zoho Campaigns
Integrations
ConvertKit
120 integrations with third-party apps for:
- Memberships and courses
- Analytics
- Lead capture
- E-commerce
- Giveaways
- Quizzes
- Workflows
- Webinar
- Affiliate management
- CRM
- Scheduling
- Email verification
ConvertKit also supports Zapier for even more integrations and provides users with the API docs for custom integrations.
Zoho Campaigns
60 integrations including Zapier, Shopify, Salesforce, Twilio, Flickr, WordPress, Zendesk, and more.
Devices
ConvertKit
- Web app only
Zoho Campaigns
- Website
- A mobile app for Android and iOS to send emails, see reporting, and import contacts, etc.
- No installable solution.
Languages
ConvertKit
English
Zoho Campaigns
Dutch
French
German
Hungarian
Italian
English
Portuguese
Spanish
Chinese
Danish
Polish
Russian
Turkish
Vietnamese
Hindi
Thai
Indonesian
Swedish
Ukrainian
Bulgarian
Croatian
Czech
Automation
ConvertKit
10+ visual automation templates for starting a paid newsletter, releasing a new podcast, crowdfunding for a music album, and other tasks that professional content creators might face.
Zoho Campaigns
Many pre-built automation workflows:
- Different welcome series
- Reengagement
- Nurture series
- Customer retention
- E-commerce
- Conditional
Pros
ConvertKit
- Good platform for content creators
- Great deliverability
- Supports paid newsletters and has a “tip jar” functionality for free donations from subscribers
- A flexible tagging and segmentation system for targeted campaigns
Zoho Campaigns
- E-commerce-focused features
- Integrations with other services including Zoho CRM
- A lot of templates and pre-built automations
- Various support options
- A mobile app
- Relatively cheap prices
Cons
ConvertKit
- Very basic reporting
- Expensive compared to other email marketing tools
- Not great for midsize and large businesses
- No drag-and-drop builder which makes it harder to design emails from scratch
Zoho Campaigns
- Slow loading times
- Low deliverability
- Design options and the email builder are limited
Reviews from experts
ConvertKit
If you’re a blogger, vlogger, frogger, YouTuber, digital course creator, or anyone who makes their own digital content for sale under a single business entity, ConvertKit is 100% the tool for you, and it’s not even close.
It has everything you need to grow your business, including direct integrations with tools specifically designed to make your life easier like course, webinar, blog, and lead magnet plugins.
If you’ve got a stable business and over 1,000 subscribers, you’ll reap all of the benefits of the world’s most streamlined email autoresponder tool at a price that won’t break the bank and is silly easy to use.
We bought this software after reading the Capterra reviews here, however we find it very limited in customization so it's mainly take it or leave type of features. We could not block freemailers from subscribing, or use custom CSS for the same purpose. In general, it is not a tool to use if you care about following a brand identity of your own.
The set-up process is tedious with Wordpress websites. We were not happy so we canceled, so instead of letting the current paid period last the software deactivated the account immediately and blocked us out of the software. We could not export our subscribers nor our content.
Zoho Campaigns
There are occasional glitches in the execution of campaigns but overall it's a fantastic marketing tool that is more user-friendly than it's competitors.
Pros: Zoho Campaigns has readymade templates that can be reused to save time.It is an affordable product in it's category making it a first choice for most businesses. Zoho Campaigns integrates well with other products such as Zoho Analytics, to generate some valuable end user data visualization that can help organizations take better & informed decisions.
Cons: Zoho's problems remain the same irrespective of the product, their customer support is sluggish and query resolution takes much time. Zoho Campaigns uses automation for scheduling campaigns but the user needs to take care of validation errors in advance else the scheduled job will fail.
Best Campaign Tool for Zoho One Users
This tool is connected in the backend to all Zoho Apps which really helps the Marketing team to track a lead in its entirety. We can have the whole life history of the lead and do lead scoring which can help the Sales team to prioritize.
Still, the deliverability is an issue and there are lot more fine-tuning needed in the features. The intelligence metrics that can come as part of a campaigning tool are not fully achieved in Zoho Campaigns
*This information is current as of 02/14/2024. While we regularly update our articles, it`s possible that this article may not contain some of the latest information.
