When it comes to email marketing software, AWeber and ConvertKit stand out as two of the most popular choices on the market. With the ability to easily create email campaigns, landing pages, and automation, these platforms provide small business owners with powerful tools to grow their customer base and drive conversions.
However, choosing the right email service provider is crucial since it will become the digital backbone of all customer communications and marketing efforts.
In this head-to-head AWeber vs ConvertKit comparison, we evaluate the two platforms across key criteria to help you determine the best platform for your business needs and budget.
1. Understanding the Basics
AWeber was founded in 1998 by Tom Kulzer. Over 25 years later, it is a well-established player in the email marketing industry. The email marketing tool has over 120,000 customers and 4 million subscribers globally.
ConvertKit was launched more recently in 2013. Nathan Barry is the founder and CEO. In 11 years, ConvertKit has gained over 26,000 paying customers proving its rapid growth. The company has emerged as a major ConvertKit alternative.
Both companies have strong social media followings. AWeber company page has over 50,000 Facebook followers while the ConvertKit company page has over 100,000. Here are links to their Facebook pages to join their communities:
When it comes to market position, AWeber is a recognized leader while ConvertKit has quickly become a disruptive competitor shaking up the industry. Both platforms now have strong user bases and continue innovating with new features.
2. Features and Functionality
Automation
AWeber
AWeber offers a visual email automation builder to easily create sequences based on subscriber actions. You can trigger automation when someone signs up, clicks a link, or downloads a file. Pre-built welcome series, broadcasts, and RSS-to-email templates help you get started faster.
With the automation builder, you can send emails, post to social media, wait a period, or check subscriber data to trigger the next email. Drag-and-drop email editing makes building automation workflows simple and intuitive.
Advanced features include segmentation with tags and groups, integration with webinar platforms, and the ability to integrate with hundreds of third-party apps via Zapier. Overall, AWeber provides a full-featured automation engine perfect for beginners or advanced users.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit is built specifically around its automation workflow builder. The visually drag-and-drop Sequence Builder provides an easy way to create multi-email sequences, send RSS or broadcast emails, post to Facebook, add delays or date-based triggers, segment contacts, and more.
Pre-built templates and the simple automation workflow interface make it easy for beginners to build complex campaigns. Advanced users can leverage tags, segments, forms, and landing pages to create highly customized sequences. With robust automation at its core, ConvertKit stands out in driving complex customer journeys.
Winner: ConvertKit
While both platforms have advanced automation features, ConvertKit wins this category for its robust sequence builder specifically designed for complex email marketing journeys. The intuitive creation process and advanced automations provide the edge over AWeber and other tools.
Email Templates
AWeber
AWeber offers hundreds of professionally designed and fully customizable email templates covering categories like sign-ups, welcome emails, promotions, newsletters, and more.
AWeber’s templates are mobile-responsive and optimized for email clients. You can customize templates by editing text, adding images, and changing colors and layouts via the easy drag-and-drop editor.
While you, as an email marketer, have to stick to existing template sections, the broad selection means you can easily find attractive templates for different uses. Templates make it fast and simple for beginners to create polished, branded emails.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit offers a blank template editor to build custom email layouts from scratch. There are no pre-designed template options for sign-up forms or lead magnet offers. The flexible drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to customize every block-based section. You get complete creative control over email structure and design.
As a content creator or advanced user, you’ll appreciate the flexibility. However, the lack of templates may slow down email creation for beginners. Overall, you get more customization freedom with ConvertKit’s blank slate approach over AWeber’s pre-made templates.
Winner: Tie
AWeber and ConvertKit take different approaches to email templates, making this category a tie. Like many other providers, AWeber provides beautiful pre-made templates for faster email creation while ConvertKit offers a flexible blank canvas for complete customization freedom.
Both email marketing providers have unique design features and you can choose the platform aligned with your email design needs.
Segmentation
AWeber
AWeber has segmentation features that allow you to segment your subscriber list based on different criteria to target broadcast email messages and offers. You can create groups manually or set up auto-segmentation rules based on email opens/clicks, geography, purchase history, subscribed date, and more.
List-centric features like tags make it easy to label subscribers and tie them into automation or broadcast emails. This way, you’ll avoid sending irrelevant messages or automated emails to the same subscriber.
Compared to other alternatives, AWeber provides decent segmentation capabilities for beginners to divide an audience. However, advanced users may find the segmenting options more limited compared to a dedicated CRM platform.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit takes a tag-centric approach to subscriber segmentation. You can create unlimited tags and tie them to automation sequences or broadcasts. Tags automatically group subscribers, eliminating the need for manual lists.
In addition, custom fields allow capturing extra subscriber data to be incorporated into workflows. ConvertKit’s tag focus provides in-depth segmentation options for advanced users to deliver hyper-targeted, personalized content.
The tagging system requires more work upfront compared to AWeber’s groups but enables complex segmentation scenarios.
Winner: ConvertKit
With its robust tagging capabilities and custom fields for data collection, ConvertKit wins this category for subscriber segmentation. The main difference between the two platforms is that Convertkit has a tag-based approach scales better for advanced marketers with large audiences and personalized customer journeys. It’s your best bet for advanced tagging and custom segmentation.
Analytics
AWeber
AWeber provides the basic analytics you would expect in an email service provider focused primarily on email campaign performance. You can view opens, clicks, bounce rates, unsubscribes, social sharing, and other standard metrics over time. The charts and graphs allow basic visualization of campaign trends.
However, customization is limited in terms of custom reports, dashboards, or advanced analytics. There is no ability to incorporate offline campaign data or track subscriber journeys beyond your email metrics. For beginners, the built-in reporting is likely enough but growth-focused businesses will want more.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit takes a more in-depth approach to email analytics. You can view heatmaps for opens and clicks to understand engagement trends. ROI reporting shows the true impact of campaigns. You can track link clicks, browsing abandonment, landing page performance, and other behavioral data connected to emails.
This provides better insight into subscriber journeys. Additionally, custom tags and UTM campaign links allow the incorporation of offline or website data. Dashboards are highly customizable to focus reports on specific goals versus generic metrics. ConvertKit provides enterprise-grade analytics rivaling dedicated platforms.
Winner: ConvertKit
When you compare AWeber with ConvertKit, the winner is clear. With in-depth email analytics, customizable dashboards, and journey tracking, ConvertKit takes the lead for businesses wanting maximum insight from their email program.
Beginners may feel overwhelmed but the robust analytics capabilities provide long-term value as email lists grow. This keeps ConvertKit competitive even amongst analytics-focused platforms.
Unique Features
AWeber
A key unique capability AWeber offers is integration with Facebook advertising. You can create signup forms directly connected to your Facebook ad campaigns to capture more subscriber data. This makes it easy to grow your email list from Facebook traffic.
AWeber also provides phone support in addition to email and chat. For users wanting the assurance of speaking to a real person, phone support adds peace of mind that issues can be quickly resolved.
Additionally, AWeber integrates tightly with WordPress allowing you to easily embed signup forms on your site. This makes it seamless to convert website visitors into email subscribers right from your blog or pages.
Overall, AWeber focuses more on core email marketing features versus innovative extras. The platform caters more to traditional emailers versus modern digital businesses. But the Facebook ads and WordPress integration provide useful unique capabilities.
ConvertKit
As a platform built for creators, ConvertKit has differentiating features that specifically appeal to bloggers, influencers, course creators, and digital businesses. For example, you get built-in landing pages and blog post subscription forms to help grow traffic and email lists.
Advanced automation and tagging make it easy to identify and communicate with superfans. Multi-user accounts allow you to manage clients or team members all within a single portal.
ConvertKit also enables sending email sequences integrating with social media posts to Facebook. This allows coordinate your social and email strategy to boost engagement.
For modern digital content creators, ConvertKit innovations around landing pages, lead capture, automation, and social media provide unique value unmatched by other generic email platforms. The product truly caters to the creator community.
Winner: ConvertKit
Thanks to its relentless focus on serving the needs of bloggers, influencers, and digital content businesses, ConvertKit wins when it comes to unique features. AWeber offers a few nice extras but caters more to traditional email marketers versus modern online creators.
3. Ease of Use
AWeber
AWeber provides an easy-to-use interface for managing email campaigns. The dashboard displays key stats and campaign details for fast access. Drag-and-drop email editors make building and sending campaigns intuitive. Features are cleanly laid out in the sidebar menu requiring little hunting.
For beginners, pre-designed templates, simple broadcast options, and the email course tool make getting started easily without technical skills. The platform utilizes wizards for setting up forms, landing pages, and automation to guide new users. An average user can get started quickly thanks to AWeber’s intuitive interface.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit also offers a clean, modern interface focused specifically on email sequencing and automation. The primary sequence builder provides a visual workflow editor for building complex campaigns with drag and drop. Broadcast and landing page creation use similar intuitive editing.
For advanced users, the automation-centric interface enables rapidly building sophisticated sequences. However, the lack of structure beyond sequences means beginners have a steeper learning curve in figuring out where to start. But for creators wanting advanced workflows, ConvertKit’s UI provides excellent usability.
Winner: AWeber
With its clean interface, pre-built templates, and intuitive wizards, AWeber wins for being the easiest platform for beginners. ConvertKit provides excellent usability for advanced sequencing needs but its automation-centric design has a larger learning curve for entry-level email marketers.
4. Email Deliverability
AWeber
With over 20 years of experience, AWeber has optimized email deliverability. Their dedicated IP address helps achieve ongoing 95%+ inbox placement. AWeber checks new features against guidelines to avoid landing in the spam folder and implements community feedback.
To aid deliverability, AWeber offers sender scoring, reputation monitoring, and tools to identify blocked messages. You can view deliverability tests and performance by campaign and get alerts on issues. While not 100% perfect, deliverability is a priority for AWeber.
ConvertKit
As a newer email provider, ConvertKit is still improving deliverability capabilities less battle-tested than AWeber. However, ConvertKit takes an innovative approach applying machine learning to understand factors impacting deliverability.
Over time, new customers inherit ever-improving deliverability driven by data. Reports provide inbox and spam rates to allow optimization. While specs may differ from AWeber currently, ConvertKit’s deliverability improves continually thanks to AI capabilities.
Winner: AWeber
With 20+ years of optimization and 95%+ inbox rates across billions of emails, AWeber is the winner for email deliverability. However, ConvertKit’s use of machine learning may allow it to achieve parity faster than other new competitors. But AWeber presently delivers the most reliable performance.
5. Customer Support and Community
AWeber
AWeber provides email, phone, and chat support channels for assistance from customer service representatives. Phone availability ensures quick answers to pressing questions without waiting for email replies. Self-service options include an extensive library of tutorials, webinars, and guides.
The community on Facebook has over 50,000 members for advice from fellow users. However, Facebook is AWeber’s only community platform lacking dedicated forums. But with direct support and documentation, most users can get issues resolved without relying on community help alone.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit takes a different approach focused first on self-service through its vast knowledge base and active user community forums. Email support and live chat support provide human assistance but the forums contain answers around the clock from fellow users, which scales better long-term.
With over 25,000 members, ConvertKit’s official Facebook group provides connections with superusers for platform advice or feedback. ConvertKit also hosts regular educational webinars and their annual CreatorCon conference. The community-first support model aligns with creators.
Winner: Tie
Both AWeber and ConvertKit offer excellent support combining human assistance and self-service. AWeber provides more direct support options while ConvertKit leverages community experiences. Each approach fits appropriately with the target customer base. Both platforms have strengths that cater well to user needs making this a tie.
6. Integrations
AWeber
AWeber offers over 750 native integrations with popular apps and services including leading CRMs, commerce platforms, webinar software, and other marketing tools. You can connect AWeber with MailChimp, Salesforce, Zendesk, GoToWebinar, Wix, and hundreds of other solutions.
The integrations synchronize subscriber and customer data across systems for a unified view. Triggers help automate multi-platform workflows based on customer actions. For accessing other best-of-breed software, AWeber probably integrates with the apps you need.
ConvertKit
As a more niche platform focused on creators, ConvertKit integrates with fewer platforms – around 50+ apps specifically chosen for bloggers, course creators, and digital entrepreneurs. These integrations focus on syncing platforms like membership sites, online course platforms, payment processors, and email comment apps.
For broader platforms, ConvertKit offers Zapier which connects 1000+ additional apps but requires more manual setup. Integrations may cover leading tools in the creator stack, as well as subscriber management, but likely miss mainstream platforms real estate or hospitality businesses use.
Winner: AWeber
With 750 native integrations covering all major apps small businesses use, AWeber is the winner for ecosystem connectivity. Only niche creators may prefer the targeted integrations of ConvertKit but AWeber automates workflows with nearly any conceivable platform at scale.
7. AWeber vs ConvertKit: Pricing
AWeber
AWeber’s paid plans start at $12.50/month for unlimited subscribers. The cost scales up based on your emails sent up to $899/month for 100,000 subscribers. You pay only for what you use.
Key features like email templates, drag-and-drop editor, segmenting, and integrations are included at all pricing tiers. You also get analytics although some advanced reporting capabilities require higher tiers.
Overall, AWeber is competitively priced for core email marketing needs, especially for small lists. However, costs grow rapidly once you pass the 2,500 subscriber mark.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit has a free plan and flat pricing structure for paid plans starting at $9 or $25 monthly price points based on maximum subscribers, sequences, forms, unlimited landing pages, and automation workflows. For creators needing more capabilities upfront with smaller lists, this can mean lower initial cost than AWeber’s scaled plans.
The free account is ideal for beginners. However, at scale, AWeber becomes cheaper for very large lists above 50,000 subscribers. But creators with targeted audiences may never outgrow ConvertKit’s Creator Pro plan. Flat-rate plans provide predictable costs.
Winner: Tie
Pricing between AWeber and ConvertKit is largely a tie depending on your specific needs. ConvertKit offers strong value for smaller creators but becomes expensive at scales above 50k subscribers. For typical small businesses, AWeber’s incremental plans provide more affordability at lower volumes.
For specific use cases, each email marketing platform may prove cheaper but head-to-head they offer comparable pricing at each stage of business growth with ConvertKit focused on creators and AWeber suitable for all.
8. Reviews and Reputation
AWeber
With over 20 years in business, AWeber has thousands of reviews across platforms. On G2Crowd, AWeber is rated 4/5 stars based on 500+ user reviews. Positive feedback notes the easy-to-use interface, pre-designed templates, subscriber-centric features, and deliverability guarantee.
Negative feedback focuses on higher pricing at scale and some limitations in formatting templates. But most agree AWeber is a high-quality, reliable email marketing platform.
ConvertKit
As a relative newcomer, ConvertKit also scores around 4/5 stars on G2Crowd through over 300 verified user reviews. Loyal fans praise the automation workflows and sequences that differentiate ConvertKit along with great customizability.
The biggest complaints revolve around the lack of pre-designed email templates and the overall complexity compared to some platforms. But fans of ConvertKit love the tailored experience for creators.
Winner: Tie
Both ConvertKit and Aweber offer highly rated services in the email marketing software space and deserve their popularity. There isn’t one that provides better value than the other. Both offer top notch service.
AWeber wins when it comes to ease-of-use while ConvertKit wins for automation power on each paid plan. Each brings respective strengths catering to different audiences with no clear winner. It’s a tie.
9. FAQ’s
AWeber FAQs
- What features are included in each pricing plan?
AWeber pricing plans to scale based only on the number of subscribers. All core email marketing features like templates, broadcasting, segmentation, automation, and integrations are available in every pricing tier. Only the account services and analytics features differ slightly between plans. - Is there a way to try AWeber for free?
Yes, AWeber offers a 30-day free trial to test out features before subscribing. You can start emailing as soon as you sign up without needing to input payment information immediately. - How long does it take to get started on a campaign?
AWeber’s pre-designed templates and drag-and-drop editor allow most users to create their first campaign email in under 10 minutes. The quick setup helps you launch faster compared to building emails from scratch.
ConvertKit FAQs
- What types of businesses benefit from ConvertKit?
ConvertKit is optimized specifically for digital content creators like bloggers, course creators, freelancers, agencies, and influencers. The focus on customizable landing pages, lead flows, and automation provides the most value for these audiences. - Does ConvertKit have email templates?
Unlike most other email platforms, ConvertKit does not offer pre-designed email template options. Instead, all emails are created custom from scratch using a flexible drag-and-drop editor. For those wanting more structure, this can increase workload. - Can ConvertKit integrate with WordPress?
Yes, ConvertKit offers deep WordPress integration allowing embedding opt-in forms anywhere on your site. This makes it easy to capture more email subscribers directly from your blog content without added work.
Final Thoughts
Choose AWeber if…
AWeber is the ideal platform for small businesses wanting to set up email marketing campaigns with minimal hassle. The easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor, professionally designed templates, and quick setup wizards allow beginners to launch their first campaign in under 10 minutes.
For typical online stores, service businesses, agencies, or organizations who simply want to connect with customers and subscribers via email, AWeber delivers the features you need with outstanding deliverability results. The seamless WordPress and Facebook integration complement online platforms perfectly at affordable rates.
Choose ConvertKit if…
ConvertKit stands above for digital content creators like bloggers, course creators, influencers, and freelancers who send highly targeted content supported by their website and social media platforms. Automation rules them all here with elegant workflows, tagging systems, and landing pages that convert.
Quality and simplicity come before sheer quantity. So for those producing regular, high-value content protected by paid communities and memberships, invest where your business goes – the relationships between creators and their true fans. This is where ConvertKit shines thanks to creator-led support and ingenious email mechanics.
Choosing the right platform lays the technical foundations to efficiently nurture leads into loyal customers and fans. Contact us with any other questions in the comments below or sign up for a free demo to experience the platforms yourself. Every business has unique needs – let us guide you to the best solution.