Email Marketing for Etsy Sellers: Kit vs Flodesk Guide

You’ve made sales. Maybe dozens, maybe hundreds. And here’s the uncomfortable question: if Etsy changed its search algorithm tomorrow, or suspended your shop by mistake, or doubled its fees — how would you reach a single one of those customers again?

You couldn’t. Etsy owns the customer relationship, not you. The platform’s own Seller Policy makes this concrete: you can’t add Etsy members to your email list without their consent, you can’t use buyer information for marketing, and Etsy’s Messages tool explicitly may not be used for unsolicited advertising or promotions. Every buyer who loves your work is, from a marketing standpoint, a stranger you’re not allowed to call.

An email list is the fix — a channel you own, where people who chose to hear from you actually do. This guide covers why a list matters for makers specifically, then compares the two email platforms most loved by the maker crowd — Kit (formerly ConvertKit) and Flodesk — on pricing, free plans, automation, and forms, using each company’s published pricing pages. We’ll finish with list-building tactics that stay inside Etsy’s rules.

Disclosure: some links on Craft Seller Compass may be affiliate links. This never changes rankings or the price you pay — see our affiliate disclosure for details.

Before you start: three ground rules

1. Consent is the whole game. Both marketing law (CAN-SPAM in the US, GDPR for EU subscribers) and Etsy policy point the same direction: people join your list by choosing to, never by being added. No importing buyer emails from your order history, ever. Etsy’s Seller Policy prohibits exactly that, and it also destroys deliverability — cold-added addresses mark you as spam.

2. Your list lives off-Etsy. Etsy’s Off-Platform Transactions policy prohibits encouraging buyers to purchase through another venue and even bans QR codes that direct users off the platform. So your list-building happens where you’re free to market: your own website, Pinterest, Instagram, craft fairs, and inside products you’ve already delivered. More on the specifics below.

3. Start before you feel ready. The most common maker regret about email is starting late. A list of 50 genuine fans who buy your seasonal collection the day it launches is worth more than another thousand Instagram followers you have to fight an algorithm to reach. Both tools below have free ways to start, so list size is not a prerequisite.

Kit vs Flodesk at a glance

All prices below come from each company’s published pricing page at the time of research — both scale with subscriber count, so always check the current pricing pages before you commit.

Why an email list matters more for makers than almost anyone

Etsy’s policies limit how you contact buyers

It’s worth reading the actual policy language, because many sellers assume they have more room than they do. Etsy’s Seller Policy states that Messages may not be used for “sending unsolicited advertising or promotions, requests for donations, or spam.” The same policy says you may not add any Etsy member to your email list without consent or use a buyer’s information for marketing. And the Off-Platform Transactions policy prohibits “encouraging buyers to purchase an item in your Etsy shop through another venue,” including via QR codes.

Put together: the customers you worked hardest to win are the audience you’re least allowed to market to. That’s not a criticism of Etsy — it’s buyer protection — but it means your shop’s growth sits entirely on rented land unless you build a consent-based channel in parallel.

Email converts because it’s chosen

People who opt into a maker’s list did so because they wanted the thing — your aesthetic, your patterns, your restock alerts. That self-selection is why email consistently outperforms social reach for small shops: no algorithm decides whether your launch announcement gets seen. For sellers weighing a move beyond the marketplace someday, a list is also the asset that travels with you — a theme we cover in Etsy vs Shopify for handmade sellers.

What makers actually send

If “newsletter” makes you think of corporate blasts, reframe it. Successful maker emails are short and personal: a new collection preview two days before it goes live, a behind-the-scenes photo of a work in progress, a seasonal gift guide of your own products, a restock alert for a sold-out favorite. One email a week or even every two weeks is plenty. The tool’s job is to make that easy and attractive — which is where Kit and Flodesk come in.

Kit (formerly ConvertKit): the generous free tier

Kit is a creator-focused email platform, and its rebrand from ConvertKit came with a striking free offering. Per Kit’s own help center and pricing page, the free Newsletter plan supports up to 10,000 active, unique subscribers with unlimited email broadcasts, unlimited landing pages and forms, audience tagging and segmentation, and even built-in digital product sales.

That number deserves a pause. Most email tools cap free plans at a few hundred subscribers. A maker could realistically run years of email marketing without paying Kit anything.

What the free plan holds back

The Newsletter plan includes exactly one basic visual automation and one email sequence — enough for a welcome series when someone joins, but not for layered funnels. Kit branding stays on your emails and pages, and the plan requires participation in Kit’s Recommendations network (your sign-up flow promotes other creators’ newsletters, with one Kit-managed recommendation slot enabled). None of that is hidden; it’s how Kit funds the free tier. For a new shop, these are mild trade-offs.

Paid tiers

Based on the published pricing at the time of research, the Creator plan starts at $39 per month — or $33 per month billed yearly ($390/yr) — for up to 1,000 subscribers, and adds unlimited visual automations and sequences, branding removal, A/B subject line testing, integrations, and support. The Pro plan runs $66 per month billed yearly ($790/yr) at the same subscriber count, layering on engagement analytics, deliverability reporting, and a referral system. Both paid tiers scale upward in price as your list grows, and Kit offers a 14-day free trial of paid features with no card required.

Note the structural quirk: the free plan allows up to 10,000 subscribers, while paid plans price from a 1,000-subscriber base. You’d move to Creator not because you outgrew the free subscriber cap but because you need more automation, no branding, or integrations.

Honest trade-offs

Kit’s email editor is functional and clean, but it’s built for text-forward, creator-style emails. If your brand depends on lush, image-heavy layouts out of the box, Kit’s templates will feel plain next to Flodesk’s, and you’ll spend time customizing. The Recommendations requirement on the free plan also means your subscribers see other newsletters promoted during sign-up — reasonable, but not everyone loves it.

Flodesk: design-first email, now with tiered pricing

Flodesk built its reputation with makers and photographers on two things: the prettiest email templates in the industry, and a famous flat monthly price no matter how big your list grew. Important research finding — that flat-rate plan no longer exists for new members. Per Flodesk’s own pricing page and help center, the unlimited flat plan was retired for new sign-ups (existing subscribers kept it), and pricing now scales with your active subscriber count, “similar to most email marketing platforms” in Flodesk’s own words.

So if you’ve read older comparisons framed as “Flodesk flat price vs everyone else’s tiers,” update your mental model: both tools in this comparison now price by subscriber count.

Current plans

Per the published pricing at the time of research, Flodesk offers three paid plans, all with unlimited email sends, priced at the up-to-1,000-subscriber level as:

• Lite — $25/month, or $19/month billed annually. The essentials for sending campaigns.
• Pro — $28/month, or $25/month billed annually. Adds more, including one checkout for selling.
• Everything — $54/month, or $49/month billed annually. Unlimited checkouts and the full e-commerce feature set, with payments processed through Stripe at Stripe’s standard rate and no added platform fee from Flodesk.

Annual billing effectively gives one month free (you pay for 11 months instead of 12). Prices step up as your subscriber count grows, and Flodesk’s help center explains an auto-upgrade model: exceed your tier and you’re moved up automatically at your next billing date (prorated monthly on annual plans), with automatic downgrades if your list shrinks. There’s also a free plan focused on list-building — forms, landing pages, and growth tools — but sending marketing campaigns requires a paid plan, which is the sharpest difference from Kit’s free tier.

Why makers still love it

Open a Flodesk template gallery next to any competitor and you’ll see the appeal instantly: fonts, spacing, and layouts that look like a design studio made them. For a brand built on visuals — ceramics, stationery, textiles, wedding goods — emails that look like your Instagram grid without any design effort is a genuine time saver, not a vanity feature. The workflow (automation) builder is similarly visual and beginner-friendly.

Honest trade-offs

The obvious one: you can’t send email for free on Flodesk, while Kit’s free plan sends to thousands. For a brand-conscious shop with early revenue, $19–25 a month is defensible; for a shop with zero sales, it’s real money. Flodesk’s automation is well-designed but simpler than Kit’s at the high end, and its integration ecosystem is smaller. And because pricing now climbs with list size, the old “it never gets more expensive” argument is gone — compare the tier tables at your realistic one-year list size, not just the entry price.

Which one should you pick?

Choose Kit if you’re pre-revenue or budget-first. Full sending for up to 10,000 subscribers at $0 is, based on the published pricing across the industry, about as generous as free email marketing gets. You get forms, landing pages, tagging, one welcome automation, and even digital product checkout without paying. The cost is plainer-looking emails and Kit branding. For most first-time Etsy sellers, this is the rational starting point.

Choose Flodesk if design is your brand and you have some revenue. If your products are visual and your customers buy partly for aesthetics, Flodesk’s templates will make every email feel on-brand with near-zero effort, at $19/month billed annually for Lite at the time of research. Sellers of digital products may also like the Everything plan’s checkout features as a light storefront alongside Etsy.

Either way, don’t stall on the choice. Both tools export your subscriber list as a CSV, so switching later is straightforward. The subscribers are the asset; the tool is furniture. Pick one within the week and move on to actually collecting emails — which brings us to the part most guides skip.

List-building tactics that respect Etsy’s rules

Everything here works without touching Etsy’s prohibited zones (no Messages marketing, no adding buyers without consent, no steering purchases off-platform).

Put the opt-in where you’re allowed to market

Your Etsy shop is for selling on Etsy; everywhere else is yours. Build one simple landing page with a freebie — both Kit and Flodesk include landing pages, so you don’t need a website — and link it from your Instagram bio, your Pinterest profile and pins, your TikTok, your craft fair table, and your own site if you have one.

Lead with a freebie your buyer actually wants

Generic “join my newsletter” boxes convert poorly. A specific free gift tied to your niche converts: a mini printable set if you sell planners, a one-page care guide if you sell ceramics, a small SVG sample pack if you sell cut files, a sizing guide if you sell apparel. Kit’s free plan can deliver the freebie automatically when someone signs up; on Flodesk, workflows handle the same job on paid plans.

Use your delivered products (thoughtfully)

For digital product sellers, a tasteful final page in the downloaded PDF — “want a free bonus set? join the studio list” — invites a voluntary opt-in from someone who already bought from you. That’s the buyer choosing to subscribe, which is the consent Etsy’s policy requires. Keep it inviting rather than pushy, don’t offer incentives to buy off Etsy, and review Etsy’s current seller policies when you design inserts of any kind. If you sell digital goods, our digital products toolkit guide pairs naturally with this tactic.

Let Pinterest do slow, compounding work

Pinterest users plan purchases weeks ahead and click through to blogs and landing pages, which makes it the friendliest social platform for list-building in the craft niche. Pin your freebie’s landing page with seasonal angles a couple of months before each season peaks.

Send the boring-but-vital welcome email

Whichever tool you choose, set up one automation on day one: a welcome email that delivers the freebie, says who you are in two sentences, and sets expectations (“one short email most weeks — new pieces, restocks, and studio notes”). Subscribers who hear from you immediately remember opting in; lists that stay silent for a month earn spam complaints.

Your first week with email

• Day 1: Sign up — Kit’s free plan or Flodesk’s trial. Verify your sending details.
• Day 2: Create the freebie from something you already have (a sample, a guide, a mini set).
• Day 3: Build one landing page and one embedded/pop-up form. Plain headline: what they get, how often you’ll email.
• Day 4: Set up the welcome automation delivering the freebie.
• Day 5: Add the landing page link to every bio you control; add the opt-in page to your digital products if applicable.
• Day 6: Create two Pinterest pins pointing at the landing page.
• Day 7: Email yourself a test of everything, fix what looks off on mobile, and schedule your first real note for next week.

FAQ

Can I email my Etsy customers directly?

Not without their consent. Etsy’s Seller Policy prohibits adding members to your email list without consent and bars using Etsy Messages for unsolicited advertising or promotions. The compliant path is inviting people to opt in through channels you own — landing pages, social bios, product inserts — so every address on your list chose to be there.

Is Kit really free for up to 10,000 subscribers?

Per Kit’s help center at the time of research, yes: the Newsletter plan is free for up to 10,000 active, unique subscribers with unlimited sends, forms, and landing pages. The limits are elsewhere — one basic automation, one sequence, Kit branding, and required participation in Kit’s Recommendations network. If you pass 10,000 subscribers, you must upgrade to keep sending. Confirm details on the current pricing page.

Did Flodesk get rid of its flat-rate pricing?

Yes. Per Flodesk’s pricing page, the original flat-rate unlimited plan was retired for new members; anyone already subscribed kept their legacy plan. New accounts choose from Lite, Pro, or Everything, priced by active subscriber count — starting at $19/month for Lite with annual billing at the time of research — with automatic tier upgrades as your list grows.

How big should my list be before I start sending?

Start at one subscriber. Seriously — the welcome automation should be live before your first opt-in, and a personal-feeling note to 30 people builds the habit and the deliverability history you’ll want at 3,000. Waiting for a “real” list size is how makers end up with two years of buyers they never captured.

Do I need a website to start email marketing as an Etsy seller?

No. Both Kit and Flodesk include hosted landing pages and sign-up forms, so your opt-in page can live entirely on their infrastructure. A website helps long-term (especially for Pinterest traffic), but it is not a prerequisite for starting a list.

Wrapping up

Etsy is a storefront you rent; your email list is the street you own. The policies are clear that buyers on the platform aren’t yours to market to — so the makers who thrive long-term collect consent-based subscribers from day one and treat every launch as a chance to grow that owned audience.

Pick your tool without delay — Kit (kit.com) if free-and-functional wins, Flodesk (flodesk.com) if design-forward is worth a monthly fee to you — and set up the freebie, the landing page, and the welcome email. Then keep building the rest of the foundation: our start an Etsy shop checklist covers the storefront itself, and Etsy vs Shopify for handmade sellers looks at where that owned audience can eventually take you.