Bloggers, if you’re looking for an email marketing solution and are considering ConvertKit, I highly recommend looking elsewhere. Here’s my story of the single worst online customer support experience I’ve ever had, with 4 different ConvertKit employees.
Should I use ConvertKit as my email marketing company?
My account was in a “paused” status where I could access all subscriber and historical email data, and I wanted to re-enable my account with a new credit card. To do so, you need to send a “support request” using their Intercom system (which appears to be online chat). So, I added my message in the Intercom system and waited. And waited. And waited…
Like I said, it looks like it’s an online chat system but it is nothing like any online chat you’ve used. In reality, it’s basically email with no ability to track the conversation on your side of things. So you just sit and look at this pseudo-chat window on the ConvertKit website staring at the “Not Seen” message under what you wrote. For hours. For days.
Yes, days. I waited 3 business days before someone finally replied using the Intercom system (which finally sends you an email as well, but without including your original question because this is not a tracked support system from the customer’s perspective). Even after this message, I was unable to send emails because they didn’t actually activate my sending ability. So I replied again. And I waited, again. For hours. For days.
Finally, I started researching other email providers like MailChimp, SendinBlue, MadMimi…and I finally arrived at Aweber, which I’d used many years ago. To my surprise, Aweber had an online chat function where I could ask pre-sales questions and get a response from a representative immediately. After thoroughly answering my questions, they even offered to import all my subscribers and up to 10 archived messages for free. Since their price for my number of subscribers is identical, at this point my frustration level with ConvertKit was high enough to start the transfer. Of course, I exported and backed up all my subscriber data from ConvertKit before the transfer was started, just in case.
Here’s the amazing part…Aweber’s team kept me updated throughout the import process, which was fully complete before I even got a reply from ConvertKit. Can you believe that? Importing, testing, and communicating with Aweber was 100% finished before I even received a reply from ConvertKit.
Then, when ConvertKit finally did reply it was worse than I expected. What I had originally asked was to be downgraded to view-only access of my historical data, like I had just before this mess started. Now remember, they don’t use a traditional ticketing system so I have no proof of what I originally wrote to them and they don’t include that in their email communications. The reply I got from the ConvertKit representative was this:
No problem. Sorry it didn’t work out.
ConvertKit Support Representative
I pushed your cancellation through and removed your credit card info.
Umm…BIG PROBLEM here folks. They removed my account completely — I no longer have any access to my historical data which the did NOT tell me was going to happen. A simple confirmation of what was about to occur would have been all that it took for me to understand their next steps and correct the miscommunication before they processed the action. Now all my open rates, email communications, subscriber history…it’s no longer accessible to me via ConvertKit. Like I said, I had read-only access before this mess started and had requested to be downgraded to that same level.
You’ll notice there was no warning, no communication as to what was about to occur with my account, no details of any kind. Just an impersonal brush off, and this is after spending thousands of dollars with ConvertKit to maintain the subscription previously.
I’ve requested, again, that ConvertKit open my account back up for read-only access but I’m not holding my breath. It will likely be several days before they respond again, if they do at all. As I said in the intro, this has been the single worst online customer support experience I’ve every had, and I’ve been doing this web stuff a long time. Thank goodness I did a backup first because ConvertKit never once let me know they were going to remove aces to all my data (as I specifically asked them not to do).
The silver lining in this story is that the team at Aweber has been top-notch and very responsive to all my questions as I learn their system. I recommend you avoid ConvertKit and look at another provider like Aweber for your email marketing needs.
Update: ConvertKit finally opened up my account so I could access my stats like I my account was set up before. Then, without warning, they closed it again permanently. The lesson here is don’t use ConvertKit and if you’re already using ConvertKit, back up all your subscribers and screenshot all of your stats & copy/paste your broadcasts into offline files today. You never know when you’re going to need those backups.
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