I always recommend to stick with a newsletter/website/payment/course/etc. platform you already know. After testing hundreds myself, I can tell you, most are really similar, and there might be little differences in pros and cons, while none of them being perfect, nor a perfect fit for us. That is my and my clients experience 99.99% of the time.
But! There might be a time when you are just sooo fed up with one (rightfully) you just want to leave that misery behind. Daily frustrations, paying for extras you never asked for, support going downhill, too much maintenance work for you – things like these can have a huge opportunity cost whenfor example you are not sending newsletters beause you freak ot from the mere thought of having to log into that platform.
This is the time when it’s worth switching!
But wait… before you jump in, there are a few things to be aware of!
1: Thorough testing
Please always test the new platform first-hand before switching. As I mentioned, most platforms are not that different, and you might end up spending a lot of money and time setting up and learning a new platform that you end up despising too. Some of my key pointers are:
- Don’t trust salespages and pricing comparison charts. My favorite example from this realm is Podia, which is a great platform, but their marketing team did the trick. Sure you can have an online community forum even on their cheapest tier! But the search function within that forum is only available on the one that costs 2x as much. It might have changed since then but it used to be like that. Salespages usually don’t mention something like that, or they try to hide it or just make it hazy enough in different ways so you buy.
- Test their support teams! Fire a range of questions to their support team as their potential new customer. See if they reply within 2 minutes, or they only send you a short email 2 days later asking if you deleted your cookies and restarted your computer. A good support team can save you tons on 3rd party experts having to problemsolve for you (like me haha).
2: Only do the migration in a calmer business season.
- Switching platforms will bring up tons of unforeseen challenges. I can guarantee that. No exception. Okay maybe there is a 0.01% chance for a smooth transition.
- This is why you will be 2x as much frustrated if you try doing this while you have to do a lot of clientwork at the same time.
- It all depends on your niche and audience, but find the time when you typically have low business, and do the move then!
3: Some platforms offer free or cheap migration services
- Take the opportunity! Believe me, even if they charge you a few hundred dollars, it’s still worth it. They will save you weeks in time, and incredible amount of frustration.
- I have personally migrated dozens of my clients between platforms. It is always a long process with many compatibility issues between the data from the old system and the new one. Data-experts from the new platform’s company have already built their tools to fix these issues in a few clicks. They do this 8 hours a day.
I hope with these pointers, your platform migration will be waaay smoother (Not smooth though! It’s never smooth!) than going at it unprepared. Enjoy your new platform! And remember, no platform is perfect. But if this new one saves you time or is less frustrating to use, then the whole hassle of moving date was worth it! Now please stop looking for alternatives… we all do that don’t worry… but you just moved… those shiny other alternatives will not be better…. and you don’t want this whole challenge anytime soon again. 😄
Leave a comment