Late in 2022, I had an idea that I would start an online business that taught people about programming. That topic has interested me since I was a teenager, and now, forty years later, I have learned a bit about it.
My idea was to attract an audience through YouTube videos. Then, to build a business on the back of my YouTube channel, I also needed a platform for things like these:
- A blog where I could showcase my expertise by giving away in-depth content
- Opt-in forms to convert casual visitors into followers
- A space for online courses and communities to interact with my students
- Email automation for campaigns and newsletters
- Order forms to get sales and payment gateway integrations to finish them
- Dashboards to follow up on how things are going
Online course marketplaces didn’t feel right because of their high commission rates and the difficulties in building a business without having your own customer base. (Good read: Roy Osherove: Why I stopped selling courses on Udemy)
I had seen people use Kajabi and ClickFunnels to do what I wanted, so that’s where I went.
And what a shock I got.
These platforms were insanely expensive—around a thousand US dollars a year already at the entry level. I was planning to start my business with household money, so I wanted to keep my expenses low until I had earnings to cover them.
I thought there had to be someone out there who wasn’t oblivious to the fact that negative cash flow is a pain point for many aspiring solopreneurs, so I started to investigate the market thoroughly. It took me a few weeks, but my research was finally rewarded when I found Systeme.io. Their founder, a programmer and online entrepreneur named Aurelien Amacker, had been thinking along the same lines a few years earlier and created the offer he was missing. Not only do they have a uniquely generous free plan—they don’t even want your credit card—they also allow you to stay on it until you outgrow it, which takes a while.
I am happy to be able to save you some research weeks by outlining the key features you’re likely to use with their free plan. You can follow along with the feature list on their pricing page. I’ll also share the most common reasons for upgrading to one of their paid plans (not that they are expensive, either).
Build your audience
The website you’d create has a blog format and can be served on your Internet domain (the first part of a website address, like google.com or makeagoodliving.online) or under theirs if you don’t have one yet. (These details take minutes to arrange but are a bit technical, so I can help you there.)
There’s no limit to how many posts you can write to describe your offer and go in-depth on topics related to your business, so let your creativity flow.
The platform also enables you to send out a newsletter with your email address as the sender. Emails are unlimited, and you can have up to 2,000 contacts on the free plan, which realistically means you will get your first sales long before you need an upgrade.
Automate your sales
You can have up to three funnels on the free tier. Here is an example of how you could use them, listed in the order a customer would go through them:
- Subscribe to your newsletter.
- Download a freebie (a.k.a. lead magnet) and receive a sequence of emails that present your offer.
- Place an order
They encourage you to try more advanced funnel features on the free tier. For example, you can have a coupon code and a simple upsell with one click.
You can also set up an automation rule, which can be explained as cause-and-effect. For example, you would want to unregister a product buyer from an email campaign promoting that product. Another use case is to grant students access to a community after finishing a module in your course.
Sell a course
You can have one course on the free tier and customize its appearance with the same easy-to-use web page builder you use for your blog and funnel pages. Lectures can be made available immediately on registration, or you can have them automatically enabled after a previous lecture, optionally with a delay. This is a great feature that allows for a paced learning experience. If you do coaching sessions, you can manually open a module for a student afterward. You get the idea; Systeme has a very advanced learning platform.
You have a long list of payment gateways at your disposal, such as Stripe, PayPal, and Apple Pay, to name a few.
Oh, and guess how much Systeme.io takes? Zero. Your revenues are yours.
Sell other products
If you wonder, you can also sell physical products through Systeme.io.
Follow up and improve
Nothing gets perfect from the start, so continuous follow-up and improvement are vital to the game. I find it easy to follow up on my progress with a glance. My main dashboard shows new leads and sales over time. Then, for email campaigns, I can follow up on how many open my emails, follow my call to action, and so on.
If I have an idea how a web page might be improved, I can set up an A/B test in a few clicks, to live test a new variant against the current one and get hard facts on which one performs better.
For courses, you have a student dashboard that gives you vital stats about how your students are doing, so you can also continuously improve your courses.
When is the free tier no longer enough?
As you have seen, the free tier will take you a long way. You can undoubtedly earn your first $1,000 without paying a dime. Let’s say by the time you reach the 2,000 leads limit, 40 of them have bought your $25 product. That makes $1,000.
If you are like me, though, you’ll want to use tags to segment customers and address them in a more relevant way. You’ll also find automation rules very useful. The free plan allows you to create one tag and one automation rule. You can live with that, but you’ll grow faster if you use these features extensively, so I think of these as an investment rather than a cost.
Customer support
Regardless of your tier, you have access to their 24/7 support, and I can tell you from my experience that they respond quickly.
They also a remarkable Trustpilot rating: 4.9 out of 5.0 in November 2024, outscoring Kajabi and ClickFunnels by a margin of 0.7 rating points.
Takeaway points
I set my initial programming course idea aside because I got so excited about how a modern platform could enable marketing and sales that I wanted to make this my niche instead. I am now a certified funnel builder. I am also an affiliate, meaning I may earn a commission if you sign up through one of my links, at no extra cost to you. It helps me keep creating helpful content like this. Thanks for your support!
The things I have mentioned in this post are just the tip of the iceberg. Systeme.io is packed with valuable features, and I will happily help you make the most of them. Feel free to reach out through the form at the bottom of this page!