I Tested Flodesk Studio So You Don't Have To

If you've ever spent an hour (or 20) wrestling a template into looking on brand, this one's for you.

I now run two businesses: Eighty Eight Co, where I've spent years knee-deep in everything systems and tech for 50+ female-led businesses, and my shiny brand new women’s hormone health coaching practice. Between the two, I've built or fixed more email sequences than I can count. So when Flodesk asked me to test-drive their new tool, Studio, before it went fully public, I said full-body-yes for two reasons: 

1: I’m nosy about new tech

and 2: I genuinely needed an email built.

So what is Flodesk Studio?

Flodesk says: Flodesk Studio is a brand-new email design app, built by real human designers, accelerated by AI, and finished by you. You describe what you want, then Studio brings it to life on-brand. You refine it in chat or pixel by pixel. Use it inside Flodesk or export the HTML to any provider - Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Beehiiv, whatever you're on.

Sounds pretty good on paper, but is this just another AI overload? (Spoiler alert: I love it)

The email I needed to send

My new biz has a free download called Body Language, people pop their name & email to download it, then… nothing. No nurture sequence catching them on the other side. Classic case of ‘I’ll build that email eventually’, except eventually never comes when you're also running client calls, school pickups, content for Instagram, and everything else that fills a busy-mum-slash-business-owner week.

This is the kind of gap I'd flag for a client in about thirty seconds. Somehow it's much harder to see in my own business. So that was my test case: build a real nurture email for people who've downloaded Body Language, using Studio, from scratch, live, no cheating.

What actually happened

I opened Studio and told it what I needed: a nurture email for freebie downloaders. Before it generated anything, it asked me a couple of smart questions first - what's the core message I want to leave people with, and what's the actual call to action. Small thing, but it mattered. It meant the first draft wasn't generic filler; it was already aimed at the right outcome.

I told it: the core message is an invitation to work with me 1:1 in a groundwork session to go deep into what's going on with their hormones, and the CTA is to book that session.

Studio came back with 3 full email options: different layouts, different visual approaches, all genuinely built in my brand. No AI beige in sight, no template with my logo slapped on top afterwards. It had already pulled in my actual brand colours and fonts (I'd uploaded these at the start), and everything felt like something I'd have picked myself - moody, earthy tones that match the ‘science meets the sacred’ feel I've spent months trying to nail down.

I picked the one that felt most like me - ‘Your Body Has Been Talking’ - and it genuinely landed almost exactly right straight out of the gate. 

The opening line went straight into the reader's actual lived experience: the fatigue that hits like a wall mid-afternoon, the mood shifts that seem to come out of nowhere, the cycles that are painful, irregular, or just... off. That's exactly the tone I use with real clients on real calls. I am truly mind blown that didn't have to rewrite the copy from scratch, I just needed to tighten a couple of lines and make it unmistakably mine.

From there, editing was flexible in a way that actually matched how my brain works. I could keep refining in chat if I wanted to talk through changes conversationally, or drag and drop elements by hand if I just wanted to move a photo or resize a block myself. Both options sat right there, no toggling between different tools to do it.

And then, once it was reader-ready: export options were right there on the same screen. Send straight from Flodesk, or pull the HTML out. You can literally export your emails in HTML format to any email service provider that supports HTML (Kit, beehiiv, Mailchimp, and more). It's the difference between a tool that only works if you rebuild your whole tech stack around it, and one that slots into whatever you're already running. A genuine game changer.

How Flodesk Studio compares to building an email the old way

Normally, building an on-brand nurture email from a blank canvas looks like: open a blank template, hunt down brand assets, second-guess the layout, write copy, realise the copy doesn't match the layout, adjust the layout, get distracted by an email from a client, come back to it 3 days later having lost the thread entirely. 

I say this with love, because it's a huge part of what I do for other people's businesses too - the ‘I’ll get to it eventually’ pile is real for everyone, including the person who builds email systems for a living.

This time, from prompt to a genuinely usable first draft took one sitting. Not even that, it took moments! Not a theoretical time-save quoted in marketing copy, an actual afternoon reclaimed.

The honest verdict

Here's what stood out, as someone whose entire professional background is judging whether tech tools actually hold up under real use:

• It didn't feel generic: this is the bit I was most sceptical about walking in. Feed most AI tools ‘hormone health coach, science meets the sacred’ and you brace for stock-photo vibes. It didn't do that, the output looked truly considered rather than templated.

• It saved real time: not theoretical time. This email would normally have sat on my to-do list for another two weeks minimum. It took 20 mins, start to finish.

  
  

• You're still doing the work: it's not a set it and forget it generator, it hands you a genuinely strong starting point, and you finish it. Which honestly is the only way I'd trust an email going out under my name anyway.

• The export-anywhere piece is game-changing: if you're managing tech for multiple businesses, or clients on different platforms - again, hi, that's my actual job.

Should you try Flodesk Studio?

It's free while Studio's in beta, no catch and no card required. If you're a service business owner, a coach, or anyone who's ever put off sending an email because building it felt like a whole project on its own, it's absolutely worth the 20 minutes to see what it gives you back.

Start creating at studio.flodesk.com.