Last updated: August 11, 2026
You’re at the laptop. Two browser tabs open. ConvertKit on one, Mailchimp on the other.
You’re trying to figure out which one won’t bankrupt you at 5,000 subscribers.
Here’s the short answer. At 5,000 subscribers ConvertKit (now Kit) can still cost nothing, and Mailchimp cannot.
Kit’s free plan runs to 10,000 subscribers. Mailchimp’s stops at 250.
The pricing math, the feature gap, and the verdict by use case — all of it below.
In This Article
- Why Kit’s Free Plan Runs to 10,000: What the Newsletter plan actually includes in 2026 — and the three things it holds back.
- Why Unsubscribes Still Cost You: Mailchimp bills you for contacts who already left, and its own documentation says so.
- Creator Tools vs E-Commerce Marketing: The business-model question that settles this in thirty seconds — and shapes your whole automation tool stack.
- What Breaks When You Migrate: What carries across cleanly, what you rebuild by hand, and how to protect your sender reputation.
- Why “Most Popular” Is the Wrong Filter: Two of the big four cut their free plans in 2026. Kit didn’t.
How We Evaluated These Email Platforms
This guide is research-first.
Every price and plan limit below came from the vendors’ own live pricing and help pages on 11 August 2026, not from a review round-up.
That matters more than usual right now.
Two of the four platforms here changed their free plan inside the last eight months.
Feature comparisons focus on what actually decides the choice for solo creators and side hustlers:
- Automation depth
- Monetisation tooling
- Free-plan ceilings
- Migration friction
Platforms with partner programs a creator can actually join were prioritised.
MailerLite and Beehiiv earn a callout where they genuinely beat both main picks on cost or newsletter monetisation.
No first-hand account testing is claimed here. Vendor documentation and dated policy changes are the evidence.
What Does Each Platform Actually Cost in 2026?
Start with the number most reviews skip: Mailchimp counts unsubscribed contacts toward your plan limit.
That isn’t a rumour.
Mailchimp’s own contact types documentation lists unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts as counting toward your monthly limit.
Only archived, cleaned and pending contacts drop off the bill.
Your active list stays flat. Your bill keeps climbing.
Kit works the other way. Its pricing page counts subscribers only if they are unique and active.
MailerLite is explicit too — unsubscribed or bounced addresses don’t count.
So the sticker price is the smaller half of this comparison.
Kit’s Creator plan starts at $33/month billed yearly, or $39/month billed monthly, for 1,000 subscribers.
Mailchimp’s Essentials plan starts at $13/month and Standard at $20/month.
That $13 headline is the one everybody quotes. It buys 500 contacts, not 1,000.
Push past 500 and Mailchimp moves you up a contact tier. Push past 10,000 and Premium opens at $350/month.
Every figure in that table was checked against the vendor’s own page on 11 August 2026: Kit pricing, Mailchimp plans, MailerLite pricing and Beehiiv pricing.
How Do Kit’s Features Differ From Mailchimp’s?
Kit is built for creators. Mailchimp is built for marketers. That gap doesn’t close at any price tier.
The tools each platform prioritises reflect who they were designed to serve.
Kit gives creators subscriber tagging, paid newsletter infrastructure, and direct integrations with platforms like Teachable and Gumroad.
Mailchimp gives marketers A/B testing suites, campaign analytics dashboards, and e-commerce reporting.
These aren’t the same needs dressed up differently. They’re fundamentally different workflows.
Switching platforms to chase a missing feature often costs more than the feature is worth.
Migration headaches, list formatting issues, and relearning automation logic consume weeks of productive time.
The honest question isn’t which platform has more features. It’s which platform was built for someone like you.
How Do the Free Plans Actually Compare?
Both platforms offer free plans. Calling them equivalent in 2026 is misleading.
Mailchimp’s free tier now caps at 250 contacts and 500 emails a month.
Automation flows, email scheduling and branding removal are all paid-only.
Per TechRadar’s Mailchimp review, that cut landed in January 2026 and took the automation workflows with it.
Kit’s free Newsletter plan is a different animal.
You can grow to 10,000 subscribers without paying a dollar. That’s 40× Mailchimp’s free ceiling.
The old line that Kit’s free tier is crippled is out of date. Here’s what it actually includes:
- One basic visual automation with one email sequence
- Unlimited landing pages, forms and email broadcasts
- Selling digital products and paid subscriptions
- A/B testing across two subject lines
- Subscriber tagging and segmentation
What it holds back:
- Unlimited automations and email sequences
- RSS campaigns and the Kit app integrations
- Removing Kit branding from your emails
Kit also keeps one managed recommendation slot on the free plan, and keeps that revenue.
At month one, both feel fine. At month three, Mailchimp’s 250-contact wall bites.
At month twelve, Kit’s free tier is still doing the job.
Kit’s free plan is the better 2026 starting point. It’s not close.
Who Should Pick ConvertKit vs Mailchimp
Creators selling courses, newsletters, or digital products should pick Kit. The creator monetization tools are native, not bolted on.
E-commerce brands running multi-channel campaigns should pick Mailchimp.
It plugs into Shopify store data and Meta ads far tighter than Kit does — see the small business ideas guide for which model this fits.
Side hustlers building a content-driven list from zero should pick Kit. The free tier scales with you. Mailchimp’s doesn’t.
Want the same cost math run against a different rival? The Kit vs AWeber cost breakdown follows a list upward from zero.
Already on Mailchimp and growing? That’s your signal to move.
What If Neither Kit nor Mailchimp Fits?
The standard advice here is “just use MailerLite, it’s cheaper.” That advice expired in June 2026.
MailerLite‘s free plan was cut on 16 June 2026.
The subscriber cap dropped from 500 to 250, and monthly sends from 12,000 to 2,500.
Its free plan update notes also cap free accounts at three automations and one landing page from 13 August 2026.
The paid plans were renamed too. Comfort now opens at $12/month and Power at $25/month.
It’s still the cheapest paid entry here. It’s no longer the generous free tier people remember.
For a newsletter-first business chasing paid subscriptions or ad revenue, Beehiiv is the pick.
Its Launch plan is free to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends.
The money features sit on Scale, not Launch.
The ad network, paid subscriptions and the 0% take rate all start at $43/month billed annually.
Monetisation baked in from day one, then — as long as day one includes a card.
- MailerLite plans — Cheapest paid entry, but the free plan now stops at 250
- Beehiiv Scale — Newsletter creators monetizing audiences through ads or paid tiers
- Kit — Creators selling products, courses, or running automations
Neither alternative replaces Kit for full creator workflows. Both still beat Mailchimp on value for solo operators.
If selling is the whole point, the Kit vs Flodesk comparison takes the same question somewhere different.
How to Actually Migrate Without Losing Your List
Migrating your list doesn’t have to mean losing it. Here’s what actually happens when you switch.
What transfers cleanly:
- Subscribers
- Tags
- Simple automations
What breaks:
- Complex Mailchimp journeys
- Custom audience segments
These don’t map 1:1, so plan to rebuild them manually.
Expect open rates to wobble across the first few sends after any switch.
Kit’s deliverability resources cover why that happens and how to settle it down.
Mitigate it by sending a warm-up broadcast to your most engaged segment first.
One more thing worth flagging: Mailchimp unsubscribed contacts count toward your plan limit until you archive them.
You’re likely paying for dead weight right now. Migration fixes that immediately.
What Changed Between 2024 and 2026?
The email marketing landscape shifted more in two years than in the previous five.
The ConvertKit rebrand to Kit in October 2024 wasn’t cosmetic.
It signalled a harder pivot toward creator monetisation and away from general email marketing.
“This rebrand reflects our unwavering belief in the power of creators and their ability to make a meaningful impact in the world.”
— Nathan Barry, founder and CEO of Kit, official rebrand announcement (October 2024)
Then came the 2025 price rise. It sparked a real argument about whether Kit’s value still held up.
Mailchimp moved the opposite way — not by improving, but by restricting.
MailerLite followed in June 2026 with a cut of its own.
Beehiiv’s own analysis of the Mailchimp cut frames it directly: limits halved, automation stripped, growing lists pushed off the free tier.
Two free-plan cuts in six months. Kit’s 10,000-subscriber ceiling didn’t move.
What hasn’t changed: Kit is still creator-best. Mailchimp is still e-commerce-best.
Frequently Asked Questions
Five questions that come up every time this comparison is made.
Does Kit’s Email Deliverability Actually Outperform Mailchimp in 2026?
Neither company publishes a like-for-like inbox placement figure, so treat any head-to-head number with suspicion.
Kit publishes a 99.8% delivery rate across more than a billion messages a month.
Delivery rate is not inbox placement. It measures acceptance by the receiving server, not which folder you land in.
What separates the two in practice is list hygiene.
Mailchimp bills you for unsubscribed contacts, so dead weight tends to sit on your list.
Kit doesn’t, so the same list gets pruned. Cleaner lists send better.
Kit doesn’t outperform Mailchimp inherently. It outperforms how most people use Mailchimp.
Can You Run A/B Split Tests on Kit’s Free Plan?
Yes — and this is the answer most comparison posts still get wrong.
Kit’s plan comparison table lists A/B split testing on the free Newsletter plan, limited to two subject lines.
The Creator plan at $33/month gets the same two-subject-line test.
Pro is where testing widens:
- Five subject lines instead of two
- Content testing, not just subject lines
- Deliverability reporting alongside the results
So the free plan tests subject lines. It just can’t test the email itself.
Does Mailchimp Integrate With Shopify Better Than Kit Does?
Yes. Mailchimp’s Shopify integration runs deeper than Kit’s.
You get these features built natively into Mailchimp’s workflow:
- Abandoned cart emails
- Purchase-based segmentation
- Product recommendation blocks
Kit’s Shopify integration exists but it’s thinner.
It suits selling your own digital products more than syncing a full product catalog.
If Shopify is your primary sales channel, Mailchimp’s e-commerce data layer is a genuine advantage Kit doesn’t match.
How Does Kit Handle GDPR Compliance for US-Based Creators With EU Subscribers?
Kit gives you the plumbing. The legal position stays yours.
Its GDPR support page documents the pieces that matter for a US-based creator with EU subscribers:
- Consent checkboxes inside forms, plus a dedicated consent page after signup
- A subscriber filter that isolates your EU contacts
- Standard Contractual Clauses built into Kit’s Data Processing Agreement
- Certification under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework
Kit covers the infrastructure. The legal framing is still your responsibility.
You’ll still need a compliant privacy policy and explicit consent wording on your forms.
Kit’s own page says to send the harder questions to your attorney. Take that seriously.
What Happens to Your Kit Account if You Exceed the Free Plan’s 10K Limit?
Cross 10,000 subscribers on the free Newsletter plan and Kit prompts you to upgrade.
One warning worth being blunt about: that upgrade is not $33/month.
The $33 annual rate is the 1,000-subscriber price. Kit’s paid tiers climb with your subscriber count.
Your account won’t be deleted or frozen the moment you cross. Kit warns you first.
Ignore the prompt and you lose sending access.
Per Kit’s Newsletter plan documentation, everything else stays as it was — you just can’t email past that threshold.
Conclusion
Most creators don’t need Mailchimp’s complexity. Most e-commerce brands don’t need Kit’s creator tools.
If your list is under 10,000 and you sell digital products, Kit’s free tier makes the decision for you.
If you’re running a Shopify store with serious ad spend, Mailchimp’s integrations justify the cost.
Pick one this week. Move now if you’re on Mailchimp and growing — friction only rises with list size.
For the wider system around your list, the make money online guide covers the income models email actually feeds.
And the blog traffic guide is the natural companion if your list isn’t built yet.
