MailerLite vs Kit: Which Fits Creators and Small Businesses?

MailerLite and Kit (the platform formerly known as ConvertKit) are both popular with creators, writers and small businesses. Both price by subscriber count and both let you sell to your list. But they make different bets. Kit gives you a very large free audience allowance and leans heavily into creator growth tools, while MailerLite includes automation on its free plan, adds a website builder, and starts its paid plans at a lower price. This comparison uses each company’s published pricing and help pages as of 28 October 2026. We have not tested either product hands-on for this article.

The short version

• Kit is hard to beat if you are a newsletter-first creator who wants to grow a big audience for free and does not need automated sequences yet.
• MailerLite suits people who want automations from day one, a website or landing pages in the same tool, and a cheaper first paid plan once they need one.

Free plans: Kit’s big advantage

This is where Kit genuinely leads, and it is worth saying plainly.

MailerLite’s free plan covers 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails per month. Kit’s covers up to 10,000 subscribers. If your main goal is to send a regular newsletter to a growing audience without paying anything, Kit lets you go much further before you hit a paywall.

What Kit’s free plan leaves out

The catch is automation. According to Kit’s help center, these features need a paid plan (Creator or Pro):

• Visual automations and the automation template library
• Email sequences (the series of emails sent automatically after someone signs up)
• Rules and RSS campaigns
• AI Connectors and paid apps in the Kit App Store
• Earning money from Paid Recommendations

Kit also states that once you reach 10,000 subscribers on the free plan, you need to upgrade to keep sending.

What MailerLite’s free plan includes

MailerLite’s free plan is much smaller, but it includes automation. You get 3 active automations (up to 5 steps each), 3 forms, 1 landing page, 1 website of up to 5 pages, A/B testing and 2 user seats. Support on Free is through the knowledge base only.

In practice, that means you can set up a short welcome email sequence on MailerLite without paying. On Kit’s free plan you can send broadcasts, but an automated welcome sequence would require upgrading.

A worked example (hypothetical)

Imagine a food writer with 1,800 newsletter subscribers who sends one email a week and nothing else. On MailerLite, this list is already beyond the 250-subscriber free limit, so the writer would need a paid plan. On Kit, the writer is well within the free allowance and pays nothing.

Now imagine a small online course creator with 200 subscribers who wants a five-email onboarding sequence for every new signup. On MailerLite, that fits the free plan. On Kit, sequences need the Creator plan, so the creator would pay from day one.

Same category of user, opposite answers. Your list size and whether you need automated sequences decide it.

Paid plans and pricing

Both platforms price paid plans by subscriber count.

MailerLite offers Comfort (formerly Growing Business) from $12 per month and Power (formerly Advanced) from $25 per month, plus Enterprise. Annual billing saves 10%, and nonprofits can get a 30% discount. See our MailerLite pricing guide for how the tiers work.

Kit offers Creator and Pro. Both are priced by subscriber count, with two months free on annual billing and a 14-day trial, according to Kit’s help center. Kit’s published prices have varied with promotions, so check Kit’s pricing page for the current price at your list size.

MailerLite vs Kit at a glance (October 2026)

Criteria	MailerLite	Kit
Priced by	Active subscribers	Subscribers
Plans	Free, Comfort, Power, Enterprise	Free, Creator, Pro
Free plan audience	250 subscribers	Up to 10,000 subscribers
Free plan sending	2,500 emails/month	Unlimited broadcasts
Automation on Free	3 active automations, 5 steps each	Not included (Creator and up)
Forms and landing pages on Free	3 forms, 1 landing page	Unlimited
Website builder	Yes (Free: 1 site, 5 pages)	Not covered here
Entry paid price	Comfort from $12/mo	Creator: see Kit pricing
Team seats	Free: 2	Creator: 2; Pro: unlimited
Creator growth network	No	Creator Network recommendations
Support on Free	Knowledge base	Support requests answered within 24 hours

What the paid tiers add

On MailerLite, Comfort adds email support, a monthly sending allowance of 10 times your subscriber tier and up to 50 automations. Power adds unlimited sending under fair use, live chat support and multiple triggers per automation.

On Kit, Creator unlocks sequences and visual automations. According to Kit’s comparison of its plans, Pro adds things like email content A/B testing, subject-line tests with up to 5 variants, advanced deliverability reporting, subscriber engagement scoring, Facebook Custom Audiences sync, a newsletter referral system and unlimited team members.

Creator tools

Growing your audience

Kit’s Creator Network is a distinctive feature. Kit’s help center says free accounts are enrolled automatically and get Smart Recommendation slots, so other creators’ newsletters can be recommended to your new subscribers and yours can be recommended to theirs. Paid plans get priority in recommendations, and only paid plans can earn from Paid Recommendations. You can switch recommendations off if you prefer.

We did not find an equivalent cross-creator network in MailerLite’s published feature list. Its growth tools are forms, pop-ups, landing pages and its website builder. If you are building a newsletter audience mainly through recommendations from other newsletters, Kit has a clear advantage. Our guide on how to build an email list covers other growth tactics that work on either platform.

Selling to your list

Both platforms let you sell. Kit’s help center lists digital products and subscriptions on its Free plan. MailerLite offers digital products through Stripe and paid newsletters, with paid newsletters available on paid plans. If you want to start charging for a newsletter while still on a free plan, Kit’s terms are more generous.

Websites and design

MailerLite includes a website builder alongside landing pages, forms and pop-ups, plus three email editors (drag and drop, rich text and custom HTML). For someone without a website, this can save paying for a separate site builder. Kit focuses on landing pages and forms rather than full websites.

Pros and cons

Who should pick which

Pick Kit if:

• You have, or expect to have, more than a few hundred subscribers and want to stay on a free plan.
• Your emails are mostly one-off broadcasts rather than automated sequences.
• You want to grow through recommendations from other creators.
• You plan to sell subscriptions or digital products early on.

Pick MailerLite if:

• You need welcome sequences or other automations from day one.
• You want a website, landing pages and email in one place.
• You run a small business or online shop rather than a pure newsletter.
• You expect to pay eventually and want a lower paid entry point.

For more help with the decision, see our guides on how to choose email marketing software and newsletter strategy, or read our full MailerLite review.

Try MailerLite's free plan

Set up a form and a short welcome automation on MailerLite's free plan, then decide whether it suits you better than Kit.

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A note on switching later

Your choice is not permanent. Both tools let you export subscribers, and both support tags or groups, so moving is mostly a matter of mapping your tags, rebuilding forms and automations, and authenticating your sending domain on the new platform. Keep consent records with your exports, and run a test campaign to a small segment before you send to everyone.