Kit vs MailerLite: The Most Generous Free Tier vs the Cheapest Paid Plan

TL;DR

Both are excellent, and the 2026 pricing shuffle made them even easier to tell apart:

• Kit (formerly ConvertKit) went extremely generous on free: 10,000 subscribers, unlimited emails, $0 — with creator-grade limits that start charging at $33–39/mo when you outgrow them.
• MailerLite went the other way: its free tier was cut to 250 subscribers / 2,500 emails per month, but its paid plans start around $12/mo — the cheapest serious tier in the category.

Kit bets you’ll grow into paying. MailerLite bets you’ll pay to start.

Quick comparison

	Kit (ConvertKit)	MailerLite
Free plan	10,000 subs, unlimited emails	250 subs, 2,500 emails/mo
Paid entry	Creator ~$39/mo ($33/mo annual), 1,000 subs	~$12/mo, 500 subs
Higher tiers	Creator Pro ~$79/mo ($66/mo annual)	Power ~$25/mo ($22.50/mo annual)
Positioning	Creator newsletters + monetization	Classic email marketing, budget-first
Free plan limits	1 automation rule, basic pages	Feature-gated editor blocks, 2 user seats
Best for	Audience builders, creators	Small businesses, solopreneurs
Price hikes	Raised prices recently — verify at signup	Slashed free tier in 2026 — verify at signup

Pricing from both providers’ official pages, August 2026. Both changed their pricing structure recently, so stale third-party comparisons are common — always confirm on the official page.

Where Kit wins

• The free tier is a real product, not a demo. 10,000 subscribers with unlimited sends is enough to run a serious newsletter to the point of monetization before paying anything. No competitor matches it.
• Creator-native features. Subscriber recommendations (free cross-promotion inside the network), sequences, paid newsletter tiers, and sponsor management — built for audience businesses rather than adapted to them.
• Automation quality. Even with the free plan’s single rule, the visual automations are the standard others copy; Creator unlocks the full engine.

Where MailerLite wins

• Paid-entry price. Around $12/mo for a full feature set — a third of Kit’s entry tier. If you’re paying from month one, the gap compounds to hundreds of dollars a year.
• Simplicity that respects your time. The drag-and-drop editor and plain-English feature names are consistently the most praised things about it. Two free user seats mean a partner or VA can share the work.
• Classic marketing coverage — e-commerce integrations, signup forms, and reporting that small businesses actually use, without the creator-economy framing you’d be paying for and ignoring.

The cons nobody puts on the pricing page

Kit:

1. The free-to-paid cliff is steep. The moment you need more than one automation rule or advanced sequencing, you’re at $33–39/mo — there’s no cheap middle step.
2. Recent price increases mean review articles (including pricing roundups from early 2026) often understate what you’ll actually pay; check the live page.
3. Pro features are gated high. Advanced reporting and referr incentive tooling sit on Creator Pro at $66–79/mo — meaningful money for a list under 10,000.

MailerLite:

1. The free tier is now a trial in disguise. 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails per month won’t carry a real project past its first months — the 2026 cut ended its run as “the generous free plan.”
2. Usage-based pricing complexity. Bills scale on both subscribers and email volume, so forecasting costs at list growth takes spreadsheet work.
3. Stale comparisons everywhere. Because the limits changed in 2026, most “MailerLite free = 1,000 subs” content online is simply wrong — verify before you plan around it.

Pricing reality check

For a 5,000-subscriber list paying monthly:

• Kit: free until you need the automation engine — then Creator pricing applies, scaling with list size.
• MailerLite: paid tier well before 5,000 subs (free stops at 250), with the entry around $12/mo and growth-priced from there.

The crossover logic: below the automation ceiling, Kit is free and unbeatable; above it, MailerLite is cheaper for equivalent basics. Map which side of that line you’ll be on in twelve months before choosing.

How we researched this

This comparison is built from both providers’ official pricing pages and plan-change documentation, verified August 2026. Both companies adjusted pricing recently, so we’ve flagged every number that third-party sources commonly get wrong. Hands-on testing — deliverability checks, automation building, editor workflow — is in progress and will be added with our own results on a future update.

Who should choose which

Choose Kit if you’re building a newsletter-first business, want the biggest free runway in the category, and expect to monetize an audience (paid tiers, sponsors, recommendations).

Choose MailerLite if you’re a small business or solopreneur doing classic email marketing, know you’ll pay from early on, and want the lowest paid-entry price with the friendliest editor.

Skip both for transactional email (password resets, receipts) — a dedicated transactional provider is the right tool for that job.

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