ConvertKit (Kit) vs MailerLite

Reading old reviews: ConvertKit became Kit

Most of the independent reviews and Reddit threads about this pair were written under the ConvertKit name, and the product has since moved to kit.com, where the footer still says Formerly ConvertKit and the company runs a series called Rebranding in Public. The pricing page today lists three plans, Free, Creator and Pro, with a Free tier that reaches 10,000 subscribers. A review that names other plans, or quotes a much smaller free allowance, was written for an earlier version of the product and its prices should not be reused.

Kit hosts a Mailerlite-versus-Kit comparison page of its own. It is marketing, so this page uses only the numbers from the two pricing pages and each vendor's documentation, read on 2026-10-07.

Free plans: 10,000 broadcast subscribers or 250 with automation

Kit's free plan is the headline difference. The pricing page offers up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited landing pages, forms and email broadcasts, tagging and segmentation, and the ability to sell digital products and subscriptions. What it withholds is automation: unlimited Visual Automations, unlimited email sequences, A/B tests on subject lines, branding removal and 24/7 support all begin on Creator.

MailerLite's free plan is the opposite shape. It stops at 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, locks sending when the 250 limit is passed, and allows one website, one landing page and three forms, but it includes three active automations of up to five steps and all three email editors.

For a B2B SaaS the practical split is simple. If the list is a content audience and the email program is a weekly broadcast, Kit Free covers a very large list at no cost. If the list is small and the job is a short onboarding or event-follow-up sequence, MailerLite Free does it today and Comfort is $19 at 1,000 subscribers when you outgrow it.

Cost at 1,000, 5,000, 10,000 and 25,000 subscribers

The billing bases differ, so a note first. Kit's page shows a monthly rate with yearly billing selected (Creator at 1,000 subscribers reads $33 a month and $390 billed yearly, which is $6 below 12 x $33). MailerLite's selector shows monthly billing. The totals below multiply the shown rate by 12, so Kit's are a ceiling, and MailerLite's would fall by the 10% annual discount it shows at its smallest tier if that discount applies at your size.

At 1,000 subscribers, Kit Creator is $390 a year and MailerLite Comfort is $228 ($19 x 12), a $162 gap. If you do not need automation, Kit Free costs $0.

At 5,000 subscribers, Kit Creator is up to $900 ($75 x 12) and Comfort is $588 ($49 x 12), a $312 gap. Power, at $828 ($69 x 12), still undercuts Creator and adds unlimited seats and automations.

At 10,000 subscribers, Kit Creator is up to $1,392 ($116 x 12) and Comfort is $1,068 ($89 x 12), a $324 gap. Kit Pro at up to $1,896 ($158 x 12) sits against MailerLite Power at $1,548 ($129 x 12), a $348 gap. A broadcast-only program on Kit Free is $0.

At 25,000 subscribers the order reverses. Kit Creator is up to $1,992 ($166 x 12) against Comfort at $2,148 ($179 x 12), $156 in Kit's favour, and Pro at up to $2,796 ($233 x 12) against Power at $2,868 ($239 x 12). MailerLite's annual discount would narrow or reverse the Creator gap, so read its selector in annual mode before you decide.

• Kit figures come from the Creator and Pro slider readouts on kit.com/pricing; MailerLite figures from the subscriber selector on its pricing page. Both read on 2026-10-07.
• MailerLite's published annual discount is visible at its smallest tier: Comfort $12 becomes $10.80 and Power $25 becomes $22.50.
• Kit says yearly billing saves 17% and lists $78 a year as the saving at Creator with 1,000 subscribers.

Automation: entry points, triggers and limits

Kit's help center describes Visual Automations with entry points that include joining a form, being added to a tag, a custom field change and a purchase from an integrated store, and a limit of five entry points per automation. Automations are not retroactive: only people who trigger an entry point after you activate the automation enter it. See Kit's article on using Visual Automations.

MailerLite's documentation lists seven default triggers: joins a group, completes a form, clicks a link, updated field, event anniversary, exact date and joins a segment. On Power an automation can have three triggers; on lower plans it has one. Re-entry is optional, and a subscriber can trigger the same automation at most once every 24 hours.

Neither tool has a custom-event trigger that your app can call by name. Both rely on state: in Kit you add a tag or change a custom field from your backend, in MailerLite you update a field or add a group. For a milestone such as 'connected first integration' either works. For repeated actions, note that a MailerLite group trigger fires again only after the person has left and rejoined the group, and never more than once every 24 hours; check during a trial how Kit treats a tag that is removed and added again.

The scale limits differ more. Kit lists unlimited automations on Creator. MailerLite allows 3 active automations on Free, 50 on Comfort and unlimited on Power, with steps capped at 5 on Free and 100 on paid plans.

People data and the API

Both treat a person as an email address with fields and labels. In Kit the labels are tags and the segments you build from them; in MailerLite they are groups and dynamic segments. Neither has a company object, so a B2B list stores the company in a custom field and segments on it.

Kit's developer documentation describes API v4 as adding cursor-based pagination, bulk requests with async processing and better subscriber stats, and says it lets you manage a list through tags and custom fields. It also notes that API use depends on an eligible plan, so check the pricing page before you plan an integration on the free tier.

MailerLite's API is a REST service with official libraries for PHP, Go, Node.js, Python, Ruby and Rust and a global limit of 120 requests a minute. Creating a subscriber that already exists updates it, and omitted fields and groups are not removed, which makes a nightly sync safe. Sending email through the API or MCP server needs a paid plan.

Landing pages, selling and the content-led SaaS

A content-led SaaS spends as much time on pages as on emails: a registration page per webinar, a gated benchmark report, a changelog subscribe form. Kit gives unlimited landing pages and forms on every plan, including Free. MailerLite caps them at 1 landing page and 3 forms on Free, 10 websites, 10 landing pages and 10 forms on Comfort, and unlimited on Power.

Both sell digital products, and both support paid newsletters. Kit charges 3.5% plus 30 cents per transaction on every plan, with processing fees included. MailerLite caps products at 1 on Free, 5 on Comfort and unlimited on Power and connects Stripe through the dashboard. A SaaS that sells a paid research report or a template pack will find either enough; a SaaS that sells subscriptions to its product will not use either.

Moving from Kit to MailerLite

1. In Kit, open Subscribers, filter the status to confirmed subscribers, use Select all, then the three-dot menu and Export. Kit's export guide says a download link is emailed to you, expires after five days, and the file carries tags, custom fields and status.
2. Create the matching custom fields in MailerLite, and one group per Kit tag you want to keep. MailerLite's import guide has you choose the group on the import settings page and map each column to a field.
3. Import only people who opted in. MailerLite advises leaving behind unsubscribed, spam-complaint and inactive subscribers, and it will not re-add an address that is already unsubscribed.
4. Untick the option that starts automations for imported subscribers on the first run, or every welcome flow fires for the whole list.
5. Rebuild each Kit Visual Automation as a MailerLite workflow, replacing tag entry points with Joins a group triggers. Kit's sequences become delays between emails inside one workflow.
6. Authenticate the domain in MailerLite and switch your forms. MailerLite's migration page lists ConvertKit as a source and offers a request form for help.

Moving from MailerLite to Kit

1. Export your subscribers from MailerLite following its export guide, keeping active and unsubscribed in separate files.
2. Ask Kit about its free migration service first: its pricing page says an in-house team rebuilds forms, templates and automations from another platform.
3. If you import yourself, follow Kit's import article: a CSV with an email column, a Tags column of comma-separated values, and headers that match Kit field names. Imports replace existing values with what the file holds, blanks included, so do not re-import over live data.
4. Pause Visual Automations and rules before importing; adding subscribers to a tag or form may trigger them.
5. Check the plan. A list above 10,000 subscribers exceeds Kit Free, and any automation needs Creator.
6. Rebuild MailerLite workflows as Visual Automations, with Joins a group becoming an Is added to a tag entry point.