Email marketing

Kit vs beehiiv vs Mailchimp

Kit, beehiiv, Mailchimp side by side: price, free tier, who each one fits and when to skip it.

Item	Kit	beehiiv	Mailchimp
What it does	Email marketing for creators (formerly ConvertKit), with sequences, automations and digital product sales.	Newsletter platform with a website, referrals, an ad network and paid subscriptions.	Long-running email marketing platform with campaigns, automations and a drag-and-drop editor.
Best for	Best for a founder who builds an audience with a newsletter before launching and wants up to 10,000 subscribers free.	Best for a founder whose newsletter is a growth channel or a product of its own, earning from sponsors or paid subscriptions.	Best for a marketing hire who already knows Mailchimp and needs ready-made templates, reports and integrations from day one.
Skip it if	Skip it if you need emails triggered by what users do inside your app: Kit is built for creators, not product events.	Skip it for onboarding and lifecycle emails tied to your app: it is built for publishing, not for product events.	Skip it if you are a founder on a budget: the free plan stops at 250 contacts and the price doubles after the first-year discount.
Setup	No code. An hour for the first form and email; the domain records verify within a day.	No code. An hour to publish the first issue; the custom domain verifies within a day.	No code. An afternoon for the first newsletter; transactional email is a separate developer project.
Price	Creator for 5k subscribers: $89/month ($75 billed yearly)	Lite for 5k subscribers: $109/month ($95 billed yearly)	Essentials for 5k contacts: $56.91/month, half off for 12 months
What it costs in practice	A founder with 3,000 subscribers who wants a welcome sequence: Creator at $59/month (or $39 at 1,000). Without automations, the same list stays free up to 10,000. Rough estimate.	A newsletter with 5,000 subscribers on Lite: $109/month, or $95/month billed yearly ($1,140). Removing beehiiv branding means Pro: $199/month. Rough estimate.	A business with 5,000 contacts (unsubscribed included) on Essentials: $56.91/month, about half that in the first 12 months, with up to 50,000 sends. Adding app receipts means Standard plus at least $20 per 25,000 transactional emails. Rough estimate.
Free plan	Up to 10,000 subscribers, with unlimited broadcasts and landing pages.	Up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends.	Up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month (250 a day).
Free tier	10,000 subscribers	2,500 subscribers	250 contacts, 500 sends/month
Price for 5k contacts	$89/month (Creator)	$109/month (Lite)	$56.91/month (Essentials)
Automations	Unlimited visual automations from Creator	From the Lite plan	4 flow steps on Essentials; 200 flows on Standard
Open source	No: no	No: no	No: no
Before you build	The free plan has no automations, no email sequences and no rules; they need Creator or Creator Pro. If you downgrade, your automations stop running. Past 10,000 subscribers on the free plan, you must upgrade to keep sending. Billing follows confirmed subscribers and moves you up a tier automatically when you cross it; going back down is manual. Cold subscribers who stopped opening still count toward the bill until you remove them.	beehiiv branding stays on Free and Lite; only Pro ($109/month at 1,000 subscribers) and Enterprise remove it. Email automations start at Lite, and the Send API, needed to fire emails from your own code, only comes with Pro. An import that would push you past your plan's subscriber limit (2,500 on Free) stays on hold as a whole, even the part that would fit, until you upgrade. Importing contacts who didn't opt in breaks the terms and can get the service terminated.	Unsubscribed contacts still count toward your monthly contact limit, so the bill grows with people who no longer get your emails. Archive them to stop counting. The free plan allows 250 contacts and 500 sends a month (250 a day). Past 250 contacts, live and test sends are put on hold until you upgrade. Transactional email is only available as an add-on to Standard or Premium, sold in blocks of 25,000 emails at $20 each. Free and Essentials can't use it beyond a 500-email demo. Paid plans bill overages automatically when you pass the contact or send limit, and the 50% discount only lasts the first 12 months.
Price checked	Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing	Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing	Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing

Prices are read from each official pricing page on the date shown and can change. Always confirm before signing up.

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