Kit (formerly ConvertKit) Review: Free to Sell, Billed as You Grow

Kit, the email platform that was called ConvertKit until its rename, is built for creators who sell: courses, ebooks, coaching, templates and paid newsletters. Its pricing and its product both follow from that. The free plan already lets you sell. Automations and sequences, the tools that turn a list into a launch, start on the first paid plan. And the price rises with your subscriber count, automatically, while falling only when you ask it to.

Our composite score for Kit is 3.79, second of the eight email platforms we have scored, behind Klaviyo (3.88) and ahead of MailerLite (3.71), Constant Contact (3.63), beehiiv (3.61), Brevo (3.58), Mailchimp (3.46) and ActiveCampaign (3.44). Every figure below comes from Kit's own pages, read on 9 October 2026, or from our arithmetic on them, labelled as ours.

What Kit is

Kit is an email platform with a store attached. You collect subscribers through forms and landing pages, tag and segment them, send broadcasts, and run visual automations and email sequences. On the same account you can sell digital products and subscriptions, earn from sponsorships placed in your emails, and earn or spend through a recommendation network shared with other Kit creators. The pricing page claims more than 550,000 creators ^[11]. It has no website builder beyond landing pages and a newsletter site, and no podcast hosting.

The entry prices are stated in Kit's own plan comparison ^[3]. Annual billing is "12 months for the price of 10" in the billing article's words ^[4], which is why the pricing page shows Creator at $33 a month billed yearly: $390 divided by twelve, rounded up.

How the price is set

"Your bill is based on your active subscribers, not on emails sent or features used." ^[4]. Kit publishes 45 subscriber bands for each paid plan, from 1,000 to 500,000, but not on the visible page: the slider shows one band at a time, and the full ladder sits in the page's script, which we read ^[2].

From the pricing page's script ^[2]. The 100,000 row is the band from 95,001 to 105,000.

When the list grows past a band, Kit moves you up without asking: "we automatically upgrade you to the next tier." ^[5]. The difference is prorated. The help centre's own example: a Creator account on $39 reaches 1,001 subscribers ten days before renewal, is moved to the $59 band, and pays $66 at the next billing date, the new price plus $7 of prorated difference ^[5].

Going down is different. Kit shows a Switch to a lower tier link when your count qualifies, and the lower price starts at the next billing date. The vendor explains why: "We leave this switch with you rather than moving your plan automatically, since subscriber counts often dip and recover inside the same month" ^[4].

This is the mirror image of beehiiv, where moving up is the optional step ^[45]. Kit never delays a send because the list grew; it bills for it instead. Growth costs money.

The free plan

"The Free plan costs $0 per month for as long as you stay under 10,000 subscribers." ^[6]. It includes unlimited forms, landing pages and broadcasts, tagging and segmentation, A/B tests on broadcasts, digital products and subscriptions, and API access ^[6]. That last pair is unusual: a free Kit account can sell a product or run a paid newsletter from day one.

What Free leaves out is automation: visual automations, sequences, rules, RSS campaigns and AI Connectors need a paid plan, and paid recommendations cannot earn ^[6]. Past 10,000 subscribers, sending requires a paid plan.

Against the category, Kit's free plan is the largest that also allows selling. beehiiv's free plan stops at 2,500 subscribers and sells one digital product but no subscriptions ^[44]; MailerLite's and Mailchimp's stop at 250 ^{[50] [49]}.

Kit's commerce covers three shapes of sale. Single purchases, such as an ebook or a template. Subscriptions billed monthly, quarterly or yearly, such as a paid newsletter or membership ^[26]. And payment plans, which split one price into instalments: "the minimum number of installments you can offer is two" ^[42]. A paid newsletter is a subscription product whose broadcasts go only to the people subscribed to it ^[26].

Three details matter more than they look:

• Unsubscribing ends the payment. If a reader unsubscribes from your list, they are no longer charged for paid subscriptions ^[27]. A reader who only wants fewer emails can end your revenue by accident; offer a preference page rather than a single unsubscribe link.
• Refunds are all or nothing. Kit refunds a purchase or a single subscription payment in full; "Only full refunds are supported at this time." ^[29].
• VAT can be collected for you. Once enabled, Kit works out the rate for each sale to EU and UK customers and sends a compliant receipt ^[43].

Purchases made elsewhere can also feed Kit: the Purchases feature reads sales from Shopify, Squarespace Commerce, Stripe and Gumroad and tags the buyer ^[28].

The Creator Network

Every Kit account joins the Creator Network, where creators recommend each other's newsletters at sign-up. On Free you get five Smart Recommendation slots and can be featured by others; paid plans get priority and more exposure ^[6]. Paid recommendations, where other creators pay you per subscriber you send them, need a paid plan to earn and are processed through SparkLoop, which approves accounts usually within 24 hours ^[31].

Kit matches newsletters with advertisers. Campaigns run in a set window, and the payout is per unique verified ad click ^[33]. Only paid plans can express interest in a campaign ^[33]. Kit keeps 23.5% of ad revenue and pays 45 days after the month in which the ad ran ^[32].

Worked example. A campaign paying $1.50 per verified click earns $300 from 200 clicks. Kit keeps $70.50 and pays $229.50 about six weeks after the month closes. Our arithmetic on the published fee.

AI Connectors

Kit's AI Connectors use MCP to connect the account to "Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and other MCP-compatible AI assistants" ^[39]. They are a paid-plan feature: free creators can connect and see the tools, but "running any tool will surface an upgrade prompt rather than executing the action" ^[39]. Each tool is annotated as read-only, destructive, idempotent or open-world, so the AI client can ask before acting ^[40]. Kit does not publish an in-editor AI allowance in its plan table.

• Products and subscriptions: 3.5% plus 30 cents per sale, which the pricing page says is inclusive of card processing, so "Kit only takes 0.6% of the total fees" ^[2].
• Sponsorships in your emails: "we charge a fee of 23.5% of total ad revenue for running and maintaining this advertising service" ^[32]. Payouts arrive 45 days after the month in which the ad ran, with "no minimum threshold" ^[32].
• Paid recommendations: "We take a 20% service fee and a 3.5% transaction fee for each successful referral." ^[31].

Kit publishes its cut of sponsorship revenue. beehiiv, by comparison, publishes what each ad pays you but not its margin.

Refunds: the help centre and the terms disagree

The billing article is generous: "We have a 30-day refund policy, so if you cancel, you can request any funds paid in the last 30 days to be refunded in full." ^[4]. It applies to annual plans too, and excludes only payments older than 30 days. That is rare.

The Terms of Service say something different: if you cancel before the end of the period, "we will not refund any Paid Services Fees already paid to us" ^[8]. The help centre describes the practice; the terms are the contract. Request any refund within 30 days, in writing, and cite the billing article.

The terms do protect current customers from price changes mid-term: a fee change "will not apply to you until such time as your current Subscription Service expires or is renewed" ^[8].

In September 2025 Kit's founder announced the "first price increase in 12 years", effective for existing customers from their first billing date after 15 October 2025 ^{[4] [10]}. Plan limits and features did not change. One reviewer in our corpus says the increase was "nearly 3x" for their account ^[9]; we cannot verify individual cases, but it explains why price appears among recent complaints.

Every account is verified before it can send

"We ask that all new accounts send us a link to their blog before we enable email sending." ^[7]. Kit wants to know you are a real person, that you own your domain, and that your content is something people asked for. You can build forms, sequences and broadcasts while you wait; you cannot send. Kit may also ask for historical open and click rates ^[7].

Large imports can trigger a temporary suspension: "If you are importing a new list of subscribers (from a giveaway or live event, for instance), your account may be temporarily suspended." ^[5]. Tell Kit in advance.

One audience per account

Kit has one list per account and one custom domain. It will let you run several businesses in one account, but advises against it: "A fresh account for every distinct audience is the best practice and our advice." ^[22]. Each account has its own plan and its own bill. Bills multiply. A creator with three separate newsletters pays three tiers; on beehiiv the same three would share one bill ^[44].

Support

Paid plans get 24/7 email and chat support ^[2]. Free accounts get support too, answered in order within 24 hours ^[6]. In our Trustpilot corpus support is the dominant theme, 38 of 100 reviews, 26 positive and 12 negative ^[9]. The negative ones cluster after the 2025 price rise and describe long exchanges on technical questions.

What users say

Trustpilot shows 4.0 from 159 reviews on kit.com, and our sample of the 100 most recent averages 4.17: 67 five-star, 15 four-star, 1 three-star, 2 two-star and 15 one-star ^[9]. GetApp shows 4.63 from 244, and Kit's WordPress plugin 4.8 from 90. The company's old profile under convertkit.com still shows 1.9 from 67, older complaints left behind under the old name.

Our scores, axis by axis

Kit leads beehiiv on value, integrations and support; beehiiv leads on capability, for its website, podcast and community. MailerLite edges Kit on value and documentation for senders who do not sell.

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    <span class="text-sm font-semibold text-ink-100">Capability &amp; depth</span>
    <span class="text-sm font-bold text-white">3.8<span class="text-xs font-normal text-ink-300">/5</span></span>
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    <span class="text-sm font-bold text-white">4.0<span class="text-xs font-normal text-ink-300">/5</span></span>
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    <span class="text-sm font-semibold text-ink-100">Integrations</span>
    <span class="text-sm font-bold text-white">3.9<span class="text-xs font-normal text-ink-300">/5</span></span>
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    <span class="text-sm font-bold text-white">3.5<span class="text-xs font-normal text-ink-300">/5</span></span>
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    <span class="text-sm font-semibold text-ink-100">Support &amp; reliability</span>
    <span class="text-sm font-bold text-white">3.6<span class="text-xs font-normal text-ink-300">/5</span></span>
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    <span class="text-sm font-bold text-white">4.0<span class="text-xs font-normal text-ink-300">/5</span></span>
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    <span class="text-sm font-bold text-white">3.8<span class="text-xs font-normal text-ink-300">/5</span></span>
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<p class="mt-3 text-xs text-ink-300">Weighted across the axes above (weights reflect what actually drives the decision in this category). <a href="/how-we-test" style="color:var(--color-accent)">How we score →</a></p>

A course creator with 4,000 subscribers launching twice a year. Creator at the 5,000 band: $890 a year ^[2]. Launch sequences and automations included. On Free, the list fits but sequences do not.

A paid newsletter with 8,000 subscribers, 300 paying $10 a month. Creator at the 8,000 band: $1,190 a year. Paid revenue $36,000; Kit's 0.6 points above processing cost $216 ^[2]. Our arithmetic.

A coach with two separate audiences of 2,000 each. Kit advises two accounts ^[22]: two Creator plans at the 3,000 band, $1,180 a year together. In one account, the 5,000 band would be $890, with the unsubscribe and single-domain drawbacks Kit describes.

Where Kit fits

Choose Kit if you sell products or courses, want automations and sequences for launches, have a list under 10,000 and want to sell before you pay, or value a refund window.

Look elsewhere if you run several distinct newsletters on one budget (beehiiv), want a website and podcast host in the same account (beehiiv), run a store (Klaviyo), or send to a large list that never buys (MailerLite or Brevo).

Kit is the strongest creator commerce platform in our email category and second overall. Its free plan is the most useful in the category for someone who wants to sell, its pricing is fair to about 25,000 subscribers, and its help centre explains billing better than any rival. What holds it below Klaviyo is a price ladder hidden in a script, a refund promise the terms contradict, a verification gate before the first send, and a one-account-per-audience model that multiplies bills.