Kit vs MailerLite: free automations or free subscriber headroom
Both have free plans that most competitors cannot match, and they give away opposite things. Kit gives away subscriber headroom — 10,000 subscribers, unlimited sends, no automations. MailerLite gives away automation — a complete small-list toolkit with automations and forms included, capped at 1,000 subscribers. Which free plan is better depends entirely on where you are.
Short version
- Choose Kit if you are a creator with an audience already growing, you plan to sell digital products or paid subscriptions, and your growth strategy is "publish consistently, broadcast, occasionally launch."
- Choose MailerLite if you are starting from near-zero, you need a welcome sequence working on day one without paying, or you are a small business sending transactional and promotional email rather than a newsletter.
- Choose neither if you need lifecycle automation across a product with hundreds of behaviours — both are newsletter-shaped tools.
What the free plans actually give you
| Free plan | Kit | MailerLite |
|---|---|---|
| Subscriber cap | 10,000 | 1,000 |
| Monthly sends | Unlimited | Capped monthly allowance (12,000 at the 1,000-subscriber tier) |
| Visual automations | No — paid only | Yes |
| Email sequences | No — paid only | Yes |
| Landing pages and forms | Unlimited | Included, limited count |
| Sell digital products | Yes | Limited (5 products on Comfort; not the free plan's focus) |
| Users | 1 | 1–2 |
Read the table as a fork, not a scoreboard. Kit's free plan is a publishing tool with a very long runway. MailerLite's free plan is a small business tool with a short runway.
What you pay once you outgrow free (annual billing)
- Kit Creator — $33/month at a 1,000-subscriber list. Unlimited automations and sequences, A/B subject testing, SMS, RSS campaigns, integrations, 2 users, branding removed. Kit Pro is $66/month standard, with a $50/month first-year promotion.
- MailerLite Comfort — $12/month ($10.80 annual) at the small-list tier. 50 automations, 10 forms, 10 websites, 5 digital products, 3 users.
- MailerLite Power — $22.50/month annual. Unlimited automations and forms, unlimited websites and users, and the HeyLite chat and sales feature.
At the same list size, MailerLite is roughly a third of Kit's price. That gap is the whole comparison for a budget-constrained operator — but both scale with subscriber count, so re-price at your target list size, not your current one. Full breakdowns: Kit pricing.
Where Kit wins
- The 10,000-subscriber free tier. Nothing else at this quality level offers it. A newsletter can run for two years without paying, and that runway has real strategic value.
- Creator-specific surface. Landing pages, tip jars, paid newsletter subscriptions, recommendation network, and a commerce flow built for selling a $49 guide rather than a catalogue.
- Deliverability reputation among creators. Kit is the default in the creator economy for a reason — a large share of the newsletters you read run on it, which means shared infrastructure tuned for exactly this traffic pattern.
- Tagging and segmentation on free. You can build real audience logic before you pay, which makes the eventual upgrade deliberate rather than panicked.
Where MailerLite wins
- Automations on the free plan. A welcome series is not a luxury — it is the difference between a list that converts and a list that does not. Getting it at $0 from subscriber one is a substantive advantage.
- Price at every paid tier. Comfort at $12 is the cheapest credible paid email plan in this comparison, and it includes what most small senders need.
- Fit for non-newsletter businesses. A studio, clinic or local service sending confirmations, reminders and offers is better served here than by a creator platform.
- Fewer decisions. Kit has a creator-shaped opinion about how you should work. MailerLite is a plainer tool that asks less of you.
The fee detail that changes the math
Kit's plan-comparison table lists a 3.5% + 30¢ per product transaction line across plans. On a $29 digital product that is about $1.35 per sale. If digital products are your revenue, that fee can exceed the entire subscription difference between the two platforms — so compare landed cost, not plan price. We flag this rather than resolve it because the pricing page presents both "low fees" messaging and the 3.5% line; we will publish a measured fee from a live test sale during our hands-on cycle. MailerLite's commerce fees are structured differently and should be checked against your payment processor's own cut.
A decision rule that holds up
Count your subscribers today.
- Under 1,000 and you need a welcome sequence: MailerLite free. You get the automation you need at $0, and you can migrate later at a size where migration is still cheap.
- Under 1,000 and you do not need automation yet: Kit free. Bank the headroom; it is worth more than the automation you are not using.
- Over 1,000 and paying: price both at your actual list size. The gap narrows as lists grow, and Kit's creator tooling starts earning its premium.
Who should not choose either
- Anyone running a product with in-app behavioural triggers. That is a lifecycle platform's job, not a newsletter tool's.
- Teams needing deep CRM and email in one system. Both integrate with CRMs rather than replace them.
- High-volume senders past 100,000 subscribers. At that scale, dedicated sending infrastructure and negotiated pricing belong in the conversation.
What we cannot verify
Plan limits and prices above come from both vendors' pricing pages, verified October 23, 2026, and we re-check quarterly. Our hands-on testing cycle is in progress — we have not yet run parallel live campaigns, so we cannot report measured inbox placement, deliverability differences between the two sending infrastructures, or support response times. The Kit transaction-fee line remains unmeasured on our side. Once the testing window closes, this comparison will carry account screenshots and a measured fee from a real test sale, per our How We Test process.