Mailchimp vs Kit (2026)

Pick Kit if you are a creator who sells ebooks, courses or a paid newsletter: its free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers, product sales work on every plan, and by 15,000 subscribers it costs $169 a month against $230 for Mailchimp Standard. Pick Mailchimp if you run a small business or online shop that needs one of its 300+ integrations, a phone app, or the lowest price for a list of a few hundred contacts. At 10,000 contacts with full automation the two cost about the same ($135 against $139 a month, checked November 4, 2026). Mailchimp's free plan stops at 250 contacts, so a growing list will pay sooner there.

Pricing compared

Both tools charge by the size of your list, and both publish their prices. These figures are US dollars for monthly billing, checked on November 4, 2026.

Contacts	Mailchimp Essentials	Mailchimp Standard	Kit Creator	Kit Pro
500	$13	$20	$39 (up to 1,000)	$79 (up to 1,000)
5,000	$75	$100	$89	$139
10,000	$110	$135	$139	$189
25,000	$270	$310	$199	$279

Mailchimp is cheaper for small lists. A business with 500 contacts pays $20 a month for Standard, which includes flows of up to 200 points, while Kit's cheapest plan with automations is $39. The gap closes as you grow. At 15,000 contacts Kit Creator is $169 against $230 for Mailchimp Standard, and by 25,000 Kit Creator is $111 a month cheaper than Mailchimp Standard.

Mailchimp counts subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts toward your limit, and its help center says so in those words. Kit bills only for unique, active subscribers. So if your list carries a lot of old unsubscribes, Mailchimp's real bill may sit a tier higher than you expect. Mailchimp also caps sends at 10 times your contacts on Essentials, 12 times on Standard and 15 times on Premium, and charges extra if you go over. Kit has no sending limit on any plan.

Kit's yearly billing costs the price of 10 months, so Creator for 1,000 subscribers is $390 a year. When we checked, Kit was also taking 25% off the first year of Pro billed yearly for lists up to 65,000, as a limited-time offer. Mailchimp was advertising 15% off the first 12 months for lists over 10,000 contacts, and it offers Pay As You Go email credits for people who send rarely. Mailchimp Premium starts at $350 a month for 10,000 contacts and adds phone support and unlimited users.

Selling through Kit costs 3.5% plus 30 cents per sale on every plan, with card processing included in that figure.

Free plans

This is the widest gap between the two. Kit's free plan lets you collect up to 10,000 subscribers and send them unlimited broadcasts. It also includes unlimited landing pages and forms, tagging and segments, A/B tests on two subject lines, and digital product sales. You get one user, Kit branding stays on, and there are no sequences or visual automations.

Mailchimp's free plan covers 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, with no more than 250 a day. It includes one user, one audience, pop-up forms and a limited set of templates, but no scheduling, no automated flows and email support for your first 30 days only. If you go over 250 contacts, Mailchimp holds all sending until you upgrade or delete contacts.

If you want to build a newsletter for free and only send broadcasts, Kit is the clear choice. Mailchimp's free plan suits a club or a very small shop that sends a few emails a month to a short list.

Automations and email building

Mailchimp splits automation by plan. Essentials allows flows of up to 4 steps, which covers a short welcome series. Standard and Premium allow up to 200 flow points with branches, and add predictive segments that group contacts by how likely they are to buy. Standard and Premium also include Intuit Assist, an AI writing helper that Mailchimp labels a beta in English. Its flows cover welcome series and abandoned cart reminders, and its 300+ integrations bring store purchases and sign-ups into your audience.

Kit's paid plans include unlimited visual automations and email sequences, so you build a flow on a canvas that sends people down different paths when they sign up, click a link or buy. A sequence can skip people who have already bought, which matters when you run a launch. Creator and Pro can also email shoppers who leave a checkout on Shopify, Fourthwall or Wix, and Kit MCP lets Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini read your Kit data and draft or schedule emails that you approve before anything changes.

For testing, Kit allows A/B tests of two subject lines on Free and Creator and five on Pro. Mailchimp starts A/B testing on Essentials and adds multivariate testing on Standard. Both tools let you build emails with a drag-and-drop editor and templates, and Mailchimp's Standard and Premium plans let you send your own coded templates.

On automation alone the two are close for a creator. Mailchimp gives you more for less at the bottom (Standard at $20), and Kit gives you every automation feature on its cheapest paid plan without a step cap.

Selling, growth and integrations

Kit is built for people who make money from their list. On every plan you can sell ebooks, courses, coaching and paid newsletter tiers, and Kit delivers the product. On Creator and Pro, Recommendations lets other creators suggest your newsletter when someone signs up to theirs, Paid Recommendations lets you pay for subscribers or earn when your readers join someone else (Kit keeps 23.5%), and newsletter sponsorships match you with advertisers who pay per click. Pro adds a referral program and Subscriber Signals, which scores each subscriber from one to five stars, useful when you pitch a sponsor.

Mailchimp is built for businesses that sell elsewhere and want email to follow the customer. Its landing page builder can pull product images from a connected store, and its integrations list runs past 300 apps on every plan, including Free. Kit lists 100+ apps in its App Store, but free-plan accounts can only use the free ones, and paid apps need Creator or Pro.

Both offer SMS: Mailchimp as an add-on for paid plans in selected countries, and Kit on Creator and Pro. Neither site gives per-message costs on the pricing page.

Ease of use and getting started

Kit's 14-day trial on Creator and Pro needs no credit card, and on paid plans Kit's own team moves your forms, templates and automations over from your old platform at no charge. Kit keeps everyone on one list and sorts people with tags and segments, which makes it easy to send a launch email to buyers of one product only.

Mailchimp's trial also lasts 14 days on Essentials and Standard, but you enter payment details when you sign up. Standard includes one onboarding session, and Premium includes four with a dedicated specialist. Mailchimp separates contacts into audiences, with 1 on Free, 3 on Essentials, 5 on Standard and unlimited on Premium. Mailchimp also has free iOS and Android apps for editing campaigns and reading reports, while Kit's own site does not mention a mobile app.

Support

Mailchimp gives free users email support for 30 days, then 24/7 email and chat on Essentials and Standard, and phone and priority support on Premium. Kit gives free users email support, 24/7 email and chat on Creator, and 24/7 priority email and chat on Pro. Kit also runs free Kit University courses for creators. If you want to talk to someone by phone, Mailchimp Premium is the only option of the two, and it starts at $350 a month.

Who each one suits

Mailchimp suits a local business, shop or service company with a list of a few hundred to a few thousand contacts that wants a familiar tool, store integrations and a phone app. Standard is the plan most of them need, because Essentials caps flows at 4 steps.

Kit suits writers, coaches, podcasters and course creators who want their list, their automations and their product sales in one account, and who expect their list to grow past a few thousand. It is free to 10,000 subscribers and cheaper than Mailchimp Standard from 15,000.

If you run a paid newsletter and want each sale traced back to the email or link that brought it in, also look at Platformly. It sells paid tiers through Stripe, publishes every issue to a web archive, and keeps automations, an inbox and revenue reports on the same contact records. Kit's creator network (Recommendations and sponsorships) has no match there.

Neither tool has a sales pipeline for B2B teams; look at ActiveCampaign for that, or Klaviyo if you run a large store and want email built around order data.