For a US list under ten thousand subscribers, Kit is the clear winner on price: its free plan carries the entire list with unlimited sending, while the same list is a paid Mailchimp subscription. Pick Mailchimp only if you sell online or need serious templates, segmentation and integrations, which Kit intentionally does not offer.
Kit, formerly ConvertKit, is what newsletter operators and course sellers use. Mailchimp is what businesses reach for by reflex. Plans and pricing checked July 2026, and every number below is read live from our pricing database.
The free plans are not comparable
"Both have a free plan" is technically true and practically useless. Here is what the two plans actually allow.
- Kit free plan: Yes (10K subscribers, 1 automation, no A/B)
- Mailchimp free plan: Yes (250 contacts, 500 sends /mo)
Kit's plan is capped on one axis, subscribers, with no monthly send limit. You can email ten thousand people every week and pay nothing. Mailchimp's plan is capped on two axes simultaneously, contacts and sends, and the send cap binds first: a couple of hundred subscribers emailed twice a month has already used it up.
Kit's entry position is therefore $0 (free to 10K), against Mailchimp's $13/mo (Essentials). This is the single most useful fact on this page, and it is why we will say plainly that Mailchimp loses on price below ten thousand subscribers. It is not close.
Pricing and plans compared
Once you cross ten thousand subscribers, the comparison gets ordinary. Kit's paid tier is Creator, priced on Per subscriber, billing Active subscribers. Mailchimp prices on Per contact and bills All contacts including unsubscribed.
That billing difference compounds. Any list that has run for a few years carries unsubscribes, and Mailchimp keeps billing for them until you delete them yourself. Kit does not count them. The calculator above prices both platforms against your real subscriber count, which is the comparison that decides it.
Both bill in US dollars, so there is no exchange rate to think about on either side.
Who each one is built for
Kit is for people whose product is what they publish: newsletter writers, course creators, coaches, authors, consultants building an audience ahead of an offer. Its emails default to plain, personal-looking mail, which is a deliberate choice rather than a missing feature, because in that context plain mail from a human outperforms a designed template.
Mailchimp is for businesses marketing to customers: a store, a clinic, a studio, an agency, a nonprofit. It ships 100+ templates and 300+ integrations, plus e-commerce reporting, and any marketer you hire will already know it.
Where Kit is genuinely weaker
The free plan does not make Kit the better tool, and pretending it does would be dishonest. Kit is thinner in four places.
Segmentation is Basic (tags, segments), against Mailchimp's Moderate (tags, predicted demographics). Tags will carry a content business a long way, but they cannot segment on purchase history or predicted value.
A/B testing is Yes (Creator Pro only), so neither the free plan nor the entry paid plan lets you split-test a subject line. Mailchimp's is Yes (Standard+).
Design is minimal by intent: 50+ templates against Mailchimp's 100+. If your campaigns need to look like a catalog, Kit will fight you.
E-commerce is shallow. Kit integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce, where Mailchimp covers Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento.
Automation compared
Kit's automation is Basic (Free), Advanced (Creator+), and its visual sequence builder does the creator job well: someone subscribes from a form, gets tagged, receives a sequence, and branches on behavior. Mailchimp's is Basic (Essentials), Advanced (Standard+), so the cheap plan is not the plan that automates.
The fair summary: Kit's automation is better value, Mailchimp's ceiling is higher. A creator may never hit Kit's limits. A business connecting email to a store, a CRM and a help desk will hit them fast.
US considerations
Both bill in US dollars, so your invoice is a fixed amount each month.
On compliance, Kit is Yes (unsubscribe, sender ID, address footer) and Mailchimp is Yes (unsubscribe, sender ID, address footer). Both handle the CAN-SPAM mechanics: a working unsubscribe honored promptly, accurate sender identification, and a physical mailing address in the footer of every campaign. Neither tool removes your own responsibility to send only to people who expect to hear from you.
SMS is a hard split, and it matters more in the United States than almost anywhere. Kit's US SMS is No, so if text is part of your marketing mix Kit is not a candidate at all. Mailchimp's is Yes (US SMS, paid add-on), which means it is available but is a separate line on the bill, and TCPA consent for text messaging is a separate opt-in from your email consent either way.
Pros and cons for this matchup
Kit wins on a free plan a real list can live on with no send cap, sequence automation aimed at content businesses, active-subscriber billing that ignores dead weight, and an editor that stays out of the way. It loses on design, segmentation depth, A/B testing being locked to the top plan, and having no SMS at all.
Mailchimp wins on templates, integrations, e-commerce depth, reporting and sheer familiarity. It loses on a free plan that cannot carry a working list, on charging for contacts who unsubscribed, and on reserving advanced automation for a higher tier.
The verdict
If you publish to an audience and your list is under ten thousand people, choose Kit. It costs nothing, it does not cap your sending, and its automation is designed for the sequences you actually run. Mailchimp cannot beat free, and the features it adds are features a newsletter never touches.
If you sell products, choose Mailchimp and pay for it. Kit's segmentation cannot follow a customer through a purchase and its commerce integrations stop early, so the free plan buys you a ceiling you will hit. If your store is the whole business, also read our Klaviyo pricing guide, because that is the tool built for it.
If you are a service business with a growing list and no store, start free on Kit, keep building, and move only when a specific missing feature costs you more than the subscription would. Run your own subscriber count through the calculator above, and see every platform we track in our US email marketing comparison or our Mailchimp alternatives guide.