Kit vs MailerLite vs beehiiv: Best for Solo Creators (2026)

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Your email platform is the one tool you don’t want to switch twice. Kit is built for selling to your list, MailerLite for doing a lot on a small budget, and beehiiv for running a newsletter as a media business. beehiiv renamed and repriced its plans on October 1, 2026 (Launch, Scale and Max became Free, Lite and Pro), and MailerLite renamed its plans in mid-2026, so we rebuilt this comparison from the official pages this month.

Kit vs MailerLite vs beehiiv at a glance

Prices checked October 2026. “Annual” means the per-month price when billed yearly.

Scroll sideways to see all columns.

MailerLite’s headline prices are for monthly billing (annual saves 10%). MailerLite and beehiiv publish every subscriber tier, but in October 2026 Kit’s page only showed its 1,000-subscriber prices. Rather than guess, we wrote “check current pricing” wherever we couldn’t confirm a Kit number. To estimate your cost at any list size, use our email cost calculator, then check the vendor’s slider before you decide.

Free plans: what you actually get

Kit Free

Kit’s free plan is the most generous by list size: up to 10,000 subscribers, unlimited forms and landing pages, unlimited broadcasts with A/B testing, and the ability to sell digital products and subscriptions. When you pass 10,000, you have to upgrade to keep sending.

What’s missing matters, though. Visual automations, email sequences, rules and RSS campaigns all require a paid plan. So you can build a big list for free, but you can’t run a proper welcome sequence or a sales funnel until you pay. Our Kit Free plan guide covers exactly what’s locked.

Good fit: creators who send weekly broadcasts and want to grow without paying yet.

MailerLite Free

MailerLite’s free plan is small: 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month. But it’s the only one of the three that includes real automations on free (3 active), plus 3 forms, 1 landing page, 1 website and 1 digital product. Here’s what happens when you hit them: MailerLite free plan limits.

Good fit: someone testing a new idea who wants to set up an automated welcome flow from day one.

beehiiv Free

beehiiv’s free plan covers up to 2,500 subscribers, with unlimited email sends, a website builder with 1 custom page, templates, its recommendation network, and API access (excluding the Send API). You get 1 publication and 1 team seat. Email automations aren’t on the free plan, but every account can send a one-email welcome message when someone subscribes. Paid subscriptions and ad monetization also start on paid plans. More detail in our beehiiv Free plan breakdown.

Good fit: a new newsletter writer who mainly publishes posts and wants a hosted website with them.

Pricing at 1k, 5k and 10k subscribers

Here’s what we could confirm from official pages:

• Kit: At 1,000 subscribers, Creator is $33/month billed yearly ($390/year), or $39/month billed monthly. Pro is shown at $50/month for the first year when billed annually ($593). That’s a first-year discount off the standard price ($66/month shown struck through), and it renews at the standard rate. Kit’s billing help article lists Creator at $59/month for 3,000 subscribers. Kit bills on active subscribers, not on emails sent.
• MailerLite: On monthly billing, Comfort starts at $12/month and Power at $25/month (500 subscribers). At 1,000 subscribers they’re $19 and $39, at 5,000 $49 and $69, and at 10,000 $89 and $129. Annual billing saves 10% (Comfort $80.10/month at 10,000, for example), and nonprofits get 30% off. Comfort includes a monthly email allowance of 10× your tier’s subscriber ceiling. At a 5,000-subscriber tier, for example, that’s 50,000 emails. Power has unlimited sending under a fair-use policy.
• beehiiv: On yearly billing, Lite is $49/month at 1,000 subscribers, $95 at 5,000 and $119 at 10,000. Pro is $95, $169 and $199. Billed monthly, Lite is $59, $109 and $139, and Pro is $109, $199 and $239. Yearly billing saves up to 20% versus monthly. Lite goes up to 100,000 subscribers and Pro up to 250,000. These are the plans and prices beehiiv introduced on October 1, 2026; existing customers move to them at their first renewal on or after November 1, 2026.

In practice: at 1,000 subscribers you can pay $0 on Kit (without automations) or beehiiv. At 10,000, Kit Free still covers sending, while beehiiv Lite costs $119/month billed yearly ($139 monthly). If you want automations, MailerLite Comfort is the cheapest paid plan we could confirm at every size: $19/month at 1,000, $49 at 5,000 and $89 at 10,000 (10% less billed yearly). Kit Creator at 1,000 is $33/month billed yearly, and we couldn’t confirm Kit’s paid prices at 5,000 or 10,000.

Automations

• Kit has the most creator-focused automation: visual automations, unlimited sequences and a template library on Creator and above. Tagging subscribers by interest and sending them into different sequences is where Kit shines for course creators and product sellers. None of this is on the free plan.
• MailerLite includes its automation builder on every plan, with limits by tier: 3 active automations on Free, 50 on Comfort and unlimited on Power. For most solo businesses, 50 is plenty.
• beehiiv offers workflow automations with triggers like signups, clicks and purchases, plus delays and conditional branches. They start on the first paid plan. beehiiv is improving here, but its center of gravity is still the newsletter itself, not complex funnels.

Landing pages and websites

• Kit: unlimited landing pages and forms on every plan, including Free.
• MailerLite: a website builder plus landing pages, limited by plan (1 on Free, 10 on Comfort, unlimited on Power).
• beehiiv: landing pages on all plans, plus a hosted website for your posts, which helps with search traffic.

If you already have a WordPress site, you mainly need embedded forms, and all three provide them.

Paid newsletters and monetization

This is where the platforms differ most.

• beehiiv takes 0% of your paid subscription and digital product revenue (Stripe charges its usual 2.9% + 30¢). For a fee-by-fee comparison, see beehiiv vs Kit for a paid newsletter. Paid plans also add ad monetization through beehiiv’s ad network, plus a recommendation network for cross-promoting with other newsletters. If your goal is “newsletter as a business,” beehiiv has the most built-in revenue options.
• Kit lets you sell digital products and subscriptions, even on Free, at 3.5% + 30¢ per transaction. Kit says that fee includes card processing. Paid plans can also earn from Paid Recommendations (Kit takes a 23.5% fee on those). Kit is strongest when your newsletter feeds products: ebooks, templates, courses, coaching.
• MailerLite supports paid newsletter subscriptions through Stripe (one-time or recurring), listed from the Comfort plan. It also supports digital products: 1 on Free, 5 on Comfort, unlimited on Power. Its pricing page doesn’t mention a MailerLite commission, so check current pricing and Stripe’s fees before you launch.

Deliverability-related features

None of these vendors can guarantee inbox placement, and we haven’t measured it. What you can compare is the tooling:

• Kit Pro adds deliverability reporting.
• MailerLite offers a dedicated IP as an add-on on Comfort and on Enterprise.
• beehiiv includes a dedicated IP on Enterprise only.

For solo creators, the big wins are the same on every platform: authenticate your sending domain, prune inactive subscribers, and use double opt-in for giveaway signups.

Ease of migration

• Kit advertises free migrations, but its pricing page doesn’t say which plans qualify, so check with Kit before you count on it. Forms, landing pages and templates have to be recreated. Old automations get rebuilt as Kit sequences and visual automations.
• MailerLite has a migration guide, and its success team can help with switching. Enterprise adds onboarding consultation.
• beehiiv has a content importer for Substack, WordPress, Ghost and Mailchimp on all plans, so your archive of past posts can come with you. Paid plans and trials get ticket support. beehiiv’s own comparison page says subscriber lists move via CSV and automations have to be rebuilt.

Subscriber lists move easily; automations never do. The more funnels you build, the more a later switch costs, so pick for where you’re going.

Who each platform is best for

Choose Kit if you sell digital products, courses or coaching and want tagging, sequences and funnels built around that. It’s also the obvious pick if you want to grow to 10,000 subscribers for free and you’re fine sending broadcasts only for now. Skip Kit if you need automations on a $0 budget, or your main income will be newsletter ads.

Choose MailerLite if you want the most features per dollar: automations, landing pages, a website and digital products on cheap paid plans. It’s great for freelancers and small service businesses. Skip MailerLite if you want a big free list (250 is tight) or built-in newsletter ad revenue.

Choose beehiiv if your newsletter is the product. That means growth through recommendations, monetization through ads and paid subscriptions with a 0% platform cut, and a hosted site for your posts. Skip beehiiv if you mainly need sales funnels, or you’re price-sensitive past 2,500 subscribers.

A no-affiliate alternative: Substack

Substack is worth a mention because it costs nothing to publish, at any list size. Instead of a monthly fee, it takes 10% of paid subscription revenue, plus Stripe fees (2.9% + 30¢ per US card payment and 0.7% for recurring billing). A custom domain is a one-time $50. Automation and branding control are limited, but for a pure writer it’s the simplest start. We earn nothing if you choose it.

Planning your full setup? See our complete solo creator tool stack, or our step-by-step Hostinger WordPress tutorial to launch your site.

FAQ

Which is cheapest for a new creator with under 1,000 subscribers? Kit and beehiiv are both free at that size. MailerLite is free only up to 250 subscribers but includes automations. If you need a welcome sequence, MailerLite Free or a cheap Comfort plan ($19/month at 1,000 subscribers, $12 at 500) is the most affordable way to get one.

Can I run a paid newsletter on a free plan? On Kit, yes: the free plan includes selling digital products and subscriptions (3.5% + 30¢ per transaction). On beehiiv and MailerLite, paid subscriptions start on paid plans.

Which has the best automations? For creator funnels, Kit’s visual automations and sequences on Creator and above. For the most automations at the lowest price, MailerLite.

How hard is it to switch later? Moving subscribers is easy on all three. Rebuilding automations, forms and templates takes the time. Kit advertises free migrations (check with Kit which plans qualify), and beehiiv imports past posts from Substack, WordPress, Ghost and Mailchimp.

Why no Kit paid prices at 5,000 or 10,000 subscribers? Kit’s pricing page only showed its 1,000-subscriber prices in October 2026 (its billing help article gives $59/month at 3,000 as an example), and we only publish numbers we can confirm. MailerLite and beehiiv publish every tier, and those prices are in the table above. Use Kit’s pricing slider for your list size.