Kit (ConvertKit) vs Mailchimp 2026: Which Email Platform Is Better?

Kit (formerly ConvertKit) and Mailchimp are two of the most established email marketing platforms, but they target different users. Kit is purpose-built for creators who sell digital products, courses, and memberships. Mailchimp is a broader marketing platform with deep e-commerce integrations for online stores.

This comparison covers every meaningful difference so you can pick the right platform for your situation.

Feature Comparison

Pricing Breakdown

Mailchimp has four tiers: Free (500 contacts, heavy branding), Essentials ($13/mo for 500 contacts), Standard ($20/mo for 500 contacts), and Premium ($350/mo for 10,000 contacts). Pricing scales with contact count. At 10,000 contacts, Standard costs around $100/month, and at 50,000 it reaches $350/month.

Kit has Free (10,000 subscribers, limited features), Creator ($25/mo for 1,000 subscribers), and Creator Pro ($50/mo for 1,000 subscribers). At 10,000 subscribers, Creator costs $100/month and Creator Pro costs $140/month. At 50,000 subscribers, Creator runs around $259/month.

The pricing is comparable at mid-range subscriber counts. The key difference: Kit's free tier is dramatically more generous (10,000 vs 500), but Mailchimp's paid plans include more marketing features per dollar. Kit charges extra for features like subscriber scoring and advanced reporting on Creator Pro.

Automations

Kit's visual automation builder is genuinely better. You can create branching sequences triggered by subscriber actions, tag changes, purchases, form submissions, and custom events. The visual canvas makes it easy to see the entire journey. Conditional logic is intuitive, and you can mix time delays, actions, and conditions freely.

Mailchimp's Customer Journeys (their automation builder) is capable but less flexible. It handles standard automations well: welcome sequences, abandoned carts, post-purchase follow-ups, re-engagement campaigns. But complex branching logic with multiple conditions is harder to set up, and some advanced triggers require the Standard or Premium plan.

For creators running sophisticated funnels, Kit wins. For standard e-commerce automations, Mailchimp is perfectly adequate.

E-Commerce and Revenue

Mailchimp has a significant advantage for online stores. Its Shopify and WooCommerce integrations sync product catalogs, track purchases, and enable product-recommendation emails automatically. You can segment by purchase history, average order value, and predicted lifetime value. The abandoned cart flow includes dynamic product images pulled directly from your store.

Kit integrates with Shopify and WooCommerce but at a surface level. You can trigger automations based on purchases, but you do not get product recommendations, purchase-frequency segmentation, or revenue attribution dashboards. Kit's strength is selling its own native digital products, not integrating with external stores.

Email Design

Mailchimp offers a drag-and-drop builder with 100+ templates, dynamic content blocks, and brand kit management. If you need polished, image-heavy emails for product launches or promotions, Mailchimp is the clear choice.

Kit takes a minimalist approach. Emails are primarily text with optional images. This is intentional: plain-text-style emails consistently get higher deliverability and open rates for creator-style content. But if your brand depends on visual design, Kit will feel limiting.

Deliverability

Kit has a strong deliverability reputation, partly because it only serves legitimate creators and partly because its text-focused emails avoid spam triggers. Mailchimp's deliverability is decent but inconsistent. Because Mailchimp serves everyone from enterprise brands to small businesses with varying list hygiene, shared IP reputation can fluctuate. Mailchimp's dedicated IP option (Premium plan, $350/mo) fixes this but at serious cost.

Landing Pages and Forms

Kit offers unlimited landing pages and opt-in forms on all plans, including the free tier. Templates are clean and conversion-focused, designed for lead magnets, webinars, and product launches. You can embed forms on external sites or use Kit-hosted landing pages with custom domains.

Mailchimp includes landing pages on all plans but limits form styling options on the free and Essentials tiers. Mailchimp's form builder is more complex, with pop-ups, embedded forms, and signup landing pages. For e-commerce, Mailchimp's forms can trigger product-specific automations, which Kit cannot match in that context.

Migration and Portability

Both platforms let you import subscribers from CSV files. Kit supports direct migration from Mailchimp, Drip, and several other platforms with automated import tools. Mailchimp's import is less streamlined for inbound migrations but supports CSV and integrates with many CRM tools. Exporting from either platform is straightforward: both give you full subscriber data in CSV format with tags, custom fields, and subscription dates.

Who Wins?

Choose Kit if:

• You sell digital products, courses, coaching, or memberships
• You need sophisticated visual automations with branching logic
• You prefer text-focused emails that prioritize deliverability
• You want native commerce without Gumroad, Teachable, or Podia
• You want a generous free tier to start (10,000 subscribers)
• You are a solo creator or small team, not a large marketing department

Choose Mailchimp if:

• You run a Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce store
• You need abandoned cart emails with dynamic product recommendations
• You want designed, image-heavy email templates
• You need advanced A/B testing across multiple variables
• You want detailed revenue attribution and e-commerce reporting
• You need 300+ native integrations with marketing tools