Kit vs MailerLite vs beehiiv: the best newsletter platform for a founder

A newsletter is the one marketing channel a founder fully owns. Search rankings shift, social reach rises and falls, and ad prices climb, but a list of people who asked to hear from you stays yours. Picking the platform it lives on is a small decision with a long tail, because moving a list later means moving forms, automations and sometimes paying subscribers too.

Three platforms come up most for founders. Kit, which was called ConvertKit until 2024, is built for creators who sell something. MailerLite is the low-cost all-rounder that many small businesses start on. beehiiv was founded by people who helped build Morning Brew, and is designed to grow a newsletter into a publication that earns money on its own.

This comparison covers free plans, what each costs at 1,000 and 10,000 subscribers, automations, landing pages, monetization and deliverability. It also explains the choice StartupStead made for its own newsletter, since we faced exactly this decision.

Prices side by side

Listed plans and prices, checked on October 7, 2026.^{⁠[1],[4],[6]} All three price by subscriber count, so the figure grows with your list.

Prices on all three move with every subscriber band, and two of the three renamed their plans this year.^⁠[5],[7] MailerLite's Growing Business plan is now Comfort and Advanced is now Power. beehiiv's Launch, Scale and Max became Free, Lite and Pro for new customers from October 1, 2026, with existing customers moving at their first renewal on or after November 1.^⁠[7]

What 1,000 subscribers cost

A founder with a first thousand readers, which is where many B2B newsletters sit after a year of steady writing:

• Kit: $0 on the free plan, which covers up to 10,000 subscribers. Creator, which adds automated sequences and integrations, is listed from $39 a month, less with annual billing.
• MailerLite: the free plan stops at 250 subscribers, so a list of 1,000 needs a paid plan. Comfort is listed from $12 a month at the smallest band.^⁠[4]
• beehiiv: $0 on the free plan, which covers up to 2,500 subscribers.^⁠[6]

At this size, the free plans on Kit and beehiiv cover most of what a founder needs. The question is which features you would pay for, not whether you have to pay.

What 10,000 subscribers cost

At 10,000 subscribers, a newsletter starts to carry real weight: it can fill a webinar, launch a product, or earn ad revenue on its own.

• Kit: still on the free plan at exactly 10,000. One subscriber more moves you to a paid plan, priced on Kit's calculator for that band.
• MailerLite: a paid plan priced for the 10,000 band.
• beehiiv: past the free plan's 2,500 cap, so Lite or Pro, priced for the 10,000 band.

Kit

Kit is built around one idea: subscribers carry tags, and tags drive what each person receives. Someone who downloads a pricing guide gets a tag, enters a sequence of three emails about pricing, and later sees the product launch email while others don't. For a founder with a product or a service to sell, that is the feature that matters.

The free plan now covers up to 10,000 subscribers, with unlimited forms, landing pages and broadcasts.^⁠[2] Paid plans add automated sequences, visual automations, integrations and more. Creator is listed from $39 a month at 1,000 subscribers and allows two users. Creator Pro, listed from $79, adds unlimited team members, advanced reporting, subscriber scoring and more automation. Annual billing gives two months free on either plan.^⁠[1],[3]

Kit also sells digital products and paid newsletters directly, and runs a Creator Network where newsletters recommend each other.

Best for: founders whose newsletter feeds a business. Watch for: the team limit on Creator, and the jump in price once you pass each subscriber band on a paid plan.

MailerLite

MailerLite has long been the low-price choice. It covers the basics well: a drag-and-drop editor, automations, signup forms, landing pages and a simple website builder, with paid newsletter subscriptions through Stripe.

The free plan is small. It allows up to 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails a month and two user seats, which is enough to test the product but not to run a list for long.^⁠[4] Comfort, the renamed Growing Business plan, is listed from $12 a month for the smallest band. Power, the renamed Advanced plan, adds unlimited monthly emails, unlimited user seats and live chat support.^⁠[4],[5]

Best for: small businesses that want one low-cost tool for a general marketing list, plus a landing page or a small site. Watch for: the email caps on lower plans, and how fast the price climbs as the list grows.

beehiiv

beehiiv treats a newsletter as a publication. Every newsletter gets a hosted website with an archive of past issues that search engines can index, and the growth and money tools sit in the product rather than in add-ons: a referral program, recommendations between newsletters, an ad network that matches you with sponsors, and paid subscriptions.

From October 2026, beehiiv's plans are Free, Lite, Pro and Enterprise. The free plan covers up to 2,500 subscribers, and beehiiv says every core product is now available on every plan, including Free. Lite is listed at $49 a month billed yearly, and Pro at $95 a month billed yearly, with prices rising by subscriber band.^⁠[6],[7]

Best for: founders building a media business, or a newsletter they want to earn money on its own. Watch for: the plan changes this year, which mean older reviews and comparisons quote names and prices that no longer apply.

Automations and sequences

A welcome sequence is the single most useful automation for any newsletter. New subscribers get a short series over their first week: who you are, your three best pieces, and what to expect. It turns a stranger into a reader while your name is still fresh.

• Kit is the strongest of the three here. Its visual automation builder branches on tags, link clicks and purchases.
• MailerLite has a capable automation builder on paid plans, with a simpler version on its free plan.
• beehiiv has automations too, built mainly around welcome series and subscriber journeys for a publication rather than a sales funnel.

If you sell a product with a long buying cycle, such as B2B software, the depth of automation is the deciding factor. If you publish one newsletter a week to everyone, it barely matters.

Landing pages, forms and websites

Every platform gives you a signup form to embed on your own site and a hosted landing page for a lead magnet. They differ on how much website you get.

• Kit offers unlimited landing pages and forms on every plan, and a simple hosted newsletter page.
• MailerLite includes a website builder with a blog, which can replace a small site.
• beehiiv gives every newsletter a full website with an archive, custom pages and SEO settings.

If you already have a website, as most founders do, what matters is a clean embed. Kit's forms accept a plain form post, which suits a static site with no server code. Our guide to what a startup website needs covers where a signup form belongs on the page.

Making money from a newsletter

There are three ways to earn from a list directly: sponsors, paid subscriptions and recommendations.

• Sponsors and ads. beehiiv runs its own ad network and handles the matching and payment. Kit and MailerLite leave you to sell sponsorships yourself.
• Paid subscriptions. All three can charge for a newsletter or for premium issues, using Stripe for payments.
• Recommendations. Kit's Creator Network and beehiiv's recommendation tools let newsletters suggest each other at signup, and in some cases pay per subscriber gained.

For most founders, though, the newsletter earns its keep indirectly. It drives sales of a product, fills a pipeline or builds trust before a launch. In that case, monetization features are a nice extra, not the reason to choose.

Deliverability and a custom sending domain

A newsletter that lands in the promotions tab still gets read. One that lands in spam doesn't. All three platforms handle the sending infrastructure, but your own setup matters too.

• Use your own domain. Send from an address on your company's domain, not the platform's default, and authenticate it with SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Each platform shows the DNS records to add.
• Meet the bulk sender rules. Gmail and Yahoo require bulk senders to authenticate their mail, offer one-click unsubscribe and keep spam complaints low.^⁠[8] All three platforms add the unsubscribe header for you.
• Clean the list. Remove addresses that haven't opened in six months or so. A smaller, engaged list delivers better than a large, cold one.

Our guide to cold email domain setup walks through the DNS records in detail. A newsletter should go out from your main domain or a subdomain of it, never from the separate domain you use for cold email.

What CAN-SPAM asks of a newsletter

The federal CAN-SPAM Act covers commercial email, and a founder's newsletter that promotes a product usually counts. The FTC's compliance guide sets out what every message needs:^⁠[9]

• Honest headers and subject lines. The from name, reply-to address and subject must not mislead.
• A physical postal address. A street address, a PO box or a private mailbox registered with a commercial mail receiving agency.
• A clear way to opt out. It must work for at least 30 days after you send, and opt-outs must be honored within 10 business days.
• No fees or hurdles to unsubscribe. You can't ask for more than an email address, or make someone do more than reply or visit one page.

The FTC lists penalties of up to $53,088 for each email that breaks the rules.^⁠[9] All three platforms add an unsubscribe link and a footer with your address, but you are responsible for what that footer says. Many founders use a virtual mailbox or their registered agent's address rather than a home address.

How StartupStead chose its own newsletter

We had to make this choice for this site, and the deciding factor was not price. StartupStead is a static site with no server of its own, so the signup form has to post straight to the newsletter platform. Kit accepts a plain form post, which means no scripts, no embeds and no tracking on our pages. The free plan covers a list far larger than ours will be for some time.

beehiiv was the close second. Its website and archive are excellent, but we already publish every article here, so a second site for past issues would compete with our own pages in search. MailerLite would work too, but its free plan's 250-subscriber cap would mean paying sooner than either alternative.

Moving later

All three let you import a list from a CSV file, and all three offer help with migration on paid plans. Subscribers move easily. Automations, tags, templates and paid subscriptions take more work, and paying subscribers may need to be moved in Stripe as well. Every move risks a dip in deliverability while the new platform learns your sending pattern, so pick with a few years in mind.

Questions to answer in a trial

• Does the signup form fit your website without slowing it down?
• How long does it take to build a three-email welcome sequence?
• Can you send from your own domain with all three records passing?
• What will the plan you need cost when the list is ten times larger?
• If you want to earn money from the list, which of the three methods will you actually use?

Which one should you pick?

• Pick Kit if the newsletter supports a business you already run and you want tags and sequences that sell. Start on the free plan and pay when you need automations.
• Pick beehiiv if the newsletter is the product and you want growth and monetization tools in one place.
• Pick MailerLite if you want one inexpensive tool for a general marketing list, a landing page and perhaps a small website.

A newsletter is part of a wider set of tools a new business runs on. Our guide to the startup tech stack covers the rest, and our comparison of HubSpot, Pipedrive and Attio covers the CRM that newsletter leads eventually land in.