Six months ago we compared Mailchimp, ConvertKit (now Kit) and Beehiiv. Pricing pages move faster than blog posts, so this is a refresh, and it includes one correction to our original: we said Beehiiv's Scale plan stays flat at $42/mo up to 100,000 subscribers. That was wrong. Scale is priced by list size, so the sticker price only applies at the bottom of the range.
What Changed Since March
Three things matter. First, Beehiiv's Scale pricing: it starts around $43/mo on annual billing (about $49 monthly), and rises with subscriber count. Our tracker lists Scale at $42 and Max at $84, which are the entry-level figures. Second, Kit's paid tiers are quoted per subscriber band: Creator runs about $39/mo at 1,000 subscribers ($33/mo billed annually), around $59 at 3,000 and $89 at 5,000. Third, Mailchimp still charges for every contact on your list, including unsubscribed ones, unless you archive them. That last one quietly inflates a lot of bills.
Prices below come from our product tracker cross-checked against current published pricing. Vendors change tiers often, so confirm on the pricing page before you buy.
Free Tiers
| Mailchimp Free | Kit Newsletter (free) | Beehiiv Free | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subscriber limit | 250 contacts | 10,000 subscribers | 2,500 subscribers |
| Sending | 500 emails/mo (250/day) | Unlimited broadcasts | Unlimited sends |
| Automations | Limited | Not included | Not included |
| Landing pages | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Branding removal | No | No | No |
Kit's free plan is the most generous by headcount, and it is a real option for a writer with a few thousand readers who only needs to send broadcasts. Beehiiv's free plan is the better publishing experience for a newsletter. Mailchimp's free plan is best treated as a trial: 250 contacts and 500 sends a month (250 a day) disappear fast.
Paid Pricing by Plan
| Platform | Plan | Entry price | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mailchimp | Essentials | $13/mo | A/B testing, 24/7 support, no Mailchimp branding |
| Mailchimp | Standard | $20/mo | Advanced automations, retargeting ads, custom templates |
| Mailchimp | Premium | $350/mo | Advanced segmentation, phone support, very large lists |
| Kit | Creator | $33/mo annual ($39 monthly) at 1,000 subs | Automations, integrations, branding removal |
| Kit | Creator Pro | $59/mo entry | Advanced reporting, subscriber scoring, deliverability tools |
| Beehiiv | Scale | ~$43/mo annual (~$49 monthly) | Paid subscriptions, referral program, ad network |
| Beehiiv | Max | ~$84/mo entry | Advanced segmentation, priority support, custom domain |
Remember that the entry price is for the smallest list in each band. Every one of these scales with subscribers.
What You Actually Pay at Different List Sizes
Approximate monthly costs for the mid-tier plan of each platform. Treat these as ballparks, not quotes.
| List size | Mailchimp Standard | Kit Creator | Beehiiv Scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | ~$20 | ~$39 | ~$49 |
| 5,000 | ~$60 | ~$89 | Higher than entry, check calculator |
| 10,000 | ~$100 | ~$119+ | Roughly double entry or more |
| 50,000 | ~$350 | ~$300+ | Roughly 5x the sticker price |
The pattern is clear enough even with rough numbers. Mailchimp wins at the low end. Around 10,000 subscribers the three converge. Beyond that, the gap depends on which features you need, not on a magic flat-rate plan. If someone tells you one of these is dramatically cheaper at scale, ask for their exact subscriber count and tier.
Email Building and Automation
Mailchimp has the most polished drag-and-drop builder and the largest template library. It is good for visually rich promotional email. Automation is competent, but on Essentials it is limited, and you need Standard for the more useful journeys.
Kit keeps its editor deliberately simple, closer to a rich text editor than a page builder. That suits creators who send personal-feeling emails. Its visual automation builder is the strongest of the three for tag-based creator funnels, though a few users find it confusing at first.
Beehiiv is built around the newsletter workflow: a clean writing editor, post pages, archives, and recommendations. Its automation is the lightest of the three. If you need complex multi-branch sequences, this is the weakest fit.
Monetization
This is where the products really diverge.
- ▸Beehiiv has paid subscriptions, a referral program and an ad network on Scale. If you want to earn from the newsletter directly, that is a genuine advantage.
- ▸Kit supports selling digital products and paid newsletters, and it has a Creator Network for cross-promotion. It is better for someone selling a course, a template pack or coaching.
- ▸Mailchimp is aimed at businesses driving sales elsewhere: product announcements, retargeting ads, lifecycle emails. It is not designed to monetize the list itself.
Pros and Cons
Mailchimp
- ▸Pros: familiar brand, big template library, lots of integrations, cheapest entry paid plan.
- ▸Cons: charges for unsubscribed contacts unless archived, small free tier, costs climb quickly, automation on lower tiers is limited.
Kit
- ▸Pros: very generous free plan, strong tagging and segmentation, good creator commerce features.
- ▸Cons: plainer templates, pricing steps up quickly past a few thousand subscribers, the rebrand from ConvertKit still confuses some integrations and documentation.
Beehiiv
- ▸Pros: built for newsletters, native paid subscriptions and referrals, ad network, clean analytics.
- ▸Cons: light automation, entry pricing is misleading for larger lists, and fewer non-newsletter marketing features.
Which Should You Choose?
Pick Mailchimp if you run a small business with a few hundred to a few thousand contacts, want polished promotional emails, and already use tools that integrate with it. Archive unsubscribed contacts regularly.
Pick Kit if you are a solo creator, blogger, podcaster or course seller who needs tags, sequences and simple selling tools. Start on the free plan and upgrade when you need automations.
Pick Beehiiv if your newsletter is the product. Paid tiers, referrals and ads are the reasons to be here. Do the math for your projected list size first, since the Scale sticker price is the floor and not the ceiling.
Skip all three if you need advanced e-commerce flows (look at Klaviyo) or deep multi-step automation on a budget (look at ActiveCampaign or Brevo).
Migration and Lock-In
Moving between these platforms is easier than it used to be, but it is never free. Subscriber lists export as CSV from all three, so the core asset is portable. What does not move cleanly is everything around it: automations have to be rebuilt by hand, tags and segments map imperfectly, landing pages and forms need new embed codes, and your sender reputation has to be warmed up again on a new sending domain if you change the authentication setup.
Two practical tips. If you might switch, keep your tags simple and consistently named from day one, because messy tagging is the biggest source of migration pain. And if you have paid subscribers on Beehiiv or product buyers on Kit, check how billing and payment history transfer before you commit, since that data is the hardest to recreate elsewhere.
The Bottom Line
The rankings from March mostly hold, but the pricing story changed: nobody here has a flat low price at large scale. Model your own list at 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 subscribers on each vendor's calculator, count only the features you will use in the first year, and start on a free plan where you can. Switching later is possible, but moving automations and subscriber history is always more work than it looks.
Pricing verified against published vendor pages and our product tracker on the publication date. Some links on this site may be affiliate links, which never change our recommendations.