Kit gives away the largest free subscriber cap in email marketing: 10,000 subscribers, with unlimited broadcasts, landing pages and forms. It is a real offer and it is the most quietly expensive free plan in the category. Here is why, with prices verified on 2026-09-09.
What the free plan does not include
Not "fewer automations". No automations and no sequences at all.
That means no welcome email when someone subscribes. No delivery of the lead magnet they signed up for. No follow-up after a purchase. Every email you send on the free plan is a broadcast you sit down and send by hand.
For a writer with a weekly newsletter, that is genuinely fine, possibly forever. For anyone using email to sell something, the first automation you want — the welcome email that delivers the thing you promised — is the paywall, and you hit it on day one.
The trap in the 10,000
Here is the part worth understanding before you start.
Kit's free plan lets you accumulate up to 10,000 subscribers. Kit's paid pricing is quoted at 1,000 subscribers: Creator is $33 a month there, Pro is $66. Like every email tool, the price scales with list size.
So the free plan actively encourages you to build a list far past the point where the advertised entry price applies. Arrive at the upgrade with 6,000 subscribers — entirely possible, because the free plan let you — and you are not choosing between $0 and $33. You are choosing between $0 and a substantially bigger number, at the exact moment your list is large enough that moving it elsewhere is a real project.
That is not a trick, it is just how subscriber-priced tools work. But Kit's unusually high free cap makes the gap between the advertised price and your price wider than anywhere else.
The defence: decide your first automation before you pass about 1,000 subscribers, and price the upgrade at your actual list size rather than at the headline number.
What Creator and Pro add
Creator, $33 a month at 1,000 subscribers ($390 a year), is the tier that makes Kit a marketing tool rather than a mailing list: unlimited automations and sequences, A/B subject line testing, branding removed, integrations and 24/7 chat support.
Pro, $66 a month at 1,000 subscribers ($790 a year), adds subscriber scoring, engagement and deliverability analytics, unlimited users, a referral system and priority support. The reason to buy it is deliverability analytics — worth it when email is the business and a drop in inbox placement costs real money, and hard to justify before that.
Note the annual pricing. Creator is $33 monthly or $390 a year, which is about $32.50 a month — a discount of roughly 1.5%. Most tools give you two months. Kit gives you six dollars. There is no reason to lock in a year, so don't.
When MailerLite is the better first list
MailerLite caps its free plan at 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month — a fortieth of Kit's subscriber cap — but includes 3 automations. So the free plans answer opposite questions: Kit asks how many people you can gather, MailerLite asks whether the machine works.
If you are building a list to sell something, the automations matter more than the ceiling, and MailerLite's paid entry is $12 a month against Kit's $33. MailerLite vs Kit prices both at real list sizes.
If you are a writer whose business is the newsletter itself, Kit's free plan is the best offer in the category and you should take it.
When you need neither
If the email list exists to sell a course or a coaching offer, Systeme.io includes email alongside funnels, a course area and a checkout on a free plan with 2,000 contacts — one automation rule, but one is more than zero, and it delivers the product too.
The short version
Kit's free plan is real, generous and automation-free. Take it if you broadcast by hand. If you will ever want a welcome sequence, decide that before your list passes a few thousand, because the price you will be quoted is set by your subscriber count and not by the $33 on the pricing page. Never pay annually; the discount is six dollars.
For where Kit's free tier sits against every other one we have checked, see the Free Plan Index. For the build itself, build an email list from zero starts with the offer rather than the tool.