Mailchimp, Kit, or Beehiiv: Which ESP is right for you?

If you’re a creator looking to own your audience and sell more through email, there are only three ESPs I recommend: Mailchimp, Kit (formerly ConvertKit), or Beehiiv.

Each one is different. Depending on what you’re trying to do, all three have pros and cons, which I’ll get into below.

Updated August 2026 with current plan names and pricing. ConvertKit rebranded to Kit in 2024, and all three companies have changed their plans since I first wrote this.

What is an ESP?

ESP stands for email service provider. It’s the software that holds your subscriber list, sends your emails, and shows you what happened after you hit send.

Your normal email app sends one message to a few people. An ESP sends one message to thousands at once. It also handles the parts you don’t want to think about: sign-up forms, unsubscribe links, spam rules, and the technical work of getting your email into the inbox instead of the junk folder.

If you’re building an audience, the ESP is where that audience actually lives. That’s why the choice matters.

One thing before I get started: picking the right ESP matters a lot. Don’t take this step lightly. Once you start using an ESP, it can be really hard to switch. This is especially true if you’ve built a bunch of automations and need to keep historical reports.

Take time to understand what you’re getting into. Find the ESP that suits your needs and, most importantly, that can grow with you.

With that out of the way, let’s look at our three options, starting with the OG: Mailchimp.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp has been around for over two decades now. They’ve been important in the growing, evolving, and maturing newsletter space. They led on all fronts and brought email newsletters into the mainstream. They set the standard and, to this day, are a viable option for hosting your newsletter.

Pricing

The free plan now caps at 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, which is a fraction of what it used to be. Paid plans start at $13 a month for Essentials and $20 a month for Standard, with Premium at $350 a month. Those starting prices are for the smallest list size. Every plan gets more expensive as your contact count climbs.

Pros

They have a huge library of integrations with third-party apps and services. Their tools for email marketing are broad, with automation and reporting being the real standouts. If your newsletter needs to talk to a store, a CRM, or a dozen other tools, nobody connects to more things.

Cons

Mailchimp’s pricing is complex and costly. As you grow, you might find yourself paying an arm and a leg just to maintain your list. Worse, you pay for your total contact count, and that includes people who already unsubscribed and are just sitting in your account.

The free plan is no longer a real starting point for a newsletter. At 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, you’ll outgrow it in a few weeks. There’s also a steep learning curve for new users, even with all those tools and features.

I used Mailchimp for years and was relatively happy with the service. It was expensive, but their automation and integrations made it easy to plug into my business. What kept me there was the ecosystem, not the product.

If you’re starting from scratch, I’d look at Kit or Beehiiv first. But if you need industry-leading integrations, Mailchimp is still the standard.

Kit (formerly ConvertKit)

Kit was founded in 2013 as ConvertKit, built around one thing: creators. They dropped the ConvertKit name in 2024 and now go by Kit. Same company, same team, shorter name. If you searched for ConvertKit and landed here, this is the one you’re looking for.

There are four main things Kit pledges to help creators with:

Grow your audience
Send beautiful emails
Automate your marketing
Earn an income

Pricing

Kit runs three plans. The free Newsletter plan covers you up to 10,000 subscribers, which is genuinely generous for a free tier. Creator starts at $33 a month billed yearly for 1,000 subscribers, and Pro starts at $66 a month on the same terms. Like everyone else, the price climbs as your list grows.

Pros

They tailor their features exclusively to the needs of creators, bloggers, solopreneurs, and others in creative careers. Their automation and segmentation tools are powerful, making it easy to send the right message to the right person at the right time. They also have integrated landing pages and form builders, so you can start collecting emails right away.

The free plan is the best on this list by a wide margin. Ten thousand subscribers before you pay anything means you can build a real audience before you spend a dollar.

Cons

Some of their features and tools can be overwhelming at first, especially if you’re coming from a more traditional ESP. Their email design features are getting better but still feel limited. You might want to bring your own templates for anything complex.

Once you move off the free plan, the price ramps quickly with list size. Keep that in mind if you plan to grow fast with paid ads or aggressive organic methods.

Kit has become the de facto ESP for creators. They grabbed that market and served that audience with real value and tools to make growth easier. Kit has excellent leadership and is growing every year. You can’t go wrong setting up shop on their servers.

Beehiiv

And now we have the young upstart. Beehiiv was founded by the second hire at Morning Brew (enough said). Taking many of the lessons learned from scaling that publication, Beehiiv has leveled the newsletter playing field for the rest of us.

Beehiiv is packed with features. It has a built-in website for your newsletter, custom automations, a referral program, boosts, an ad network, subscriptions, content gating, and more.

Pricing

Beehiiv runs three public plans plus a custom one. Launch is free up to 2,500 subscribers. Scale starts at $43 a month and Max starts at $96 a month, both scaling up to 100,000 subscribers. Above that, you’re talking to their Enterprise team. Paying yearly knocks a bit off: Scale is $517 a year and Max is $1,151.

Pros

It’s 100% designed with publishers in mind. To quote their home page, Beehiiv is “the newsletter platform built by newsletter people.” They focus heavily on making sure emails actually reach the inbox with high deliverability rates. No one does this to the extent Beehiiv does.

The pricing is compelling too. Scale bundles monetization, automations, and the growth tools into one number that stays flat until your list crosses a threshold. That’s a lot of platform for what it costs.

Cons

They still have fewer integrations than Mailchimp or Kit. That gap is closing, but if your newsletter needs to sit in the middle of a lot of other software, check the list before you commit. Beehiiv leads with newsletter delivery, and some of the deeper audience management and segmentation features are lighter than what the other two ship.

For a long time my biggest complaint was email design. Beehiiv had essentially one text-based look, and as a design-forward creator, that was a deal-breaker for me.

That’s the part that changed. Beehiiv now has a visual editor, reusable templates you build yourself, and custom HTML blocks when you need to go further. As of August 2026 the visual editor is what new accounts start in. It’s not a full design tool, but it’s no longer a wall.

That’s why I moved. This newsletter runs on Beehiiv now. The design gap closed enough for me to stop making excuses, and everything else Beehiiv does well came along with it.

The final verdict

Mailchimp, Kit, and Beehiiv are the three ESPs worth your time, attention, and money.

Mailchimp is solid but pricey, and the free plan is too small to start on. Pick it when you need its integrations, not when you need a newsletter.

Kit is creator-driven, making it easy to build on their platform. The free plan up to 10,000 subscribers is the easiest way to start a list right now, and the paid tiers give you serious automation when you need it.

Beehiiv is still pushing the envelope on what a newsletter can be. The features are next-level, the pricing is fair, and the design tools finally caught up. It’s what I use.

I hope this helps you pick the ESP that suits your needs. Do all your research upfront before pulling the trigger, because it can be really hard to unwind your list from an email platform once you’re in.

If you have any questions about any of these ESPs, don’t hesitate to shoot me a note on X.