Kit (formerly ConvertKit) Review: Simple Yet Powerful?

Kit’s approach to email campaigns feels refreshingly focused. You get your standard broadcast emails (one-time sends) and sequences, but what’s cool is how flexible the segmentation is.

Rather than rigid lists, everything revolves around the subscriber — you can tag people based on interests, behaviors, or how they’ve engaged with previous emails.

Scheduling is pretty smart too — you can time things based on your preferences or let it optimize based on time zones. The email editor is intentionally simple (which honestly threw me off at first until I understood why).

They prioritize plain-text or minimal formatting to boost deliverability rates, which makes sense when you think about it.

You still get all the stats you’d expect — opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and deliverability metrics — and it’s easy enough to see how specific campaigns performed.

Key points worth mentioning:

• The subscriber-centric tagging makes personalizing emails much more intuitive
• Time zone scheduling is a nice touch for global audiences
• You can customize content based on subscriber traits (conditional content)
• Performance tracking gives you the essentials without overwhelming you

Kit’s automation functionality empowers creators to deliver timely, personalized email campaigns with minimal manual intervention. The platform features a visual workflow builder where users can design sequences triggered by subscriber actions such as link clicks, tag assignments, or product purchases.

Email content within these automated sequences can incorporate conditional logic — ensuring subscribers receive appropriate messaging based on their behavior or funnel position.

The platform also supports branching paths, allowing users to direct subscribers through different sequences depending on their engagement with previous emails.

While not as complex as enterprise-level solutions, Kit offers sufficient flexibility for creators managing lead nurturing campaigns, product launches, or audience engagement sequences.

Performance metrics for each automation step display open and click rates, helping users optimize their workflow effectiveness and subscriber engagement.

Notable Features:

• Visual builder with event-based triggers and path branching
• Conditional content for subscriber-specific personalization
• Support for various campaign types from launches to engagement sequences
• Event-driven scheduling based on subscriber behavior
• Step-by-step performance tracking for workflow optimization

Kit makes it pretty straightforward to build landing pages and forms that feed directly into your email campaigns. There’s a decent range of templates for different purposes – lead magnets, webinars, product launches, newsletters — and you can personalize them with custom fields and tag-based segmentation.

What’s handy is that when someone submits a form, they can immediately be added to specific sequences or tagged for follow-ups. The display rules are flexible too – you can show forms based on how far someone’s scrolled, if they’re about to leave your site, or after a time delay.

Everything integrates directly with Kit’s email system, so there’s no awkward disconnect between capturing leads and starting your email relationship with them. The built-in analytics show views, conversion rates, and where subscribers are coming from.

Key takeaways:

• The tag-based segmentation makes follow-ups more relevant
• Forms can trigger specific sequences automatically
• You can control when forms appear to visitors
• The analytics help you understand which forms are actually working

This is probably one of Kit’s biggest strengths — they’ve ditched the traditional list-based approach that causes so many headaches with duplicates.

Instead, you get one unified subscriber list with tags and custom fields, so you can segment people based on what they’re interested in, how they behave, what they’ve bought, or how engaged they are.

This approach makes dynamic content in emails much more practical — you can show different content blocks to different subscribers within the same email campaign. It’s super effective for product launches, course promotions, or re-engaging people who’ve gone quiet.

You can also trigger broadcasts or sequences based on these tags, so your emails hit at the right moment and feel relevant. While the segmentation options aren’t as complex as what enterprise platforms offer, they strike a good balance between power and usability.

The campaign analytics can also be filtered by segments, which helps you track how different audience groups are responding.

Main points:

• Tag-based segmentation makes targeting much more intuitive
• No more duplicate subscribers across campaigns
• You can personalize content within the same email
• Campaigns can be triggered based on tags or custom fields

Kit connects with over 100 third-party tools across ecommerce, course platforms, CRMs, and membership sites. The integrations with platforms like Shopify, Teachable, and Stripe let you sync customer behavior, purchases, and subscriptions in real-time, which enables more personalized, trigger-based campaigns.

The Zapier integration opens up thousands more connections, and the REST API gives developers flexibility to programmatically manage subscribers, segment audiences, or trigger campaigns based on external events.

What’s neat is that campaigns can be scheduled or triggered automatically based on activity across these connected platforms, making targeting more precise. The performance tracking includes attribution insights from integrated sources, helping you connect email results to your broader business goals.

Key points:

• Integrations sync data from ecommerce and course platforms for better targeting
• The API lets you create custom subscriber updates and campaign triggers
• Campaigns can be triggered by events from connected apps
• Data from integrations improves personalization in email content

Kit keeps reporting straightforward — you get clear insights into email performance without overwhelming complexity. Each broadcast or sequence shows metrics like open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate, and deliverability in an easy-to-digest format.

You can segment these reports by tags or subscriber filters to see how specific groups engage with your content. While it doesn’t have advanced multi-touch attribution or fancy funnel visualization, you can track how individual emails perform within sequences, which helps optimize your messaging over time.

I like that you can see exactly who clicked which links, making it easier to follow up based on demonstrated interests. This focused, creator-friendly approach to analytics helps you improve email performance without needing to be a data scientist.

Main takeaways:

• Campaign reports cover the essentials — opens, clicks, unsubscribes, deliverability
• Link tracking shows which content resonates most
• You can filter performance by audience segment or tag
• The step-level reporting within sequences helps with content optimization

Kit’s support feels tailored to creators running focused email campaigns. You get access via live chat and email (with faster response times on paid plans), and the team seems well-equipped to help with campaign setup, segmentation logic, and deliverability issues.

Whether you need help personalizing a sequence or figuring out the best send times for engagement, the support agents generally provide clear, helpful guidance. Their educational resources (Kit University) offer webinars, tutorials, and materials specifically covering campaign strategy and best practices.

For solo creators or small teams, this level of support makes a real difference — ensuring your campaigns don’t just launch but actually perform well.

Worth noting:

• Support is available for campaign design and setup challenges
• They can help with segmentation and personalization strategies
• Response quality is consistent, especially for campaign-related questions

After connecting with dozens of Kit users across different industries, I’ve noticed a pattern in their feedback about the platform’s usability. Most genuinely appreciate how the interface balances functionality without overwhelming them.

“User-friendly layout despite tons of features. Automations forced me to switch from MailerLite,” one content creator told me recently. This sentiment captures why many stick with the platform — it removes unnecessary complexity without sacrificing capability.

What makes this particularly valuable? Content creators already juggle countless responsibilities. They don’t have extra bandwidth to decipher complicated software while also producing content, managing social media, and running their business.

Kit seems to understand this reality, creating workflows that feel logical rather than technical.

During a recent workshop I attended, several participants specifically mentioned appreciating how they could visualize their automation sequences rather than working through abstract text-based rules. This visual approach makes complex subscriber journeys more accessible to non-technical users.

Though Kit earns praise for its clean design, users do acknowledge some initial hurdles when first diving in. The platform isn’t necessarily difficult, but it does require a mental shift — especially for those accustomed to traditional list-based systems.

“It becomes pricey as your list grows. Has steep learning curve when you’re just starting with email automations,” shared one small business owner during a recent creator conference.

This perfectly captures the dual challenges some users face: adapting to a new system while also managing subscription costs.

What saves the experience for most? Kit provides substantial educational resources and responsive support. Their knowledge base, tutorial videos, and community forums help bridge the gap between initial confusion and practical mastery.

Most users report that after the first few campaigns, the workflow becomes second nature.

The most telling insights come from how Kit affects everyday operations for content creators and digital entrepreneurs.

“Kit is super easy to use — I love logging in and quickly seeing my subscribers list growth,” mentioned a course creator I spoke with last month.

This highlights something I’ve observed repeatedly — the platform focuses on delivering meaningful insights without drowning users in excessive metrics or complicated dashboards.

Users consistently highlight how Kit streamlines tasks that would otherwise consume hours of their week. Setting up audience segments, scheduling broadcasts, or building automated sequences becomes approachable even for those without marketing backgrounds.

This efficiency directly translates to more time creating content and less time fiddling with marketing infrastructure — a crucial distinction for solo creators and small teams.

Having worked hands-on with both platforms for different client projects, I’ve developed a clear sense of their practical differences.

Mailchimp has built an expansive marketing ecosystem offering broad capabilities — from sophisticated design tools to audience analytics, multi-channel campaigns and extensive integration options. This makes it incredibly flexible for agencies and diverse marketing teams.

Kit takes a deliberately focused approach, optimizing specifically for creator workflows with streamlined automation, intuitive tagging systems, and purpose-built tools for selling digital products.

Their subscriber-centric model (versus Mailchimp’s list-based structure) eliminates common headaches around duplicate contacts.

These philosophical differences manifest in everyday use. Mailchimp gives you considerably more design flexibility and visual customization options, which appeals to brand-conscious marketers. Kit deliberately prioritizes deliverability and engagement, sometimes at the expense of fancy layouts.

Creators who value simplicity, consistent deliverability rates, and integrated monetization tools generally gravitate toward Kit. Organizations needing comprehensive analytics, diverse campaign types, and multi-user collaboration features tend to favor Mailchimp’s broader capabilities.

The comparison between Beehiiv and Kit reveals fascinating differences in how platforms interpret creator needs.

Beehiiv, developed by former Morning Brew team members, approaches newsletters as publication-first experiences. Their platform excels with newsletter-specific publishing workflows, built-in referral systems, and straightforward advertising options — clearly designed for writers building audience-based businesses.

Kit positions email within a broader creator business strategy. While it handles newsletters effectively, it also equips creators with more sophisticated segmentation options, behavior-triggered sequences, and flexible monetization pathways.

In practice, Beehiiv delivers stronger editorial tools and native discovery features for growing readership. Kit offers more robust personalization capabilities and deeper integration with diverse business models.

Writers running media-style newsletters focused primarily on subscriber growth and straightforward monetization find Beehiiv’s specialized approach compelling. Creators building multi-faceted businesses where email supports courses, consulting, or digital products typically prefer Kit’s flexibility and control.

When comparing these creator-friendly platforms, their philosophical differences become apparent through practical features and pricing strategies.

MailerLite emphasizes design flexibility through its genuine drag-and-drop editor and strong visual customization options. This naturally appeals to brand-conscious creators who want visually distinctive campaigns. Their A/B testing features also offer more experimental options than Kit’s streamlined approach.

Kit deliberately prioritizes plain-text style emails and clean designs that optimize deliverability rates and engagement metrics. Their automation builder and subscriber tagging system generally provide more intuitive workflow creation for behavior-based sequences.

Pricing structure reveals another meaningful difference — MailerLite typically offers more favorable rates for growing subscriber lists, including generous feature access on its free plan. This makes it particularly attractive for creators watching costs during audience-building phases.

Creators focusing primarily on engagement, relationship-building, and integrated monetization typically prefer Kit’s approach. Those prioritizing design flexibility, testing capabilities, and budget-friendly scaling often lean toward MailerLite.

The choice ultimately depends less on which platform is objectively “better” and more on which aligns with your specific content creation style and business model. Both deliver solid solutions for creator businesses, just with different strengths that match different workflow preferences.