MailerLite vs ConvertKit

Trying to choose between MailerLite vs ConvertKit as your email marketing software? Here's when to choose each tool – and the pros and cons to know about.

MailerLite vs ConvertKit comparison
  • 4.4 TrustPilot
  • 4.7 Capterra
  • 4.7 G2

Average 4.6 / 5

i

MailerLite

MailerLite is an all-in-one email marketing platform that allows you to create newsletters, landing pages, and even websites using pre-made templates. It has 100+ integrations with other platforms and a recurring payment feature for paid newsletters.

Pricing

Free plan, dynamic paid plans depending on the features and the contact list size start from $9/month billed yearly.

Key features

  • Drag-and-drop email editor with an AI writing assistant
  • No-code website, blog, and landing page builder
  • iPad subscriber app for generating leads on offline events
  • Paid newsletter subscription
  • Automated sequences
  • Integrations with online stores
  • Email verifier

Support

24/7 email and live chat support

  • 4.7 GetApp
  • 4.7 Capterra
  • 2 TrustPilot

Average 3.8 / 5

i

ConvertKit

ConvertKit is a tool for marketing automation and monetization for independent creators.

Pricing

  • Email marketing automation
  • Landing pages
  • Sign-up forms
  • Analytics
  • A/B testing
  • Tools for content monetization

Key features

  • Email marketing automation
  • Landing pages
  • Sign-up forms
  • Analytics
  • A/B testing
  • Tools for content monetization

Support

Community support for all users, email and chat support for paid users

General info about company

MailerLite

MailerLite was founded in 2005 as a web design agency but then switched to email marketing. The company is remote-first, with employees in 40 countries.

ConvertKit

ConvertKit was founded in 2013 and is based in Idaho, the US. It was created by Nathan Barry, a blogger and creator who needed a better way to promote his books and courses.

Difficulty

MailerLite

No coding or design skills are required to create emails and web pages. The platform also offers an extensive knowledge base with tutorials, which makes it beginner-friendly.

ConvertKit

Not beginner-friendly, since you need to code while creating emails.

Best for

MailerLite

E-commerce, freelancers, small businesses

ConvertKit

Bloggers, coaches, course creators, writers, and everyone who makes content for living.

Free plan

MailerLite

A generous forever free plan with a limit of 1 user, 1,000 contacts, and 12,000 monthly emails. The free plan includes:

  • Email editor and automation builder
  • Website builder and 10 templates for landing pages
  • Sign-up forms and pop-ups
  • 24/7 email and chat support for the first 30 days

ConvertKit

The forever free plan includes the contact list of up to 1,000 subscribers and the following features:

  • Unlimited landing pages
  • Unlimited forms
  • Unlimited “broadcasts”, or one-off email campaigns, sent right away or scheduled
  • Audience tagging and segmentation
  • Selling digital products & subscriptions
  • Community support
  • Free recommendations

Pricing

MailerLite

Growing business:

  • $9-205/month billed yearly, depending on the number of subscribers, with a limit of 50k contacts at the highest price
  • Unlimited emails and 24/7 support
  • Includes extra features like dynamic emails, selling digital products, blogs, and an unsubscribe page builder
  • 3 users available

Advanced:

  • $19-1,600/month billed yearly, with a limit of 500k contacts at the highest price
  • An email limit if you have more than 50k subscribers, up to 6 million, depending on the number
  • Includes features like custom HTML editor, AI writing assistant, Facebook integration, promotion pop-ups, and more
  • Unlimited users

Entreprise:

  • Depends on the scope of work
  • Only available for businesses with 100k and more subscribers
  • Includes the services of a dedicated success manager, onboarding, account audit, and dedicated IP and deliverability consultation

ConvertKit

Dynamic pricing depends on the size of your contact list and the features of interest.

Creator: $9–1,916/month billed yearly for 300–400,000 subscribers. Includes all the free features plus:

  • Live chat & email support
  • Paid recommendations
  • Free migration from another tool
  • Automated email sequences
  • Visual automation builders
  • Third-party integrations
  • One additional team member

Creator Pro: $25–2,166/month billed yearly for 300–400,000 subscribers. Includes all the Creator features plus:

  • Newsletter referral system
  • Subscriber scoring
  • Advanced reporting

Support

MailerLite

Customer support is available 24/7 via email and live chat — however, it’s only available for 30 days on the free plan. Users can also hire experts in email marketing, copywriting, no code development, and more.

MailerLite also offers an extensive Customer Self-Service Center. It includes:

  • A large categorized knowledge base, that includes articles about troubleshooting most common issues
  • Video tutorials
  • A Circle community where users can communicate with each other
  • A free ML Academy with 5 free online courses about MailerLite and email marketing

ConvertKit

Community support:

  • The internal forum where you can ask questions and receive answers from ConvertKit support specialists and other platform users
  • Available even on the free plan

Email and live chat support:

  • Available for Creator users
  • Priority support via email and live chat available for Creator Pro users

ConvertKit also provides a knowledge base and a YouTube channel with tutorials. The platform also runs online workshops for newbies in marketing.

Features

MailerLite

  • Email marketing automation
  • Sign-up forms
  • Landing pages
  • Website builder
  • Blog builder
  • Email verifier
  • Transactional emails
  • Click maps
  • The ability to sell digital products like e-books and online courses
  • Setting up a paid subscription for emails

ConvertKit

  • Email builder
  • Email marketing automation
  • Landing pages
  • Sign-up forms
  • Tools for selling digital products and paid subscriptions
  • List segmentation
  • Lead scoring
  • A/B testing
  • Reporting and analytics
  • Internal referral systems for creators to earn off putting links in your newsletter or paying to get promoted by other creators

Templates

MailerLite

70+ templates for newsletters:

  • Blog digests
  • Events
  • Holiday emails
  • Featured product
  • Notifications
  • Surveys and quizzes
  • Deals and offers
  • Emails for creative professionals

40+ templates for landing pages:

  • For bloggers
  • For creative professionals
  • Events
  • Surveys and quizzes
  • Coming soon
  • Celebrations
  • Books
  • Non-profits

18 website templates for different industries and purposes:

  • Business
  • E-commerce
  • Education
  • Events
  • Food and drinks
  • Portfolio
  • Wellness

ConvertKit

25 email templates made for content creators by content creators, includes templates for:

  • Newsletters
  • Content promotion
  • Product sales pitch
  • Waitlist

The templates are sourced from other users and you can create and share your own.

ConvertKit also offers 50+ landing page templates not specified by purpose.

Integrations

MailerLite

139 integrations with services for CRM, loyalty programs, e-commerce, project management, surveys, and more.

ConvertKit

120 integrations with third-party apps for:

  • Memberships and courses
  • Analytics
  • Lead capture
  • E-commerce
  • Giveaways
  • Quizzes
  • Workflows
  • Webinar
  • Affiliate management
  • CRM
  • Scheduling
  • Email verification

ConvertKit also supports Zapier for even more integrations and provides users with the API docs for custom integrations.

Devices

MailerLite

    MailerLite has a web app, an iOS app, and an iPad app only for subscribing leads on offline events.

ConvertKit

  • Web app only

Languages

MailerLite

English English

ConvertKit

English English

Automation

MailerLite

  • 15 automation recipes for welcome emails, abandoned cart, membership renewal, online courses, and more.
  • Paid versions include an AI writing assistant powered by OpenAI that allows users to write marketing copies faster.
  • Automated A/B testing for up to 3 workflow variations.

ConvertKit

10+ visual automation templates for starting a paid newsletter, releasing a new podcast, crowdfunding for a music album, and other tasks that professional content creators might face.

Pros

MailerLite

  • A very simple and minimalist product that is good for beginners
  • Many unique features like paid newsletters and selling digital goods
  • Great customer support
  • A lot of integrations available
  • Easy migrations from other services
  • Extensive video tutorial library for new users

ConvertKit

  • Good platform for content creators
  • Great deliverability
  • Supports paid newsletters and has a “tip jar” functionality for free donations from subscribers
  • A flexible tagging and segmentation system for targeted campaigns

Cons

MailerLite

  • May come off as too simple for experienced marketers
  • You need to get approval to start working with the service
  • 2FA requires a third-party app instead of a phone number
  • Stripe integration can be troublesome
  • Confusing categories in the interface
  • Outdated documentation at times

ConvertKit

  • Very basic reporting
  • Expensive compared to other email marketing tools
  • Not great for midsize and large businesses
  • No drag-and-drop builder which makes it harder to design emails from scratch

Reviews from experts

MailerLite

Great level of satisfaction in terms of the results we are obtaining in our campaigns, as well as how it is to work with MailerLite on a daily-basis. Also, very important to mention the amazing customer service provided. Always very quick, detailed and helpful. Message Factory couldn’t be any happier by working with MailerLite!

Andre R.

Andre R.

Project manager at msgFactory

On the down side, MailerLite felt a bit unpolished at times. Things like the odd feature that was incomplete, or a tab that seemed to be in the wrong place – small things that slowly added up, resulting in a bittersweet experience.
MailerLite is great, and I’m sure it will only get better with time. It just fails to deliver an exceptional email marketing experience right now

Alexandros Melidoniotis

Alexandros Melidoniotis

Freelance writer and editor with experience in digital marketing

ConvertKit

If you’re a blogger, vlogger, frogger, YouTuber, digital course creator, or anyone who makes their own digital content for sale under a single business entity, ConvertKit is 100% the tool for you, and it’s not even close.
It has everything you need to grow your business, including direct integrations with tools specifically designed to make your life easier like course, webinar, blog, and lead magnet plugins.
If you’ve got a stable business and over 1,000 subscribers, you’ll reap all of the benefits of the world’s most streamlined email autoresponder tool at a price that won’t break the bank and is silly easy to use.

Karl Kangur

Karl Kangur

Director of Marketing at Smash Digital, SEO/Marketing speaker

We bought this software after reading the Capterra reviews here, however we find it very limited in customization so it's mainly take it or leave type of features. We could not block freemailers from subscribing, or use custom CSS for the same purpose. In general, it is not a tool to use if you care about following a brand identity of your own.
The set-up process is tedious with Wordpress websites. We were not happy so we canceled, so instead of letting the current paid period last the software deactivated the account immediately and blocked us out of the software. We could not export our subscribers nor our content.

Karan Singh

Karan Singh

CEO of Code Creative India

*This information is current as of 02/13/2024. While we regularly update our articles, it`s possible that this article may not contain some of the latest information.