Best ConvertKit Alternatives for SaaS in 2026

Prices checked 7 October 2026; each price links to the vendor page it came from.

Why SaaS teams leave ConvertKit

The first friction is where automation sits. Kit's pricing page says the Free plan is up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited landing pages, forms and email broadcasts, tagging and segmentation, and the ability to sell digital products and subscriptions. Visual Automations and email sequences are listed from Creator, which is $33 a month for 1,000 subscribers when billed yearly ($390 a year, a saving of $78). A SaaS onboarding series is a sequence, so the free tier does not carry the work you came for, and a tiny trial list already needs Creator.

Kit also prices by audience size, and the step up is steep: Creator reads $50 at 3,000 subscribers, $75 at 5,000, $116 at 10,000 and $166 at 25,000, with the yearly rate shown. Pro reads $66 at 1,000, $116 at 5,000, $158 at 10,000 and $233 at 25,000, and a limited-time first-year offer shows $50 at 1,000. Pro is the first plan whose list says unlimited users, and it is where deliverability reporting, Subscriber Signals and a newsletter referral system appear. None of those is a SaaS lifecycle feature.

The second friction is the data model. Kit's plan table describes subscribers organized by tags and segments, conditional content written in Liquid against those tags, engagement scoring for sponsor pitches and VIP offers, and Subscriber Signals that report subscriber income, demographics and social influence. That is the vocabulary of a creator business. The page lists no trial, plan-change or failed-payment triggers, and a tag records a state at a moment, not the history of what someone did. The feature list includes API documentation, so developers can push attributes in; the question to answer in a pilot is whether the product's real states fit comfortably into Kit's subscriber fields and tags.

The honest counterpoint is that Kit is not expensive. At 10,000 subscribers Creator at $116 sits between Loops at $99 and ActiveCampaign Starter at $149, and at 25,000 it is $166 against $198 for Loops. Teams leave Kit because of fit, not price, and the cheapest fix for some is to keep Kit for the newsletter and move only product email.

Kit also does several things SaaS tools do not bother with. Its page lists a 14-day free trial with no credit card, free migrations for people moving in, a Growth Concierge team on Pro, subscriber polls, newsletter referrals, paid newsletters and digital product sales. If your company runs a customer-education newsletter or sells a template pack beside the product, those features are worth keeping, and they are why the split setup in the cost section below is often a better answer than a full move.

The alternatives, one at a time

1. Loops: the nearest in spirit, built for products

Loops is free for unlimited contacts, but sends are capped at 4,000 in any rolling 30 days to the 1,000 newest contacts, with a small Powered by Loops footer and all features included. Paid plans scale by subscribers: $48 at 4,788, $99 at 9,998, $198 at 24,339 and $249 at 49,989. Transactional sends to users outside your audience are included on paid plans, and there is no seat fee.

The difference from Kit is that automation is not a paid add-on: the free plan includes all features, so a welcome sequence can go live at zero cost for the first 1,000 contacts. At 10,000 subscribers Loops is $99 against $116 on Kit Creator, a saving of $17 a month, or $204 a year. At 25,000 the order flips, with Loops at $198 and Creator at $166. Our Loops alternatives page covers what comes next.

2. Customer.io: when product events decide the message

Customer.io reads Essentials at $100 a month for 5,000 profiles, $145 for 10,000, $235 for 20,000 and $325 for 30,000, billed monthly. It includes 1,000,000 emails a month and transactional email in every plan, and companies that raised under $10M can get a year free through the Startup Program. The page lists no price below 5,000 profiles, so a small list pays $100 where Kit Creator would charge $33 at 1,000 subscribers.

That entry price is why Customer.io suits products with real event volume rather than tiny lists. It models people and events, with a visual workflow builder, email, push, in-app messaging and WhatsApp on its feature list. The Customer.io vs Loops comparison is the right next read.

3. Userlist: for B2B accounts

Userlist charges $149 a month for Basic up to 10,000 users plus $10 per extra 1,000, and $349 for Professional plus $12. Its slider reads $229 at 18,000 users and $369 at 32,000. Plans include a message allowance of five times your tracked users, floored at 500,000, and extra messages are $1 per 1,000. Basic covers lifecycle email, in-app messages and segments for users and companies.

It is the tool to evaluate when the customer is a workspace with an owner, admins and members, because Kit's subscriber model has no notion of an account. It is also the most expensive way to start, since the first 10,000 users are one $149 block.

4. Encharge: visual flows that connect to billing

Encharge prices Growth at $99 a month for 2,000 subscribers ($79 billed yearly), $179 for 5,000, $249 for 10,000 and $389 for 25,000; Premium is $159, $269, $399 and $649. Growth lists unlimited flows and team members and a monthly email limit of 10x the subscriber cap, and its feature list includes a visual flow builder, behavior-based emails, webhooks, a transactional email API, and Stripe and Chargebee among its integrations.

For a team coming from Visual Automations the builder will look familiar, and the billing connectors cover what Kit's page does not mention. It lists no free plan, so even a small list starts at $99. See the Encharge vs Customer.io page for the next decision.

5. MailerLite: cheaper if you stay creator-style

MailerLite has a Free plan of up to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month. On monthly billing, Comfort reads $19 at 1,000 subscribers, $49 at 5,000, $89 at 10,000 and $179 at 25,000, and Power reads $39, $69, $129 and $239. Comfort allows 10x the subscriber ceiling in monthly emails and Power is unlimited. Its page states that data is stored in the European Union under an ISO 27001 certificate.

It is a Kit-like product at lower prices, with automation, landing pages, websites and digital products on its feature list. Choose it if what you do is publish and sell to an audience, not trigger on product state. For SaaS lifecycle it is no closer than Kit.

6. Brevo: newsletters and transactional email under one roof

Brevo offers a free plan of 300 emails a day with storage for up to 100,000 contacts, Starter from $9 a month and Standard from $18, both beginning at 5,000 emails a month, with automation and A/B testing named on Standard and Professional starting at $499. Because the tier follows email volume rather than subscriber count, a long list that is mailed rarely stays cheap.

That makes it a practical landing spot for a company with a big dormant list and a small product, and it adds transactional email in the same account. Event-driven logic is shallower than in Customer.io or Userlist.

7. ActiveCampaign: automation with CRM attached

ActiveCampaign starts at $15 a month for 1,000 contacts on Starter, $49 on Plus, $79 on Pro and $145 on Enterprise, billed annually. The selector reads $79 for Starter at 5,000 contacts, $149 at 10,000 and $391 at 25,000, with Starter limited to one user and five actions per automation. It is a fit for a small sales-assisted SaaS that wants contact records and deal-linked nurture. The ActiveCampaign alternatives page covers the downsides.

What it costs at 1,000, 5,000, 10,000 and 25,000 subscribers

Billing terms differ, so the notes matter: Kit's figures are the yearly rate shown on its page, ActiveCampaign is billed annually, and MailerLite, Encharge and Customer.io are shown on monthly billing. A cell says where a vendor lists no stop at that size.

Read the table against the job, not just the price. If all you need is onboarding automation for a few thousand people, Loops and MailerLite Comfort undercut Kit Creator at each size shown up to 10,000, and Loops costs nothing while the list is within 1,000 contacts. The picture changes at 25,000, where Kit Creator at $166 is the cheapest paid plan in the table, below Loops at $198 and every SaaS-specific tool. Pay for the SaaS tools when their data model saves engineering time, not when the invoice looks smaller.

A split setup shows the arithmetic. Eight thousand newsletter readers on Kit Free cost nothing. A 4,788-user product on Loops is $48. Putting those 12,788 people into one Kit Creator plan would sit between the $116 stop at 10,000 and $166 at 25,000, so the split is cheaper and keeps the product's data out of the newsletter tool. The cost is two lists, which means two places for an unsubscribe to live.

Which one for which team

• A founder writes onboarding and announcement emails: Loops. Free to start, $99 at 9,998 subscribers, transactional included.
• Engineers will send product events and billing state: Customer.io, $145 at 10,000 profiles, or Encharge if a marketer owns the flows.
• Customers are companies with several users: Userlist from $149.
• The audience is mainly a newsletter and the budget is tight: MailerLite Comfort at $89 for 10,000 subscribers, or stay on Kit.
• A big list that is mailed occasionally, plus transactional email: Brevo, free for 300 emails a day.
• A small sales team needs contact records: ActiveCampaign, Starter $15 at 1,000 contacts.
• You sell digital products or paid newsletters through Kit: keep that part on Kit, since its page lists those features and most alternatives here do not.

Moving off Kit

Kit's own page promises free migrations, but that offer is for people moving in. Going out is self-service, so plan it as a data-mapping job with a short parallel run.

1. Decide what leaves. Product users and lifecycle email move. A creator-style newsletter, paid newsletters and digital products can stay, because the free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers and the page lists those features.
2. Export subscribers with their state. Take active, unsubscribed, bounced and complained subscribers, with tags and custom fields. Kit counts subscribers only if they are unique and active, so decide whether dormant addresses come along; tools that bill by subscriber, and Loops with its cap on the 1,000 newest contacts, reward a clean import.
3. Classify tags before importing. A tag that says what someone is becomes an attribute, such as plan or role. A tag that says where they came from becomes a source property. A tag that records an action, such as finished setup, should become an event so journeys can react to it going forward.
4. Rebuild automations with exits. Kit's sequences are time-based lists of emails. List each sequence, its delays and its stop condition, then add the exits Kit could not express, such as paid, cancelled or activated, so nobody receives a trial nudge after upgrading.
5. Replace the form with your signup flow. Kit's forms and landing pages collect addresses. In a product, the app should create the contact and send events through the new tool's API. Write to both systems for a short period, then drop Kit as the receiver.
6. Authenticate the sending domain. Add the new vendor's DKIM, merge SPF, and check how Kit branding on emails and pages is removed if you keep any content there; Kit lists removing its branding from Creator upward.
7. Sync unsubscribes during the overlap. The dangerous window is when two systems both mail the same person. Reconcile suppression on the cutover day and again a week later.
8. Downgrade, do not delete. Move Kit to Free if the newsletter stays, or export everything and close the account after one clean billing cycle.

Our pick

For a small SaaS leaving ConvertKit, Loops is the best first pick: automation is available on the free plan, $99 covers 9,998 subscribers, and the product is built around onboarding and product email rather than creator commerce. Customer.io is the runner-up for a team with engineers and real event data, at $145 for 10,000 profiles. Keep Kit if the main audience is a newsletter and you never needed product state in your emails.

Related reading: ConvertKit vs Beehiiv, Customer.io vs Loops, email platforms for early-stage SaaS, product-led SaaS and SaaS onboarding emails.