Kit (ex-ConvertKit)
Email platform for creators: sign-up pages, newsletters, sequences, digital product sales and paid subscriptions. Free plan up to 10,000 subscribers; Creator at $33 a month.
A sign-up page, sends and a welcome sequence can be built in a few days with Amazon SES, and listmonk exists as free software. What Kit sells: deliverability, visual automations, selling digital products and paid subscriptions, and the creator ecosystem. As the free plan goes up to 10,000 subscribers, the saving often does not justify switching.
What you lose
- Email deliverability
- Visual automations
- Selling digital products and paid subscriptions
- Creator-to-creator recommendations
Existing alternatives to Kit (ex-ConvertKit)
- listmonkOpen source
Free newsletter and mailing-list manager (AGPL-3.0), fast, with API.
The prompt to build it yourself
Build me a newsletter tool for a creator, to replace Kit. Stack: Next.js, TypeScript, PostgreSQL with Drizzle, sending through Amazon SES. To do: - Sign-up pages with double opt-in, tags, custom fields, timestamped consent kept (GDPR). - Subscriber import and export, deletion on request. - Broadcast editor in Markdown, HTML and text preview. - Sequences: a series of emails with delays, triggered by a sign-up or a tag, which stops on unsubscribe. - Queued sending with rate limits, retries, handling of bounces and complaints. - A resources page protected by a magic link, to give content in exchange for signing up. - One-click unsubscribe, List-Unsubscribe headers; SPF/DKIM/DMARC tips in the README. - Secrets in .env, no telemetry, tests, backups. Out of scope: selling digital products, paid subscriptions, creator recommendations, visual automations.
Frequently asked questions
- Can Kit (ex-ConvertKit) be replaced by a custom-built tool?
- casevibecode verdict: Partly replaceable. A sign-up page, sends and a welcome sequence can be built in a few days with Amazon SES, and listmonk exists as free software. What Kit sells: deliverability, visual automations, selling digital products and paid subscriptions, and the creator ecosystem. As the free plan goes up to 10,000 subscribers, the saving often does not justify switching.
- What is Kit (ex-ConvertKit) used for?
- Email platform for creators: sign-up pages, newsletters, sequences, digital product sales and paid subscriptions. Free plan up to 10,000 subscribers; Creator at $33 a month.
- What alternatives to Kit (ex-ConvertKit) already exist?
- listmonk (open source). Options to compare before committing to a custom build.
Community feedback
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