MailerLite vs Kit for Food Bloggers (2026 Comparison)

For most food bloggers under 10,000 subscribers, MailerLite is the cheaper paid option and includes automations and RSS campaigns, while Kit's free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers but limits automation. Choose Kit for free sending and creator-style commerce. Choose MailerLite if you need automated welcome sequences cheaply.

TL;DR:

Kit's free plan reaches 10,000 subscribers, but visual automations and sequences need the paid Creator plan.

MailerLite is cheaper on paid plans at every list size I could find, but its free plan is now only 250 active subscribers.

Both platforms can turn new recipe posts into emails by RSS, and that looks like a paid feature on each.

The only deliverability test I found is from 2023 and mixed, so run your own test before you trust any ranking.

Export your list and rebuild your welcome sequence in a trial before you commit to a switch.

How much do MailerLite and Kit cost at 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 subscribers?

Price is where most food bloggers start, so let me start there too. Here is what the published tables show for monthly cost, with the caveat that these come from different trackers and different billing bases.

List size	Kit Creator	MailerLite Comfort	MailerLite Power
1,000	$39 monthly, or $390 a year (about $33 a month)	$19	$39
5,000	About $89 monthly (one tracker lists $75)	$49	$69
10,000	$116 (one tracker)	$80.10 effective, billed yearly	$116.10 effective, billed yearly

A few things to notice.

At 1,000 subscribers, MailerLite Comfort is $19 against Kit Creator at $39 on monthly billing. At 5,000, one 2026 table puts MailerLite well below Kit Creator's roughly $89. At 10,000, the gap narrows if you compare MailerLite Power with Kit Creator, though the yearly-billed and monthly-billed figures are not a clean match.

Kit also changed its pricing recently. In September 2025 it raised Creator at 1,000 subscribers from $29 to $39 a month, about 34%, and left the free Newsletter plan alone. If you signed up before that and have not looked at your invoice lately, look now.

One more detail matters for planning. Kit moves you to the next price band automatically when you cross it, so growth shows up on your bill without a warning email. Please treat every number above as a snapshot and check both live pricing pages before you decide.

Is Kit's free plan really enough for a recipe blog?

It depends on what you want email to do.

Kit's free Newsletter plan supports up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts, landing pages and forms, and digital product sales. That is a lot of free. If your plan is to send a weekly note and sell one ebook, you may never need to pay.

The catch is automation. Visual automations and sequences sit on the paid Creator plan. For a food blogger, that usually means no automated welcome series on the free tier. Sources are not in full agreement here. One guide says the free plan allows one basic visual automation, while others say it has none, so check kit.com/pricing before you build anything.

Why does this matter? Because the welcome sequence is where a new subscriber decides whether you are worth opening. I walk through that in the welcome email sequence most food bloggers get wrong. If you cannot automate it, you are either sending it by hand or skipping it, and skipping it costs you.

What can you still do on MailerLite's smaller free plan?

Less than you could a year ago. MailerLite cut its free plan to 250 active subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, down from 500 subscribers and 12,000 emails. Free accounts are capped at 3 automations, 3 forms and 1 landing page, and existing free accounts moved to the new limits on July 1, 2026.

Here is the useful part. Three automations is enough for a welcome sequence, a lead magnet delivery and one more flow. For a brand-new blog with a few hundred subscribers, that is a real starting kit. For anyone with 500 or more subscribers, the free plan is out of reach, so you are comparing paid plans from day one.

The paid tiers are Comfort, from $12 a month, and Power, from $25 a month. If your main goal is a cheap, automated welcome sequence, MailerLite is worth trialing. Try MailerLite for your welcome sequence (affiliate link) and judge it on that one job. Its strength is that paid plans cost less than Kit Creator at the list sizes above while still including automations. Its limitation is that the free plan is now tiny, so you should expect to pay once your list grows past a few hundred people.

A lead magnet is what feeds that sequence, and lead magnet ideas for food bloggers will help you pick one that earns subscribers, not just downloads.

Which platform handles RSS-to-email for new recipes better?

If you publish several times a week, RSS email can save you hours. Both platforms offer it, and the details differ.

Kit: Its RSS connection can draft a broadcast for every new blog post, or send a weekly digest of recent posts. That suits recipe sites that publish several times a week. RSS campaigns appear on the paid plan, since Kit Creator adds visual automations, sequences, integrations, RSS campaigns and subject-line A/B tests.

MailerLite: Its RSS-to-email feature takes your feed URL, a daily, weekly or monthly send frequency and the number of posts to include. It advertises RSS campaigns as part of a 14-day trial of premium features on new accounts, which suggests RSS is not part of the small free plan.

So on both, plan to pay if you want recipes to flow to email automatically. The practical difference is control. Kit's per-post drafts let you review each email before it goes out. MailerLite's frequency settings suit a steady digest. I would pick based on whether you want to edit each send or set it and leave it.

A word of caution from experience. An automatic feed of every new recipe is convenient, but it is not a strategy. Plan the content behind it, and a seasonal content calendar will keep the feed from becoming a firehose.

Which is better for selling an ebook or meal plan?

On the research I have, Kit has a clear edge on the free tier. Its free plan includes digital product sales, which means you can sell a recipe ebook or meal plan before you spend anything on the platform.

For MailerLite, I do not have a confirmed source on which plan includes digital product sales. Before you choose it for selling, check the live pricing page for which tier includes it, and what is taken from each sale. That matters more than the monthly fee if your ebook is your main email product.

Whichever you choose, the platform is the easy part. Price and positioning are harder, and how to price a recipe ebook covers that for a first launch. If your list is not yet earning anything, most food bloggers have an email list but few make money from it, and that post covers why.

Does MailerLite or Kit have better deliverability?

This is the question I would trust least, and I want to be clear about why.

The only head-to-head test I found is EmailToolTester's from June 2023. In it, Kit landed 85.2% of emails in the main inbox and MailerLite 77.9%. But the picture is mixed:

Result (June 2023)	Kit	MailerLite
Main inbox	85.2%	77.9%
Sent to tabs	6.0%	18.6%
Spam rate	5.3%	0.3%

Kit won the main inbox, but MailerLite had the lower spam rate, 0.3% against 5.3%. That test is older than two years, and results shift over time.

My read: do not switch platforms because of a 2023 chart. Your own list health, sending habits and content matter at least as much as the platform. A cold, unengaged list drags results down anywhere, and a re-engagement sequence is the cheapest fix.

Should you switch platforms, and what does it cost to move?

Switching is rarely about the monthly fee alone. The real cost is your time: exporting the list, rebuilding forms and automations, and checking that everything still points where it should.

Here is when switching tends to make sense:

You are paying for Kit Creator mainly for a welcome sequence, and MailerLite would cover it for less.
You are on MailerLite's free plan and have outgrown 250 active subscribers.
You are on a paid plan, send simple broadcasts, and could drop to Kit's free plan.

And here is when I would stay put:

Your automations work and your list is growing.
The savings are small and the rebuild would eat a weekend.
You are in the middle of a launch.

One practical tip: clean the list before you move. Because pricing climbs with subscriber count, cold contacts can push you into a higher band, so a clear-out may lower your bill on either platform.

I often see creators skipping domain authentication. Gmail and Yahoo now require bulk senders to have SPF, DKIM, and DMARC set up properly. I've learned this both as a business owner building my own list and through my discussions with creators. Creators who relied on a platform’s shared default domain often don’t realize this needs redoing for the new provider. So if you're thinking about switching, practical order is: authenticate the domain, migrate engaged subscribers first, warm up with the most active segment, and keep the old account live long enough to catch stray signups.

Decision table: which platform fits which kind of food blogger?

If you are...	Lean toward	Why
Under 250 subscribers and starting out	MailerLite free	3 automations, 3 forms and 1 landing page cover the basics
Sending broadcasts and selling one ebook, with a list near 10,000	Kit free	Up to 10,000 subscribers, with digital product sales included
Wanting a welcome sequence on a modest budget	MailerLite Comfort	Cheaper than Kit Creator at 1,000 and 5,000 subscribers
Publishing several recipes a week and wanting per-post drafts	Kit Creator	RSS can draft a broadcast for each new post
Wanting a steady RSS digest	MailerLite (paid)	Set the feed, the frequency and the number of posts
Unsure	Trial both	Rebuild your welcome sequence and compare

Notice that no row says "best." The right choice depends on what your list does for you, and that changes as you grow.

Do this today

Block 30 minutes and do two things.

Export your list from your current platform and save the file somewhere safe. This is your insurance, and it takes about five minutes.
Rebuild your welcome sequence in a trial of the platform you are considering. MailerLite advertises a 14-day trial of premium features on new accounts, and for Kit, check kit.com/pricing for current trial terms. Build the same three or four emails you use now, add your signup form, and send a test to yourself.

If it feels easy, you have your answer. If it feels like a chore, you have saved yourself a bad switch. Do not cancel anything until the new setup has sent a real email to a real reader.

FAQ

Is Kit's free plan enough for a food blog? It is enough if you mainly send broadcasts and sell a digital product, since the free plan supports up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts, landing pages, forms and digital product sales. It is not enough if you want a visual welcome automation, because those sit on the paid Creator plan. Sources disagree on whether one basic automation is included, so check kit.com/pricing.

Is MailerLite still free? Yes, but the free plan is now small: 250 active subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, with 3 automations, 3 forms and 1 landing page. Existing free accounts moved to those limits on July 1, 2026. Confirm the numbers on MailerLite's pricing page before you build on it.

Which platform is cheaper at 5,000 subscribers? On the published tables, MailerLite is cheaper. One 2026 table lists Comfort at $49 and Power at $69 a month at 5,000 contacts, against roughly $89 for Kit Creator on monthly billing. Another tracker lists Kit at $75, so verify both on the live pricing pages.

Can I send new recipes automatically by RSS? Yes on both, though it appears to be a paid feature on each. Kit can draft a broadcast for every new post or send a weekly digest, and MailerLite takes your feed URL, a daily, weekly or monthly frequency and a number of posts to include.

Does deliverability differ between the two? In a June 2023 test, Kit placed more emails in the main inbox than MailerLite, but Kit also had a higher spam rate. That test is more than two years old, so treat it as a rough guide and run your own seed tests.

MailerLite vs Kit for Food Bloggers: Which Fits in 2026?

Share this article

How much do MailerLite and Kit cost at 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 subscribers?

Is Kit's free plan really enough for a recipe blog?

What can you still do on MailerLite's smaller free plan?

Which platform handles RSS-to-email for new recipes better?

Which is better for selling an ebook or meal plan?

Does MailerLite or Kit have better deliverability?

Should you switch platforms, and what does it cost to move?

Decision table: which platform fits which kind of food blogger?

Do this today

FAQ

Sources

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Kristen Wager, Ph.D.

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