Comparison
Beehiiv vs Mailchimp vs Kit for a small business in 2026
The short answer
Kit has the most generous free tier at 10,000 subscribers. Beehiiv is free to 2,500 with unlimited sends and $43 a month after. Mailchimp cut its free plan to 250 contacts and 500 sends in February 2026, which is why so many small businesses are looking elsewhere.
What happened to Mailchimp
Mailchimp was the default for small business email for about fifteen years, largely because the free tier was generous enough to start on and stay on for a while.
That is over. As of 17 February 2026 the free plan covers 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, down from 2,000 contacts in 2022. That is an 87.5% reduction in four years, and automations had already been stripped from the free tier in mid-2025.
For a business with a list of four hundred customers, the free plan is now unusable. That is the whole reason this comparison exists.
What each costs now
All as of late 2026 and worth checking, because two of the three changed pricing within the last eighteen months.
Free tiers and first paid step
- Kit: free up to 10,000 subscribers on the Newsletter plan, the most generous of the three. Creator plan $33 a month annual, raised from $15 in September 2025
- Beehiiv: free up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends. Scale from $43 a month annual to 100,000 subscribers, Max at $109
- Mailchimp: free at 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, with automations removed. Paid tiers scale by contact count
Who should pick Kit
Anyone with a list under 10,000 who wants to spend nothing. The free tier is the most generous in the category by a wide margin and it includes sending, which is the thing that usually gets restricted.
The caveat is the jump. Kit raised its Creator plan from $15 to $33 a month in September 2025, a 120% increase that visibly dented its ratings. So the free tier is excellent and the step off it is steeper than it used to be. Worth knowing before you build a list of nine thousand on it.
Who should pick beehiiv
Anyone who wants the newsletter to be a thing in its own right rather than a channel for announcements. It carries no platform fee on paid subscriptions and includes an ad network, which only matters if the newsletter is a product.
For a plumbing business emailing four hundred customers about boiler servicing, most of that is irrelevant and the free tier at 2,500 is the only number that counts. It is perfectly good for that, and $43 a month if you outgrow it is a fair price.
Who should stay on Mailchimp
Businesses already paying for it and using the parts that are genuinely good: the automations, the ecommerce integrations, and a template editor that is still the friendliest of the three.
Migrating an email list is not free. You lose engagement history, you re-warm a sending reputation, and you spend an afternoon rebuilding automations. If the paid plan works and the price is acceptable, the switching cost is real and the grass is not that much greener.
The people who should move are the ones on the free tier who just discovered it now holds 250 contacts.
Migrating a list is not free. You lose engagement history and re-warm a sending reputation.
What migrating actually involves
Export the list, import it, and expect the new platform to make you verify your sending domain again. That last part matters more than people expect: it means DNS records, and a day or two before deliverability settles.
Automations do not transfer. Whatever sequences you built get rebuilt by hand, which is the real cost and the reason to do it once rather than annually.
Send your first campaign to your most engaged segment rather than the whole list. A new sending domain with a poor first open rate starts you in a hole that takes weeks to climb out of.
The thing that matters more than the platform
All three deliver email competently. What decides whether the list is worth anything is whether you send to it, and most small business lists are collected diligently and then emailed twice a year.
A list of four hundred emailed monthly is worth more than four thousand emailed at Christmas, and no feature comparison changes that. Pick whichever free tier fits your list size, and put the decision energy into the sending schedule instead.
Common questions
- What happened to the Mailchimp free plan?
- It was cut to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month as of 17 February 2026, down from 2,000 contacts in 2022. Automations were removed from the free tier in mid-2025.
- Which has the best free tier?
- Kit, at up to 10,000 subscribers on its Newsletter plan. Beehiiv is free to 2,500 with unlimited sends. Both are far more generous than Mailchimp's current 250.
- Is it worth migrating from Mailchimp?
- If you are on the free tier and it no longer fits, yes. If you are paying and using the automations and ecommerce integrations, probably not: migrating costs you engagement history, a re-warmed sending reputation and an afternoon rebuilding sequences.
- How much does beehiiv cost?
- Free up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends, then the Scale plan from $43 a month billed annually up to 100,000 subscribers, and Max at $109. There is no platform fee on paid subscriptions.
- Does the platform choice actually matter?
- Less than the sending schedule. All three deliver email competently, and a list of four hundred emailed monthly is worth more than four thousand emailed once a year.