Email marketing
Which email marketing tool is right for your course business?
There is no single best email platform for course creators — the right answer depends on how you sell, what you already pay for, and how big your list is. Kit suits creators who launch. ActiveCampaign suits evergreen funnels. GetResponse suits people who want one platform for everything. This quiz asks six questions and matches you against all eight tools, with the reasons and the downsides stated openly.
Six questions. A ranked recommendation in about 60 seconds. No signup.
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The short answer
If you don't want to take the quiz, here is the short version. Most course creators launching to a list under 10,000 subscribers are best served by Kit: it has the strongest native integrations with Teachable, Thinkific and Kajabi, a free plan that runs far further than anyone else's, and an editor you can learn in an afternoon. Two weaknesses to weigh against that. Reporting is thin, so tracing which email produced which sale is awkward. And Kit raised prices by roughly 120% in September 2025 — the Creator plan is now $39 a month at 1,000 subscribers, the highest entry price in this comparison. The free plan is still the most generous here by a wide margin, so the increase mainly bites when you cross into paying.
If your selling is evergreen and funnel-driven, ActiveCampaign is the better tool and it isn't close. Its automation builder handles conditional logic that Kit simply cannot express, and its reporting attributes revenue properly. You pay for that in money and in setup time. If you have never built an automation before, expect a weekend, not an evening.
If you have no website and no course platform yet, GetResponse is worth serious consideration purely because it collapses four subscriptions into one — just price the tier that actually includes automation, not the $19 headline. And if your constraint is cost above everything, MailerLite does 80% of what Kit does for a fraction of the price, with automation that will eventually limit you but the best measured inbox placement of anything here.
Three tools on this page will suit fewer people but are worth knowing about. Mailchimp is the most capable general-purpose platform here and scales furthest, but nothing about it is built for selling courses and its free plan is now the weakest at 250 contacts. Flodesk makes by far the best-looking emails and is the nicest to use, but lost its flat-rate pricing in late 2025 and has the thinnest reporting. AWeber's deliverability record is excellent and its automation is the most limited — dependable rather than ambitious.
All tools at a glance
Entry prices and free plans. Costs scale with list size on every tool here, so check current pricing before committing.
| Tool | From | Free plan | Inbox placement | Best for | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kit | $39/mo | up to 10,000 subscribers | Strong (tested) | Built for creators who sell courses, newsletters and digital products. | Visit |
| ActiveCampaign | $19/mo | No | Excellent (tested) | The most capable automation builder here, with a light CRM attached. | Visit |
| GetResponse | $19/mo | up to 500 contacts | Strong (tested) | Email, landing pages, webinars and course hosting in one platform. | Visit |
| MailerLite | $10/mo | up to 1,000 subscribers | Excellent (tested) | Simple, affordable and quick to start — the easiest on-ramp here. | Visit |
| AWeber | $19/mo | up to 500 subscribers | Excellent (tested) | Long-established, dependable delivery, straightforward to run. | Visit |
| Moosend | $9/mo | No | Strong (tested) | Budget-friendly with better automation than the price suggests. | Visit |
| Mailchimp | $13/mounverified | 250 contacts, 500 sends/month | Strong (tested) | The default everyone has heard of — broad, capable, and no longer cheap. | Visit |
| Flodesk | $19/mounverified | No | Not independently tested | The design-led option — the best-looking emails here, with the least depth behind them. | Visit |
The 8 tools compared
Kit
Kit was built for exactly this audience, and it shows in the details: native integrations with the major course platforms, tagging that maps cleanly onto 'bought course A, on the waitlist for course B', and a free plan up to 10,000 subscribers that lets you build an entire launch list before paying anything. Two trade-offs. Reporting stops at opens, clicks and growth — there is no revenue attribution, so you will be reconstructing which email drove which sale from your course platform's data instead. And the price moved sharply: a roughly 120% increase in September 2025 put the Creator plan at $39 a month at 1,000 subscribers, making it the most expensive entry point on this page. That free tier still absorbs most of the pain for creators under 10,000 subscribers, but budget for a real jump the day you outgrow it. The automation builder is also intentionally simple, which is a feature until the day you need branching logic three levels deep.
Strengths
- Native integrations with Teachable, Thinkific and Kajabi
- Free up to 10,000 subscribers — by far the most generous here
- Tagging model fits how creators actually segment buyers
- Easiest here to get sending on day one
Trade-offs
- Reporting is basic — no revenue attribution or funnel analytics.
- Raised prices roughly 120% in September 2025 — now the most expensive entry tier here.
- The automation builder is deliberately simple; deep conditional logic gets awkward.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is the most capable tool in this comparison and the least pleasant to start with. Conditional branching, split-testing inside automations, site tracking, lead scoring and genuine revenue attribution are all there. For an evergreen funnel where a subscriber's behaviour should change what they receive next, nothing else here competes. The costs are real: no free plan, the steepest pricing curve as your contact count grows, and an interface that assumes you know what a 'goal' and a 'deal pipeline' are. If you are pre-launch with 300 subscribers, this is the wrong tool and you will feel it every time you log in.
Strengths
- Deepest automation here — conditional branching, split tests, multi-trigger
- Revenue attribution and genuine funnel analytics
- Best measured inbox placement of any tool in this set
- Segmentation down to behaviour and site tracking
Trade-offs
- Steepest learning curve here — expect a real setup investment.
- No free plan, and pricing rises sharply with contacts and feature tier.
- Far more capability than most solo course creators will ever use.
GetResponse
GetResponse is the one platform here that seriously tries to replace several subscriptions at once — email, the best landing page builder in this set, webinars, and course hosting. For a creator with no website, no funnel tool and no course platform, that consolidation is worth more than any individual feature comparison suggests. Check the tier before you commit, though: the $19 entry plan does not include marketing automation, which starts around $59 a month. If automation is the reason you are considering GetResponse, price it at $59, not $19. The broader caveat is that nothing in the bundle is best-in-class — its automation is good but not ActiveCampaign's, its course hosting functional but not Teachable's. If you already pay for a course platform and a website, you are buying overlap you won't use.
Strengths
- Replaces several subscriptions — email, pages, webinars, course hosting
- Strongest landing page builder in this set, with A/B testing
- Can host courses itself if you don't have a platform yet
- Solid measured deliverability (~91%)
Trade-offs
- Automation isn't in the $19 entry plan — you need the ~$59/mo tier for workflows.
- Jack of all trades — each individual tool is good rather than best-in-class.
- The webinar and course features only pay off if you actually use them.
MailerLite
MailerLite is the easiest tool here to get running and the cheapest to keep running. The free plan covers 1,000 subscribers with most core features intact, the editor is genuinely pleasant, and the landing pages are better than the price suggests. For a creator validating whether they even have an audience, it is hard to argue against. Where it stops is automation depth and reporting: workflows handle 'someone joined this group, send this sequence' well and struggle beyond that. Worth knowing before you commit: MailerLite manually reviews accounts and does reject some, so approval is not automatic.
Strengths
- Best sustained inbox placement on record here (94.4% across five test rounds)
- Cheapest credible option at almost every list size
- Fastest of the set to get running
- Free plan covers 1,000 subscribers with most core features
Trade-offs
- Automation is capable but shallow — complex funnels will outgrow it.
- Account approval is manual and can be refused; support is slower on the free plan.
- Reporting is among the thinnest here.
AWeber
AWeber's case rests almost entirely on deliverability and stability. It has been sending email since before most of this list existed, and its inbox placement record reflects that. For a creator whose priority is that launch emails actually arrive during a five-day cart-open window, that matters more than feature counts. Against it: the automation is linear, so multi-branch sales sequences are awkward or impossible, the interface looks its age, and the stock templates will need replacing. It is a dependable choice rather than an ambitious one.
Strengths
- Among the longest-proven deliverability records in the industry
- Straightforward to learn
- Competitive on smaller lists
- Free plan up to 500 subscribers
Trade-offs
- Automation is the weakest here for multi-step sales sequences.
- The interface feels dated next to Kit or MailerLite.
- Stock templates look their age unless you build your own.
Moosend
Moosend is the cost-conscious outlier — the lowest entry price here, with automation and reporting noticeably better than that price implies. If your constraint is purely budget and you are comfortable wiring integrations yourself, it delivers more than it should. The reasons it rarely wins for course creators are specific: there is no free plan, only a 30-day trial, and its course platform integrations are the weakest here, so expect Zapier to sit between Moosend and Teachable or Thinkific. The company is also smaller, which means a thinner ecosystem when you need an answer.
Strengths
- Lowest entry price of the set at $9/month
- Automation is stronger than the price suggests, with real branching
- Reporting is more detailed than the price point implies
- Clean interface, quick to pick up
Trade-offs
- No free plan — a 30-day trial only.
- Weakest course-platform integrations here; expect to rely on Zapier.
- Smaller company with a thinner ecosystem and community.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is the one everybody has already heard of, and it is genuinely capable — mature reporting, the widest integration library of anything here, strong ecommerce tooling, and it scales to lists far larger than most course businesses will ever build. Two things hold it back for this audience. Its free plan has been cut repeatedly and now stands at 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, which is the least generous in this comparison by a wide margin. And nothing about it is built for course creators specifically — where Kit gives you tagging that maps onto 'bought course A, waitlisted for course B', Mailchimp gives you a general-purpose marketing platform you have to bend into that shape. Worth adding for transparency: Mailchimp is the one tool on this page we earn nothing from. It has no straightforward affiliate programme for a site like this, and it is here because leaving out the most-searched tool in the category would tell you more about our incentives than about email marketing.
Strengths
- Most widely supported integrations of anything here
- Reporting and ecommerce tooling are genuinely strong
- Scales to very large lists
- Familiar — almost no learning curve if you've used it before
Trade-offs
- Free plan has been cut repeatedly — now just 250 contacts and 500 sends/month.
- Costs escalate faster than most alternatives as your list grows.
- Nothing about it is built for course creators specifically.
Flodesk
Flodesk makes the best-looking emails on this page and is the most pleasant of the eight to actually use — if design matters to you and you have been put off by how clinical most email tools look, that is a real and underrated advantage. Be clear about the trade-offs before committing, though. It retired its flat-rate unlimited plan in December 2025, which was the single biggest reason people chose it, and now scales by subscriber count like everything else. Its reporting is the weakest here. Automation runs out quickly once you want conditional sales sequences. And unlike every other tool on this page, no independent inbox-placement testing exists for it — its own deliverability chart measures delivery (sent minus bounced), not whether mail actually reached the inbox, which are very different numbers. We have rated it neutrally on deliverability rather than guess.
Strengths
- By far the best-looking templates and editor here
- Very fast to learn
- Well-designed forms and landing pages included
Trade-offs
- Retired its flat-rate unlimited pricing in December 2025 — the main reason people chose it.
- Reporting is the weakest of any tool here.
- No independent deliverability testing exists for it, so we can't verify inbox placement.
- Automation depth runs out quickly for real sales funnels.
How to actually choose
Most comparison articles rank these tools on feature counts. That is the wrong axis, because every tool here sends email competently and the feature lists have converged. What separates them for a course business is a smaller set of questions that most articles skip.
The first is how you sell. Live launching and evergreen selling place almost opposite demands on a tool. A launch needs reliable delivery in a compressed window, easy segmentation into 'opened but didn't buy' groups, and speed of setup, because you are rebuilding sequences each time. Evergreen selling needs the opposite: deep conditional automation you build once and leave running, plus reporting good enough to see where in the funnel people stall. A tool that is excellent for one is merely adequate for the other.
The second is what you already pay for. If you are on Kajabi, you already have email, landing pages and hosting. Adding a second email tool only makes sense if it is meaningfully better than the built-in one at something you actually need — usually automation depth or segmentation. If you are on Teachable or Thinkific, you have course hosting but no serious email, and native integration becomes the thing that saves you hours.
The third is your real budget over the next twelve months, not today. Every tool here prices on subscriber count, and the curves differ sharply. A tool that is cheapest at 500 subscribers may be the most expensive at 10,000. If you expect meaningful list growth, compare prices at the size you expect to be, not the size you are.
The fourth, and the one people underrate, is how much setup time you can afford. ActiveCampaign will reward a weekend of configuration with capability nothing else here matches. It will also punish a creator who does not have that weekend, by sitting half-configured while their list goes uncontacted. An adequate tool you actually use beats an excellent tool you never finish setting up.
What these tools actually cost as your list grows
Entry prices are the most misleading number in this category, because every tool here charges by subscriber count and the curves diverge hard. The cheapest option at 500 subscribers is frequently not the cheapest at 5,000, and almost never the cheapest at 25,000.
A concrete example of how far apart they pull. At around 5,000 subscribers, GetResponse runs about $54 a month while ActiveCampaign runs about $99 — nearly double, for a list size plenty of course creators reach inside two years. At the entry point those two are much closer together, which is exactly why comparing starting prices tells you so little.
Two things distort the picture further. The first is feature gating: GetResponse's cheapest plan excludes marketing automation entirely, so if automation is why you're considering it, the relevant price is the roughly $59 tier and not the $19 one. Always check that the plan you're pricing includes the feature you actually came for. The second is free-plan erosion — Mailchimp's free tier has been cut twice in three years and now sits at 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, so a free plan you chose a tool for may not be the free plan you end up with.
The practical advice: work out roughly what size list you expect in twelve months, price every shortlisted tool at that number rather than today's, and confirm the tier you're pricing includes the features you need. Migration is possible later but costs days of rebuilding automations, so this is worth twenty minutes now.
Should you just use your course platform's built-in email?
If you're on Kajabi, Podia or another all-in-one, you already have email included, and adding a dedicated tool means paying twice and keeping two systems in sync. That's a real cost, and for a lot of creators the built-in option is genuinely the right answer. We haven't included the all-in-one platforms as recommendations on this page for a simple reason: at $179 a month and up, Kajabi isn't competing with a $19 email tool on price, it's a different purchase entirely, and lining them up in the same table would mislead more than it helps.
The case for adding a specialist tool on top comes down to three specific gaps. Automation depth is the most common — built-in email tends to handle 'someone bought, send this sequence' well and struggle with genuine conditional branching. Segmentation is the second: tagging based on behaviour rather than purchase history is usually thin. Deliverability is the third and least discussed, since a bundled feature rarely gets the dedicated sender-reputation engineering that a specialist platform's entire business depends on.
If none of those three limits is currently costing you sales, stay where you are. The moment one of them is — you're rebuilding the same sequence by hand every launch, or your open rates have quietly slid — that's the signal to add a specialist rather than a vague sense that you ought to have better tools.
Common questions
Do I need a separate email tool if I use Kajabi?
Not necessarily. Kajabi's built-in email is adequate for straightforward broadcast sending and simple sequences, and running a second tool means paying twice and syncing data between them. The case for adding a dedicated tool is specific: you need automation branching Kajabi can't express, you need segmentation based on behaviour rather than purchase, or you want deliverability better than a bundled feature typically provides. If none of those apply, stay with Kajabi.
What's the best free email marketing tool for course creators?
Kit's free plan is the most generous by a wide margin — up to 10,000 subscribers, which is more than most course creators reach in their first two years. That gap widened after Kit's September 2025 price increase: the free tier stayed generous while the paid entry point rose to $39, so the free plan is now the main reason to start there. MailerLite's free plan covers 1,000 subscribers but keeps more automation available at that tier. AWeber's stops at 500. GetResponse's covers 500 contacts and excludes automation. Mailchimp's is now the weakest at 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, having been cut twice since 2023. ActiveCampaign, Moosend and Flodesk have no free plan at all, only trials. If your budget is genuinely zero, the quiz filters the paid-only tools out entirely rather than recommending something you can't use.
Is ConvertKit the same as Kit?
Yes. ConvertKit rebranded to Kit, and you will still see both names used interchangeably across the web, in integration menus and in older articles. It is the same product and the same account.
How much should a course creator expect to pay for email marketing?
It depends almost entirely on list size, since every tool here prices per subscriber. A creator under 1,000 subscribers can realistically run on free plans — Kit's covers up to 10,000, MailerLite's up to 1,000, AWeber's up to 500. Once you are paying, entry tiers at around 1,000 subscribers run from about $9 a month (Moosend) to $39 (Kit, following its September 2025 increase), with ActiveCampaign, AWeber and GetResponse around $19. Watch for feature gates as well as headline prices: GetResponse's $19 plan excludes marketing automation, which needs the roughly $59 tier. Past 10,000 subscribers the spread widens considerably, and ActiveCampaign in particular climbs steeply. Compare at the list size you expect in a year, not the one you have today. Prices last checked 11 August 2026.
Can I switch email tools later without losing my list?
You can export and import subscribers between any of these tools, so the list itself moves. What does not move cleanly is everything built around it: automation sequences must be rebuilt by hand, tags and segments often need remapping, and forms and landing pages have to be recreated and re-embedded. You will also take a short-term deliverability hit while the new platform establishes a sending reputation for your list. Switching is entirely possible, but the cost is measured in days of work, which is a good reason to think about your next twelve months rather than just this one.
Which tool is best for live launches specifically?
Launch selling rewards three things: deliverability during a compressed cart-open window, fast segmentation into groups like 'clicked the sales page but didn't buy', and quick setup because you rebuild sequences each launch. Kit and AWeber are both strong on delivery, and Kit's tagging makes launch segmentation quick. ActiveCampaign can do everything they can and more, but its setup overhead is harder to justify for something you configure fresh each time rather than build once.
Is Flodesk worth it for course creators?
It depends almost entirely on how much you value design. Flodesk makes the best-looking emails of anything on this page and is the most pleasant to use, which is a genuine advantage if polished branding matters to your business. But it retired its flat-rate unlimited pricing in December 2025, which was the main reason most people chose it, and now scales by subscriber count like everything else. Its automation runs out quickly for conditional sales funnels, its reporting is the weakest here, and no independent inbox-placement testing exists for it — its own deliverability chart measures delivery rather than whether mail reached the inbox, which are very different things. Good fit for a design-led creator with straightforward sequences; poor fit if you're running complex evergreen funnels.
Why isn't Mailchimp your top recommendation?
Mailchimp is a capable platform and it scales further than most course businesses will ever need, but it's a general-purpose marketing tool rather than something built for selling courses. For this audience specifically, tools like Kit give you tagging that maps directly onto 'bought course A, waitlisted for course B', while Mailchimp asks you to build that structure yourself. Its free plan is also now the weakest here at 250 contacts, and its costs escalate faster than most alternatives. It's on this page because omitting the most-searched tool in the category would say more about our incentives than about email marketing — it's also, as it happens, the one tool here we earn nothing from.
How much does deliverability actually matter?
More than most feature comparisons suggest, and it's the one dimension on this page backed by genuine measurement rather than judgement. Independent testing sends seed emails through each platform and checks where they land, and the spread is significant: the strongest performers place around 94% of mail in inboxes while the category average sits closer to 83%. On a 5,000-person launch list, that difference is roughly 550 people who never see your cart-open email. It matters most if you sell in compressed windows, where a message landing in spam on day one of a five-day launch can't be recovered.
Product data and pricing are checked periodically and dated on each card. Found something out of date? Tell us.