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 six tools, with the reasons and the downsides stated openly.
Six questions. A ranked recommendation in about 60 seconds. No signup.
How many email subscribers do you have?
If you're just starting, that's fine — we factor in room to grow.
How this site makes money: we may earn a commission if you sign up through our links, at no extra cost to you. Commission rates are not an input to the scoring — the programs pay very different rates and the ranking is blind to that. How we recommend.
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. 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.
The 6 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 of the six. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 of the six, 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.
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 we don't factor in
Every tool on this page runs an affiliate program, and we may earn a commission if you sign up through one of our links. That creates an obvious incentive problem, so here is exactly how we handle it.
Commission rates are not an input to the scoring. They do not appear anywhere in the code that ranks these tools. The quiz scores products on how well their capabilities match the needs your answers imply, and nothing else. The programs pay very different rates — the highest payer here earns us several times what the lowest does — and the ranking is blind to that distinction.
We also state a downside on every single recommendation, including the top one. A recommendation engine that only says positive things is an advertisement wearing a lab coat. If the tool we rank first for you has a real weakness relative to your answers, that weakness appears on the card.
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. ActiveCampaign and Moosend 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.