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Kit vs Substack.
It’s a conundrum many creators face—and for good reason.
Both platforms were made with creators in mind, but both take very different approaches. While Substack strips things right back so you can concentrate on writing a newsletter, Kit (formerly ConvertKit) has gone for a “more is more” approach, with plenty of monetization and automation features.
We’ll break down how both tools compare across the features that matter most, including ease of use, pricing, automations, and more. We’ll dig into what each platform offers, highlight their unique features, and explain where they really shine (and where they might fall short).
We’ll also talk about the main differences, like how each one handles paid newsletters, what’s included out of the box, and the kinds of extras that could make or break your experience.
Kit vs Substack: Summary
- Both Kit and Substack are good options for creators who want to share their words and wisdom with their audiences.
- Kit is great for automations, monetization, and keeping things affordable while you grow.
- Substack really shines with its community features, like the ability for readers to comment directly on your posts and newsletters.
- Both tools have generous free plans—Substack is always free to use, while Kit offers a free plan for up to 10,000 subscribers.
Ease of Use
Substack was built to be ridiculously easy to use.
You can sign up, start writing, and hit publish within minutes and everything’s very intuitive. There’s barely a learning curve, but there is a downside to how easy it is to use. Substack is as straightforward as it gets—you hit the big orange “+” button and can either write a note or write your newsletter as a long-form post, with limited flexibility.
There are some basic customization options such as adding a header and footer to your email. If your modus operandi is to focus on your writing without getting bogged down in tech, it’s pretty much ideal.
That said, Kit isn’t difficult to use. It’s just different.
Kit gives you more tools and options upfront which can feel overwhelming at first, but pays off in the long run. You can customize everything: how your pages look, how you monetize, and even how you connect with your audience.
Yes, it takes a bit more effort to set up, but the flexibility is worth it if you want to create something that feels like your brand. And once you’re up and running, the dashboard is well-organized and easy to navigate. So if you’re willing to invest a little time upfront for more control and customization, Kit can be a great choice. It really depends on how much effort you want to put into the back end of your platform.
Winner: While Kit is far from complicated, it can take a bit of getting used to. Substack is easier to get set up and started so it pips Kit to the post here.
Substack: 1
Kit: 0
Email Editor
Substack’s email editor is as simple as it gets.
It feels like writing in a plain text editor—clean, distraction-free, and focused purely on the words. Great, if you don’t fancy tinkering with design or layouts.
Substack’s editor is simple and distraction-free.
You can add basic formatting, images, or embeds, but that’s about it. And honestly, that’s the point. Substack assumes your audience is here for the content, so the basic editor is adequate enough if you want to get your thoughts out quickly without fussing over aesthetics.
Kit’s email editor is also a simple text-based editor. However, it is far more flexible.
You can tweak layouts, format elements, and build beautiful branded emails. This is a huge plus if you want to include things like product promos, detailed visuals, or little personalized touches.
Kit’s email editor has more options but is still relatively simple to use.
But these additional features come with a bit of a learning curve. It’s by no means hard to use, but you’ll need to spend a bit of time figuring out how to make the most of it.
One of my favorite bits about Kit’s email editor is the ability to save templates. Once you’ve created a design you like, you can add it to your dashboard to use over and over again.
Winner: While Substack’s editor simplicity can be great, Kit wins this round. There’s far more customization available and you have much more control over your emails.
Substack: 1
Kit: 1
See a collection of inspiring real-life newsletter examples.
Subscription and Monetization options
Substack really only offers one monetization method—subscriptions.
You can toggle between free and paid options for your newsletter, set your subscription price for different tiers, and let Substack handle the rest. They manage payments, subscriber access, and even let you offer discounted trials or one-time promos to attract new subscribers.
These features are all baked into the platform, but this comes at a cost. Substack takes a 10% cut of your revenue—and that’s not including fees from your payment platform (for example, that’s an extra 2.9% on each transaction through Stripe). As you can imagine, this really adds up as your subscriber base grows.
Kit supports multiple revenue streams, including tiered memberships, one-off purchases, and bundles of products and services. You can also offer paid subscriptions to monetize your newsletter—and, get this, it only takes 3.5% of revenue plus $0.30 per subscription.
You can create products within Kit.
The trade-off here is that you need to do a little more legwork to set everything up and you might need third-party integrations to get the most out of it. But it by far offers more monetization options than Substack, which is great if you want to experiment with different revenue streams.
Winner: Kit is the no-brainer winner here. It has far more monetization options and takes less of a cut than Substack. There’s no competition.
Substack: 1
Kit: 2
Design And Flexibility
When it comes to designing your newsletter, Substack leans hard into minimalism.
You don’t get a lot of templates or customization options, but that’s by… design. The email layout is clean and readable with lots of white space, but you’re locked into a simple structure with no real way to tweak it beyond basic formatting.
An example of a Substack email from Patti Smith’s newsletter, showcasing the platform's clean and minimalist design
You can personalize a little bit by adding a logo and choosing main fonts and colors for the web version of the newsletter. But it’s all pretty basic, as usual. The same goes for your landing page. It’s functional, but if you want to inject some personality into your branding, you’re going to feel limited unless you specifically want a no-frills platform.
An example of a newsletter webpage on Substack
Kit, on the other hand, gives you more creative freedom. The email editor has several templates you can customize to match your branding and you can easily tweak fonts, colors, and layouts.
A selection of email templates in Kit
It’s the same with landing pages and forms. Kit offers a few templates that are easy to customize. A caveat here is that the templates feel pretty basic and, while it’s easy to change the font and colors, it’s much harder to change the overall structure of the page.
Winner: Kit definitely offers more design options in terms of templates and customizations. It’s still not fantastic for landing page design and the email editor isn’t as sophisticated as others on the market, but it’s far more flexible than Substack.
Substack: 1
Kit: 3
List management
There’s a common theme with Substack: simplicity. And its list management capabilities are no different.
In fact, they might be a bit too simple, depending on your needs. You can segment subscribers into free and paid tiers, and that’s about it. There’s no tagging, no advanced segmentation, and no filtering based on engagement.
This works fine if your audience is relatively small or if you don’t need to customize how you engage with different types of readers. But if you’re planning to do anything beyond “free vs. paid,” you’ll probably hit some frustrating roadblocks.
On the flip side, Kit has almost too many segmentation options (if that’s even a thing—I say the more the merrier!). You can tag subscribers based on behavior, interests, or where they came from.
Kit’s segmentation feature is pretty advanced
You can also create highly specific segments. For example, “people who opened the last three emails but didn’t click the link” or “subscribers who’ve purchased X product but not Y”.
It took me a while to get the hang of all the possible segmentation options, but one of my favorites is the ability to tag people who click a link in an email. This means I can automatically group people who show an interest in a new product or blog post and it’s completely low-effort on their part—they just have to click.
Winner: Kit has considerably better segmentation options. It gives you real control over your list and the freedom to segment your audience in ways that are best for you and your business.
Substack: 1
Kit: 4
Reports
Substack’s reporting is as you’d expect: pretty basic but functional.
The report’s dashboard in Substack
You can see how many people opened your email, how many clicked on a link, and your subscriber growth over time. It’s presented in a clean, easy-to-read way so there’s no data overload, and great if you’re just starting out or don’t particularly want to dive deep into your analytics.
But when you do get more curious about your numbers, you might find it difficult to analyze trends or improve your performance.
Kit is a bit more advanced with its reporting capabilities.
You still get the basics, like open rates, click rates, and subscriber growth, but you also get more granular insights. For example, you can track engagement by segment, see which links performed best, and monitor revenue metrics if you’re selling through the platform.
Kit’s reporting dashboard is more advanced
Kit also integrates with other tools, so you can pull your data into something like Google Analytics if you want to rummage further. This is all really helpful if you want to refine your strategy, but it’s not as beginner-friendly as Substack—mostly because the dashboard has a lot going on.
Winner: Substack keeps things nice and simple, but at some point, you’re going to want to dig a bit deeper into your numbers. For this reason, Kit is the winner. The sheer number of things you can track and measure gives you far more to work with.
Substack: 1
Kit: 5
Community Features and Audience Engagement Tools
Substack was made for community.
Readers can like your posts and comment on them and you can respond to create conversations. You can also start a direct conversation with your audience using their Chat feature. Substack also has a great “network effect” because it’s a platform where readers can discover, share and recommend other newsletters (which can indirectly help grow your audience).
The ability for readers to join in the discussion and to start threads based on comments and messages is a big selling point for Substack—especially if you’re keen to create a paid community.
Substack’s Chat feature, where writers and readers can start threads
Kit is a bit more dynamic with its community features.
You can create interactive forms, surveys, and polls to get real feedback from readers. You can also tag and segment your audience, which lets you personalize outreach or run campaigns for specific groups.
While Kit doesn’t have a built-in “discovery” feature like Substack, it does have a Creator Network where you can promote other relevant newsletters and vice versa.
Kit’s Creator Network lets you recommend other newsletters
For the most part, Kit’s community features are an extension of its segmentation capabilities. There’s no way for readers to comment directly on an email—instead, they’d have to hit reply and chat with you that way.
Winner: While Kit has some great ways to interact with your audience, Substack was literally built around community. It lets readers comment directly on your content, almost in a forum-style way, which is why it just pips Kit to the post in this round.
Substack: 2
Kit: 5
Pricing and Fees
Substack’s pricing model is straightforward. You don’t pay anything upfront, but they take a 10% cut of your paid subscriptions. I’ve already mentioned how this is a much bigger cut than most email marketing providers, but that’s likely because the rest of it is free.
The upside is that there’s no financial risk if you’re just starting out—you only pay when you make money. Plus, Substack handles all the payment processing through Stripe (though bear in mind that Stripe takes an additional cut of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, plus a billing fee of 0.7% for recurring subscriptions). All these fees can be a lot, so it’s worth keeping them in mind when thinking about the platform’s overall cost.
Kit works on a different pricing model where you pay a flat monthly fee to access all the features and then an additional 3.5% on the products you sell through the platform.
Perhaps the biggest bonus of Kit is that you can enjoy a free account right up until you hit 10,000 subscribers (you can find more details about it here). While you don’t get access to everything, you do still get one visual automation and one email sequence along with all the features included in the paid plans.
Kit’s pricing tiers
If you want more automations, you’ll need a paid Creator plan, which starts at $9 a month for 300 subscribers and increases as your audience grows.
Winner: Using Substack is completely free, which should give it the edge here, but that 10% cut, plus fees, is a killer. For this reason, Kit wins this round. Its free plan for up to 10,000 subscribers is unlike anything else out there and gives you a great opportunity to explore the platform before you pay.
Substack: 2
Kit: 6
Automations
Substack lets you schedule posts and emails to go out at a specific time, but that’s about where its automation capabilities end. There are no tools for setting up sequences, drip campaigns, or automations based on user behavior.
You can schedule posts in Substack
Kit, on the other hand, is brimming with automation options.
You can create custom email sequences, like onboarding series for new subscribers, or nurture campaigns for potential buyers. You can also trigger automations based on user behavior, like sending a follow-up email when someone clicks a specific link or giving a discount code to subscribers who haven’t purchased yet.
There are two key ways you can automate emails and flows in Kit.
Firstly, there are “rules” that work in an “if this, then that” way. So, if someone signs up for a form, you can automatically trigger a specific email sequence.
Alternatively, you can use the visual automation tool which lets you build out more complex flows. It can take a while to get your head around everything and get it all set up, but it’s beautiful once it’s in motion!
A selection of visual workflows in Kit
Winner: Kit, hands down. Its automation features far outweigh the limited options in Substack and you can even have limited use of them on the free plan.
Substack: 2
Kit: 7
Integrations
Substack was designed as a standalone platform, so there’s not much need for external tools. As a result, its integration capabilities are fairly limited.
It does work seamlessly with Stripe for payment processing and you can connect Google Analytics for basic tracking, but that’s it. The platform’s “everything in one place” approach is simple and convenient, but it can feel restrictive if you’re trying to do more complex things.
Kit takes a completely different approach and has integrations with a huge range of tools, including ecommerce tools, marketing tools, CRMs, analytics tools, membership tools, and even affiliate management tools.
Kit integrates with a ton of tools
You can do things like integrate Kit with your online store or set up Zaps to send leads to your project management tool.
But with endless possibilities comes a tiny bit of overwhelm, especially if you’re not sure which tools you need or how to link them all together.
Winner: Again, Kit takes the top spot here. Its huge number of integrations means you can essentially plug and play your entire tech stack.
Substack: 2
Kit: 8
Extras
Substack’s special features are all about improving the writer-reader relationship.
One standout feature is its subscriber discovery system. Readers can browse and subscribe to other newsletters within the ecosystem, which is a great organic growth opportunity.
Audio file option on a Substack newsletter
It also has built-in podcast hosting and the ability to upload audio files alongside your newsletter – giving readers the option to listen instead of read, if you enable this feature. But the biggest deal is the reader comments and chat threads which really do create a sense of community.
Substack also offers users a podcast platform
Beyond these highlights, Substack doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles—it sticks to the basics of content creation and distribution.
At the other end of the scale, Kit is packed with extras.
You can create custom domains, A/B test subject lines, and join the Creator Network to grow your subscriber base. This lets you recommend other creators and they can do the same for you. But it also gives you a unique landing page where you can promote your latest newsletters and content.
The Creator Profile editor in Kit
And then there are its selling features. As well as paid newsletters, you can sell digital products directly through the platform. This, plus its sheer number of integrations means you can essentially build out your entire business from one platform.
Winner: Features such as the chat threads on Substack are gold for community, but Kit’s additional features especially designed for creators position it as the winner here.
Substack: 2
Kit: 9
Who is the winner?
We’ve put both Substack and Kit through the wringer, testing them out in various categories. And it’s no real surprise that Kit has come out on top. With a decisive score of 9 to 2, Kit has shown its dedication to creators through detailed analytics, amazing features, and the ability to sell through the platform.
For those wondering how to create a newsletter that not only engages but also grows and monetizes effectively, Kit’s advanced features make it the stronger choice.
> Read our detailed Kit review
But that doesn’t mean Substack doesn’t hit hard too. It can be an excellent choice if you’re looking for a simpler tool—especially if you have a nice, engaged audience ready to pay for exclusive content. However, Substack’s features are more limited overall, so you need to be sure you’re comfortable working within its scope.
Both tools have their own perks and we recommend trying out each one to see what works best for you. You might find Substack’s easy interface and minimalist approach are all you need.
Or, you might agree with us that Kit’s advanced features—like automations and diverse monetization options—are the better choice for growing your list and taking your content to the next level!
I hope this article has helped you choose the best tool for your newsletter project!
You may also want to check out how Kit and Substack compare to Beehiiv, one of the most popular email marketing tool for creators:
Have you used Substack or Kit? Let me know in the comments about your experience – or if you have any other questions!
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