GetResponse vs Kit (2026): Count Workflows, Not Subscribers

In late August a Kit user left a one-star Trustpilot review titled "Free plan advertises features you can't actually get." They had built a six-part email course during Kit's 14-day trial. Then the trial ended: "The only free plan offered to my account after the trial was broadcasts only, with none of that, and it locked the work I had built. To get the features advertised as free, I had to pay $39/month." A support rep later agreed the difference between the trial and the free plan was unclear and refunded a charge, the reviewer added, but the work stayed behind the paywall.

It wasn't a glitch in one account. As of October 2026, Kit's Free plan doesn't send automated email at all. Its help center files visual automations, email sequences and rules under "What needs a paid plan." Some of the comparisons ranking for this search still say Kit Free includes one automation. It did, until recently.

For anyone who runs a welcome sequence, that change reshuffles this comparison. Most "GetResponse vs Kit" pages sort you by identity first (creator or marketer) and by list size second. Neither one tells you which tool is cheaper. The number that does is how many automations you plan to run.

Count your workflows, not your subscribers. With no automations, Kit Free wins outright up to 10,000 subscribers. With a welcome series plus one other workflow, GetResponse Starter costs $5 to $60 a month less than Kit at every list size up to 10,000. Past that, Kit Creator undercuts GetResponse Marketer at three of every four list sizes up to 100,000, provided Kit's account review lets your business in.

The short answer

• No automations, under 10,000 subscribers: Kit Free. It's $0, and GetResponse's free plan stops at 500 contacts.
• A welcome series and one more workflow: GetResponse Starter, $19 to $79 a month up to 10,000 contacts, against $39 to $139 on Kit Creator.
• Three or more workflows: Kit Creator at most list sizes. The exceptions are 5,001–10,000, 45,001–50,000 and above 85,000, where GetResponse Marketer is cheaper.
• Webinars, courses or affiliate-led emails: GetResponse, for reasons that have nothing to do with price. See the sections on Kit's admission test and on what each premium buys.

What "free" means on each side in October 2026

Both free plans are broadcast-only now, and Kit's holds 20 times as many people. For a writer who only sends a newsletter, that settles it. Kit Free is the better free plan, and it isn't close.

The plan changed under the comparison pages. Until recently Kit's free tier was called Newsletter. It included one basic visual automation and one sequence, plus a recommendation slot Kit controlled. One review site captured those terms on August 26, and the Trustpilot reviewer above describes the same slot. A writer in r/Emailmarketing on Reddit was still using them in early August: once Kit's support bot moved the account onto the Newsletter plan, the free automation ran, and a test signup "about 10 minutes later it received the first email in that sequence." Kit's onboarding article for that plan now returns a 404. The replacement trades the automation for five recommendation slots you can edit or turn off, and its help page is candid about the trade-off: "Paid plans get priority and a larger share of these recommendations."

Two rules on the new plan matter later. When you pass 10,000, "You'll need to upgrade to a paid plan to keep sending." And if you move back down to Free, "Visual automations and sequences stop running."

Workflow count: the number the price tables leave out

Start with an automation inventory, not a list size. Welcome series. Lead-magnet delivery. Launch sequence. Re-engagement. Purchase follow-up. Each line is a workflow somebody has to pay for, and the two vendors charge for them in different places:

• GetResponse Starter includes a welcome email series and one custom automation workflow. Marketer and Creator put no cap on workflows.
• Kit Free includes none. Kit Creator and Pro set no cap on visual automations or sequences.

So the real pairings are Kit Creator against GetResponse Starter if your inventory stops at a welcome series plus one more, and Kit Creator against GetResponse Marketer if it doesn't. Both vendors price by tier ceiling. Kit's own help example moves an account to the $59 tier at 1,001 subscribers.

Welcome series plus one workflow: Kit Creator vs GetResponse Starter (monthly)

Above 10,000 the lead trades back and forth. Kit is cheaper at 10,001–15,000 ($169 against $174), 25,001–35,000 ($259 against $299) and 50,001–75,000 ($379–$499 against $539). GetResponse Starter is cheaper everywhere else. Across every list size from 1 to 100,000, Kit wins 40% of them.

Three or more workflows: Kit Creator vs GetResponse Marketer (monthly)

Kit wins 75% of list sizes in this pairing. Yearly billing doesn't move a single band: Kit charges ten months' price for twelve, GetResponse takes 18% off, and the winners stay the same.

Two lines on that inventory means GetResponse Starter. Three or more, and Kit Creator is the plan to price against Marketer, which Kit usually wins unless the list sits between 5,001 and 10,000.

That's also the reader Kit's price is built for. In a September 2025 thread about Kit getting expensive, one user who stays with it put the trade this way: "I don't love the price increase but it is hands down the best tool for the job if you use it to its full potential."

Two claims in the current search results don't survive this table. One comparison says that once you pass 10,000, GetResponse undercuts Kit at every tier. Against Kit Pro that's nearly true. Against Kit Creator it isn't: at 12,000 subscribers Kit Creator is $169, GetResponse Starter $174 and Marketer $215. Another, updated in September, puts 10,000 contacts at $59 on GetResponse and $119 on Kit. Today's prices at that size are $79 on Starter, $114 on Marketer and $139 on Kit Creator.

Kit's free plan sets up its most expensive upgrade

Kit Free is the usual advice for writers who only send a newsletter: start there and sort out automation later. It still holds, with one condition: decide before you pass 5,000 subscribers whether you'll ever want a welcome sequence.

Follow the chain. Kit Free costs nothing up to 10,000, so a broadcast-only writer has every reason to stay. Because it runs no automations, the first welcome sequence forces an upgrade wherever the list happens to be. If that day comes between 5,001 and 10,000, Kit Creator costs $119 or $139 a month. GetResponse Starter costs $79 and Marketer $114. That stretch is the only one below 45,000 where Kit loses to both GetResponse plans, and at 8,001–10,000 the gap to Starter is $60 a month, $720 a year.

Now wait instead. At 10,001 Kit makes you upgrade anyway, and the price lands at $169, against $174 on Starter and $215 on Marketer. The forced upgrade is cheaper on Kit than either GetResponse plan. The voluntary one a few thousand subscribers earlier is dearer than both. So the plan that makes Kit the cheapest place to grow a list also makes the month you want your first automation the most expensive month to buy it.

Waiting has its own cost, and I can't put a number on it: every subscriber who joins before the upgrade gets no welcome sequence. The August reviewer hit the same wall from the other side: a course built, and no free way to run it. Paying for automation you don't use is an old complaint about this tool, too. A Hacker News commenter wrote back in 2021, while still under 1,000 subscribers, that "their pricing can get so expensive when i don't even have a much need for automations." Kit's free plan now goes the other way: room for 10,000 people and no automations at all.

I read that as where this market is heading. Both of these vendors now give away a broadcast-only plan and charge for the first automated email, and Kit's free tier doubles as a feeder for its recommendation network. Not every vendor has gone this way (Brevo's free plan still runs automations for up to 2,000 contacts), but for these two, automation is the paywall. Choose a free plan by its ceiling. Choose a paid plan by your workflow count.

Kit's admission test

Price is only half of whether Kit is cheaper for you. The other half is whether Kit lets you stay.

Kit's Acceptable Use Policy, updated May 7, 2026, opens with the gate: "Most new accounts are required to go through our verification process," and "During your account review, we reserve the right to deny your account." The prohibited list includes "Make-money-online or get rich quick schemes" and "CPA affiliate type sites or similar affiliate type of sites, network marketing sites, affiliate educational offers, insurance sales or promotions." Further down, Kit says it will "evaluate on an account-by-account basis" a set of industries that includes affiliate marketing, where it bans "content that is 100% affiliate based, including selling other tools, software, 'business in a box', etc."

A separate help article from June 2026 puts a ratio on it: "If 70-80% of your email content is about your own products, services, and information about who you are and what you do, and only around 20-30% of your content is related to affiliate marketing, you are good to go." Regardless of your business, Kit allows no affiliate links "related to education, loans, online pharmacies, or 'get rich quick' types of software." And if an account is closed for a violation, "A refund will not be provided. Export of any account data or details will be at Kit's discretion."

Trustpilot shows what that looks like from the inside. In September 2026 one user, on Kit since the start of the year, pasted the message they'd received from Kit into a one-star review: "At this time, we don't believe that our platform is the right fit for your business, so we are unable to support your account." In March 2025 another wrote: "My brand-new account was shut down before I even had the chance to send my first emails. Kit claimed it was due to concerns about affiliate marketing, even though I hadn't engaged in any affiliate promotions." They added that they'd only had plans to include affiliate links later, "responsibly." These are one side of each story, and Kit's reasons in each case aren't public. The policy text is public, though, and it matches what they describe.

GetResponse isn't gate-free. Its terms say "We do not pre-screen or control Customer's activity," then reserve the right to "suspend email campaigns, block Customer's landing page, stop Webinars" at its "sole discretion." Its checks land on the first campaign after an import, which test the import before you prepay covers for both tools. The difference is what the written rules aim at. GetResponse's prohibited-goods list targets products: gambling, make-money-fast and pyramid schemes, payday loans, weapons, nicotine, crypto without written permission. It has no rule about what share of your email can be affiliate content. Kit's policy targets the business model.

That gives each tool a customer who shouldn't start on it.

If most of what you send is someone else's link (software deals, affiliate roundups, "tools I use" emails with nothing of your own between them), don't start the build on Kit. Its policy wants 70–80% of your email to be about your own work, and the judgment happens on Kit's side, case by case, possibly after you've built.

Before building a coach's funnel on GetResponse, read the offer against one line of its prohibited-goods list, which bars marketing for "medical services, medical aid, medical assistance, medicines." A wellness offer that drifts into treatment claims belongs on a platform that has said yes in writing. Insurance and loan offers fall foul of Kit's policy outright and need a written answer from GetResponse support before you build them there.

What the premium buys: a network or a room

Strip out the workflow math and the two tools are selling different things. Kit sells access to other creators' audiences. GetResponse sells a room you can bring your audience into.

Kit's network. Kit enrolls new accounts in its Creator Network at signup, so newsletters can recommend each other on their signup forms. On Creator and Pro you can also earn from Paid Recommendations, where other creators pay "anywhere between $1 and $4+ for every subscriber you send their way." Kit takes "a 20% service fee and a 3.5% transaction fee," 23.5% in total. That lets you test whether the network pays the premium back. At $2 a subscriber you keep $1.53, so covering a $60-a-month gap with GetResponse Starter takes 40 paid referrals a month. At $1 it takes 79. At $4, 20. Kit doesn't publish typical referral volumes, so I can't tell you which number is realistic for your list. Not everyone is sold. A one-star reviewer in February 2026 described "a creator network that is supposed to increase engagement, but does absolutely nothing."

Kit also lets you sell on every plan, Free included, at 3.5% + 30¢ per sale, "inclusive of credit card processing fees, so Kit only takes 0.6%." The flat 30¢ weighs on small prices: $0.48 on a $5 sale (9.5%), $0.65 on $10 (6.5%), $2.05 on $50 (4.1%). Because the fee already includes card processing, I'm not going to claim GetResponse is cheaper to sell on. Card rates vary by country and I haven't verified them. The structural difference is bigger than the fee anyway. A $5-a-month paid newsletter can run on Kit Free with no subscription cost. On GetResponse, premium newsletters are a Creator feature, which costs $69 a month for a 1,000-contact list.

Kit Pro adds engagement scoring, Subscriber Signals and a custom tracking domain. That last one is a sore point. A reviewer in September 2026 titled a one-star review "Custom tracking domains cost double!" and explained that the feature is "Not available on the $40 subscription, only on the $80" Pro plan. The gap between Creator and Pro is $40 a month for 1,000 and 3,000 subscribers, $50 at 5,000 and 10,000, and $80 at 25,000.

GetResponse's room. Creator adds live webinars (100 attendees), a course builder, premium newsletters and a website builder, with 0% GetResponse transaction fees (you still pay your payment processor). Kit's plan pages list no webinar tool. Against Kit Pro, GetResponse Creator is cheaper at most sizes up to 10,000 and costs the same, $249, at 10,001–15,000.

A room has a single point of failure, though. In October 2025 a GetResponse customer wrote: "We set a webinar and promoted on the social media with paid ads, but the webinar did not start." Their conclusion: "If anyone is considering using Getresponse for online Webinars, SAVE your money." One review doesn't measure reliability. It does show what's at stake when the room is the product.

Billing: who counts what, and who downgrades

What each tool counts. Kit bills on unique, active, confirmed subscribers, once each, however many tags they carry. Its billing page calls this "subscriber-centric rather than list-centric." GetResponse counts a contact once per list and includes contacts added during the month even if you delete them. I covered how that inflates bills in my Brevo matchup.

Going up is automatic on both. Kit upgrades you the moment you pass a tier. Its own example: "You reach 1,001 subscribers and automatically get upgraded to the $59/mo tier." GetResponse charges a List Extension Fee the following month.

Going down is on you. Kit's help center says you can downgrade from your account settings once your count drops below the next tier. Its pricing FAQ says "our team has to manually downgrade plans" and asks you to email before deleting subscribers. Either way, nothing happens on its own. One reviewer, paying $119 on the old 10k tier after cleaning their list to about 7,300, wrote: "I got billed for the 10k bc I didn't manually reach out to downgrade my account. I have to manually reach out to downgrade?" Another put it more bluntly: "they automatically increase your plant [sic], but they will NOT do it when you decrease it."

Whichever tool you pick, treat the downgrade as your job. Put a second line under every list clean: change the plan.

Prices move, too. Kit's billing page describes its 2025 update as its "first price increase in 12 years," effective from the next billing cycle after October 15, 2025. Some long-time customers felt it. "While the price has increased nearly 3x for me, the quality of customer service has gone in the opposite direction," a two-star reviewer wrote this month. Pricing by subscriber count bothers some people on principle. A Hacker News commenter said in 2024 they'd "grown tired of competitors like Beehiiv and ConvertKit charging based on the number of subscribers instead of actual usage."

Verdict: three questions

Kit is cheaper than GetResponse once you run more automations than GetResponse Starter allows, except at 5,001–10,000, 45,001–50,000 and above 85,000 subscribers, and only if Kit accepts your business. With a welcome series and one more workflow, GetResponse Starter costs less at every list size up to 10,000. With no automations, Kit Free costs nothing.

1. How many automations will you run in the next 12 months? None: Kit Free, as long as you stay under 10,000. A welcome series plus one more: GetResponse Starter, cheaper at every size up to 10,000. Three or more: Kit Creator at most sizes, GetResponse Marketer at 5,001–10,000, 45,001–50,000 and above 85,000.

2. Does the newsletter earn money on its own? If readers pay for it, or you want recommendations and sponsorships, Kit's premium buys something GetResponse doesn't sell. If email exists to fill webinars, courses or funnels, GetResponse Creator puts the room and the list on one bill.

3. Would your emails pass Kit's review? If they're mostly affiliate links, or you're in insurance, loans or make-money-online, start on GetResponse and check its prohibited-goods list too.

Who should pick which:

• Pick Kit Free if you only send a newsletter and you're under 10,000. Decide about automation before 5,000.
• Pick GetResponse Starter when a welcome series and one more workflow cover you. It's the cheapest automated setup here up to 10,000.
• Pick Kit Creator if you run several sequences and your list sits outside 5,001–10,000, especially if paid subscriptions or the Creator Network are part of the plan.
• Pick GetResponse Creator if you sell through webinars or courses. If your email is affiliate-led, pick GetResponse on whichever plan your workflow count calls for.

My limits here. This comparison prices plans and reads policies. It doesn't measure inbox placement, and I can't see Kit's approval decisions until they happen. The tier prices are exact for October 8, 2026, but both vendors have changed plans this year, and Kit's free plan changed within weeks of the last round of comparison articles. Recount your workflows before you renew.

Today's plans, on each vendor's own site: GetResponse pricing · Kit pricing

If Kit wins and you're bringing a list from elsewhere, my guide to moving to Kit sorts out what Kit's team moves for you and what you rebuild.

FAQ

Does Kit's free plan include automations or sequences?

No. Visual automations, email sequences and rules need Kit Creator or Pro.

Is GetResponse cheaper than Kit?

For a welcome series plus one workflow, yes, at every list size up to 10,000: $19 to $79 on GetResponse Starter against $39 to $139 on Kit Creator. With more workflows, Kit Creator is cheaper than GetResponse Marketer at 75% of list sizes up to 100,000.

I cleaned my Kit list. Why didn't my bill go down?

Because Kit upgrades automatically but doesn't downgrade on its own. Its help center says you can change your tier from account settings once your confirmed count is below the next tier's limit, while its pricing FAQ asks you to email [email protected] before you delete subscribers. I do both: email first, then check the plan in settings once the clean is done. Make the change before your renewal date. One reviewer on an annual plan noticed the higher charge more than 30 days later and couldn't get it adjusted, and Kit's refund policy covers payments made in the last 30 days only. Another, on a monthly plan, got the downgrade within a day of being billed but no refund.

Can I move from Kit Free to GetResponse without paying for duplicates?

Yes, if you import everyone into one GetResponse list. Tags need Marketer or higher: Starter, the plan I suggest above for a welcome series plus one workflow, has no tagging, so on Starter carry Kit's tag information into contact details and use segments on that one list instead. GetResponse counts a contact once per list, so recreating Kit's segments as separate lists can push you into a higher tier. Ask GetResponse support how an import is counted before you start, and check the first invoice.

Can I sell a paid newsletter on either one?

Yes. On Kit, paid subscriptions work on every plan, Free included, at 3.5% + 30¢ per sale with card processing included. On GetResponse, premium newsletters come with the Creator plan ($69 a month for 1,000 contacts), with no GetResponse transaction fee on top of your processor's fees.

Does Kit allow affiliate links?

Yes, in moderation. Kit's guidance is roughly 70–80% of your email about your own work and 20–30% affiliate content, clearly labeled. It bans emails that are 100% affiliate-based and any affiliate links for education, loans, online pharmacies or get-rich-quick software.