I've Run My Newsletter on Kit for Years. Here's My Honest Review (Plus the New Kit MCP)

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I run a newsletter for about 850 subscribers, and I send it from Kit (the platform that used to be called ConvertKit). I've used it during a dormant stretch and now during rebuilding, so I've seen it in both a slow month and a busy one. Here's what it's actually like to work in there day to day.

What Kit does well

The core job is email, and Kit is good at the boring parts of that. Tagging and segmenting subscribers is simple, so I can send one message to people who downloaded a freebie and another to everyone else. Sequences run on their own once I set them up, which is the closest thing I have to passive work. The visual automation builder makes sense without a tutorial, and the free plan gets you going before you ever pay.

For creators, the landing pages and forms are genuinely useful. I've built opt-in pages in Kit instead of touching my site, and they convert pretty well. In a simple setup, Kit could be your website, newsletter, and shop all in one.

Where it falls short

It isn't the cheapest option once your list grows, and the price climbs with subscriber count, whether or not those people open anything. The reporting is fine, but basic without a pro plan. If you want deep analytics, you'll feel the ceiling. And some of the newer creator features feel aimed at people already making a full-time income, not at someone rebuilding from a few hundred subscribers.

The new feature: Kit MCP

Kit just launched something called the Kit MCP, and it's the reason I'm updating this review. MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. In plain English, it's a bridge that lets an AI client like Claude or ChatGPT connect straight to your Kit account and work in it through normal conversation.

The Kit MCP maps to Kit's full v4 API, so an AI client can read and write my account data (subscribers, sequences, broadcasts, tags, segments, custom fields). I can ask it to pull the number of people who joined this week, tag everyone who clicked a specific link, draft a broadcast to a filtered subset of my list, or set up a segment, all by typing what I want instead of clicking through menus or writing API calls myself.

My previous complaint of not having good analytics is virtually solved by being able to connect it to Claude.

The part that made me really excited to see is the safety setup. Every action the Kit MCP exposes is labeled by its function. Read-only stuff runs without bugging you, and anything that writes gets an added security layer. And the destructive actions, like actually sending a broadcast or deleting data, always stop and ask you to confirm first. So the AI can draft the email to my subscribers, but it can't fire it off to all 850 of them without my giving approval. This is great if you haven't used Claude Co-Work before and are a little hesitant to connect something as important as your newsletter.

Setup uses OAuth, which means you sign into Kit, grant access, and the connection is scoped to your account. It's available on the paid Kit plans (Creator and Creator Pro), and requests are rate-limited to 120 a minute, which is plenty for a one-person run newsletter.

Is it essential? No, I ran my newsletter for years without it. But if you hate the busywork of list management, the repetitive tagging, the "who do I send this to" filtering, the digging through menus to check a number, that's exactly the kind of thing it takes off your plate. For a creator running a side business in stolen pockets of time, that's worth a look.

If you want to try it, here's the Kit MCP landing page

Should you use Kit?

If you're a creator who wants email, forms, automations, and now an AI connection in one place, Kit holds up. I've stayed with them over the last four years because switching email platforms is a pain, and Kit does what I need with simple design and solid stats. The MCP is a nice addition, and maybe a good reason for you to check it out; it's the first new Kit feature in a while that actually changed part of my workflow.

If you're on the fence, start on the free plan, build one opt-in form, and see if the automations click for you before you pay for anything.