How to Migrate From Mailchimp to Kit (7 Steps)

Switching email platforms feels risky because your list is your business — one bad import and subscribers vanish into the void. The good news: Mailchimp-to-Kit is one of the best-documented migrations in the creator-tool space, with a dedicated importer and official automation-mapping docs on both sides. This guide walks through the exact 7-step sequence, what transfers and what doesn’t (per official docs), and the policy reason many creators switch in the first place.

The honest framing first: contacts, tags, and segments transfer cleanly. Automations do not transfer as objects — Mailchimp Customer Journeys are rebuilt as Kit Visual Automations using official trigger/action mappings. Budget most of your migration time for that rebuild, not the import.

Why creators switch: the affiliate-policy reason

Before the how, the documented why. Mailchimp’s own help documentation states that affiliate marketing as a business model or industry is prohibited on its platform — it’s listed under prohibited industries in Mailchimp’s Acceptable Use policy. Incidental affiliate links are generally permitted if the message isn’t centered on them and the URLs aren’t denylisted, but an email business built around affiliate promotion violates Mailchimp’s terms.

For creators whose monetization is affiliate-centered — deal roundups, tool recommendations, sponsored content — that’s not a gray area, it’s the documented reason to move. Kit’s free tier (up to 10,000 active unique subscribers with unlimited landing pages, forms, and broadcasts) is built for exactly this creator segment. If you’re still choosing a platform rather than migrating, the full landscape is in best email marketing for creators.

Pre-migration checklist

Do this inside Mailchimp before you touch Kit. Everything here is on-page and takes one focused session:

• Clean your list. Remove hard bounces, unsubscribes, and cleaned contacts. You only want to import people who can legally receive your emails — importing dead addresses hurts deliverability from day one (see email deliverability for creators for why list hygiene matters).
• Export your tags, segments, and groups list. You need the inventory of how your list is organized so you can verify the import mapped everything.
• Inventory your automations. List every active Mailchimp Customer Journey and classic automation: name, trigger, and what it sends. You’ll rebuild each one in Kit.
• Screenshot every automation workflow. The visual layout won’t transfer — screenshots are your rebuild blueprint.
• Note your templates. Record which templates are custom-coded (exportable as HTML) versus drag-and-drop (not exportable — rebuild in Kit).
• Export your reports separately. Mailchimp report exports don’t include a path to import reporting history into Kit. Download what you want to keep for your records.
• Back up everything. Keep the CSVs, screenshots, and report exports in a dated folder before you start.

The 7 steps

Step 1 — Export your contacts from Mailchimp

Mailchimp lets you export entire audiences, segments, tags, and groups as CSV from the audience export tools. ZIP exports can separate subscribed, unsubscribed, non-subscribed, and cleaned contacts into different files. Exports include audience fields, marketing permissions, member rating, opt-in and confirmation metadata, geolocation, notes, and tags. They exclude report engagement metrics, purchase history, language, predicted demographics, favorite email client, social profile data, and complete profile-update history. Export files remain available for 30 days.

Practical note: export the subscribed contacts as your primary import file. Keep the unsubscribed/cleaned export too — not to import (don’t), but so you have a suppression record and can verify counts.

Step 2 — Export your templates and assets

This step has a hard documented limit: only custom-coded templates can be exported as HTML from Mailchimp (via More options → Export as template). Drag-and-drop templates cannot be exported. Save the HTML for custom-coded templates; for everything else, take screenshots and plan to rebuild in Kit’s builder. Direct Mailchimp-template-to-Kit transfer is not a documented path — export what you can, rebuild the rest.

Step 3 — Set up your Kit account

Create a Kit account and start on the free tier: $0/month for up to 10,000 active unique subscribers, with unlimited landing pages, forms, and broadcasts. The documented constraint: your existing imports must keep the account total under 10,000 subscribers to stay on the free tier. Paid tiers unlock unlimited visual automations. Kit’s pricing page also documents free migration assistance by its team on eligible paid plans, including rebuilding forms, templates, and automations — worth knowing if your list is large and you’d rather not do the rebuild yourself.

Step 4 — Import your contacts into Kit

You have two documented paths:

• The dedicated Mailchimp importer (recommended): transfers contacts plus your Audiences, Groups, Segments, and Tags — which become Kit tags. It also transfers geolocation, contact rating, subscribe date, and custom fields, which do not transfer via a plain CSV import. Duplicates merge automatically; note that later field values — including blanks — can replace existing Kit values.
• Plain CSV import: works with mapped fields and custom fields, but columns you don’t map are dropped, tags must be comma-separated, and the geolocation/rating/subscribe-date extras don’t come along.

Two warnings from Kit’s official docs, both worth heeding: disable unwanted automations before import, because imported tags can trigger Automation Rules and Visual Automations — you don’t want a welcome sequence firing at 8,000 legacy subscribers. And if you’re importing into an account that already has contacts, remember that blank values in your import can overwrite existing data.

Step 5 — Rebuild your automations

This is the real work. There is no official “export automations and import them into Kit” path — Mailchimp Customer Journeys are rebuilt as Kit Visual Automations. Use the official trigger/action mappings from Kit’s Mailchimp-switching documentation:

Work from your screenshots (Step 0 of the checklist). Rebuild one automation at a time, starting with the highest-traffic ones — typically the welcome sequence first. For named Mailchimp automation types (welcome message, onboarding series, abandoned-cart series, product follow-ups, customer re-engagement, birthdays, API-triggered workflows, and others documented in Mailchimp’s classic-automation help), map each using the table above. Any trigger without a documented mapping should be labeled unsupported in your plan — don’t invent a workaround; check Kit’s current Visual Automations docs for the closest supported equivalent.

Step 6 — Recreate your forms and landing pages

Rebuild your signup forms and landing pages in Kit (unlimited on all plans, including free). Point your website’s embedded forms and popups at the new Kit forms. Keep the Mailchimp forms live until you’ve confirmed the Kit versions are capturing correctly — overlap is fine during the transition.

Step 7 — Warm up, test, then switch

1. Send a test broadcast to a small segment (your most engaged subscribers) and confirm delivery, formatting, and links.
2. If you use double opt-in, verify the confirmation flow end to end.
3. Keep Mailchimp active during the switch. Run both platforms in parallel for at least one send cycle so nothing falls through the cracks.
4. Switch your sending domain’s DNS authentication (SPF/DKIM/DMARC) to Kit’s records — the documented DNS setup checklist walks through each record type.
5. Once Kit is sending cleanly, sunset Mailchimp: cancel or downgrade the plan, export a final backup, and document the cutover date for your records.

What transfers vs what doesn’t

Per the official import/export documentation from both vendors:

Timing and deliverability notes

• Sequence timing: do the export and import on a quiet day, rebuild automations over the following days, and don’t switch your sending domain until test sends look clean. Rushing the DNS switch is the most common self-inflicted deliverability wound.
• Keep Mailchimp active during the switch. Paying for one overlapping month is cheap insurance against a missed automation or a form that stopped capturing.
• Warm up gradually. Start with your most engaged segment, then expand. A sudden full-list blast from a new sending domain is exactly what spam filters notice.
• Sunset checklist: cancel/downgrade Mailchimp, confirm no active integrations still point at it (Zapier, website forms, checkout tools), archive your final exports, and note the cutover date.

The verdict

The migration is a weekend project, not a quarter-long saga: one session for the checklist and export, one for the import, and the bulk of the time on rebuilding automations from your screenshots. Start with a free Kit account, run both platforms in parallel for a send cycle, and only cut Mailchimp loose once Kit is sending cleanly. If your list is large and the rebuild looks daunting, Kit documents free migration assistance by its team on eligible paid plans.

How this guide was researched

No hands-on testing was performed and none is claimed. Every step, limit, and mapping above comes from official vendor documentation captured on 2026-09-17: Mailchimp’s help articles on contact export, template HTML export, classic automation types, affiliate-link policy, and its Acceptable Use legal page; and Kit’s help articles on CSV import, the dedicated Mailchimp importer, switching Customer Journeys to Visual Automations, the free plan, and Kit’s pricing page. Where official docs were silent or conflicting (notably, direct template transfer and numeric CSV import limits), the guide says so instead of filling the gap. Pricing pages change — recheck Kit’s current plan terms on the official pricing page before you commit.

Frequently asked questions

Sources & verification

• Mailchimp — view and export contacts — captured 2026-09-17
• Mailchimp — export template HTML — captured 2026-09-17
• Mailchimp — classic automation types — captured 2026-09-17
• Mailchimp — about affiliate links — captured 2026-09-17
• Mailchimp — Acceptable Use Policy — captured 2026-09-17
• Kit — how to import a subscriber list — captured 2026-09-17
• Kit — how to import Mailchimp contacts — captured 2026-09-17
• Kit — switch Mailchimp Customer Journeys to Visual Automations — captured 2026-09-17
• Kit — the free plan — captured 2026-09-17
• Kit — pricing page — captured 2026-09-17