I Spent Six Weeks on the Wrong Email Platform So You Don't Have To
- Nik Scott, MBA
- 5 days ago
- 10 min read
Let me tell you about one of the more humbling seasons of my business journey.
I had the offer. I had the content. I had more than enough professional experience to back up what I was teaching. What I didn't have was an email platform that worked, because I had chosen one that wasn't built for me.
I spent six weeks trying to set up a single welcome email sequence on a platform designed for large marketing teams. Six weeks reading tutorials, watching YouTube videos, bookmarking 17 different how-to articles, and building spreadsheets full of feature comparisons. And I still couldn't get a basic welcome email to send correctly. What I was experiencing wasn't a learning curve. It was a tool mismatch. And that distinction matters more than most people talk about.
I've been building online businesses since 2008. I've grown a YouTube channel to more than 150,000 subscribers. I hold an MBA and spent years in corporate marketing and communications before stepping away to build something of my own. And even with all of that, I was spending more time trying to figure out an email platform than I was spending building the business itself.
That experience is exactly why I'm writing this post. Because if it happened to me, it's happening to you too. And you deserve a better starting point.
What the Email Platform Conversation Is Missing for Coaches
When you search for email marketing platform comparisons online, most of what comes up was written for companies with dedicated marketing teams, complex sales pipelines, and product catalogs. That's not your situation. You have your laptop, your skills, a professional background that took years to build, and a limited amount of time to make this work.
Why do most email platforms feel overwhelming for new coaches?
Because most of them weren't designed for you. They were designed for e-commerce brands, enterprise sales teams, or large agencies managing multiple accounts. When you try to apply that infrastructure to a one-person coaching business, nothing quite fits. The vocabulary is off. The onboarding assumes things about your business that aren't true yet.
And the features that matter most to you are buried underneath features you'll never use.
That's a friction problem, not a strategy problem. And friction is expensive in ways that go beyond time. Every week you avoid your email platform is a week you're not growing your list and not building the asset your coaching business needs. The email platform that gets used is infinitely more valuable than the platform with every feature on the market that you're too overwhelmed to log into.
What does a new coach actually need from an email platform?
Before we get into the tool itself, let me be direct about what matters at the beginning. You need three things from your email platform:
The ability to collect subscribers
The ability to deliver something valuable to them
The ability to send consistent messages
That's it. Everything else is a distraction until you have a list that needs it.
This is something I talk about a lot inside my coaching work with women building their first offers. We get so focused on building the sophisticated system that we delay building the list. And the way you treat your coaching business from the very beginning determines how much momentum you build. The email list is part of that foundation.
Kit, Formerly ConvertKit
If you've been in the online business space for any length of time, you've heard this name. Kit rebranded from ConvertKit in October 2024, and that shift wasn't just cosmetic. The rebrand reflects what the platform has always been at its core: a tool built specifically for creators and coaches who sell their knowledge.
That specificity matters more than it sounds. When a platform is built for people who sell knowledge-based offers, the features make sense in context. The vocabulary feels familiar. The onboarding asks the right questions. You're not trying to translate e-commerce concepts into a coaching business framework.
Who built Kit and why does that matter?
Kit was founded in 2013 by Nathan Barry, a creator who couldn't find a platform that worked the way he needed it to. He built Kit because he understood what it felt like to build something from scratch with a limited budget and limited time. That origin story is baked into how the platform is designed. It wasn't built by a large software company that decided to add a coaching feature. It was built from inside the creator experience, which means the decisions that were made in how it works were made by someone who had felt the same friction you're feeling right now. Today Kit has grown to over 63,000 customers, the majority of them creators and coaches who sell knowledge-based offers.
What makes Kit different for coaches specifically?
One of the things that stands out most about Kit is that it's text-focused. I know that might sound like a limitation, but for coaches it's a feature. When someone subscribes to your email list, they're not signing up to receive a magazine-style layout with designed graphics and promotional banners. They're signing up because they want to hear from you. They want your perspective. They want your thinking. Plain text emails feel like a real conversation, and in an inbox full of promotional blasts, a clean and thoughtful email from someone who has something real to say tends to stand out.
Your subscribers don't want a newsletter in the traditional sense. They want an authentic conversation with someone who understands where they are and where they're trying to go. Kit is designed to deliver exactly that.
What Kit's Free Plan Gives You
This is the part of the conversation that tends to shift things for new coaches, so I want to give it the space it deserves.
What's included in the Kit free plan?
Kit's free plan lets you grow your email list to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited email sends and unlimited opt-in forms. That means you can collect subscribers, deliver your lead magnet, send your welcome sequence, and build your list to 10,000 people without paying a single dollar. As of the time I'm writing this, that is a permanent tier, not a trial.
The free plan does have limits on automations. You get one automation and one email sequence. But here's what I want you to hear: for a new coach, that's a complete starter system. One automation to welcome new subscribers and one sequence to begin nurturing them toward your first offer is a functional email funnel. And it's free.
When you're ready to scale beyond that, the paid Creator plan starts at $39 a month for up to 1,000 subscribers. Pricing did increase in September 2025, so it's worth noting that the investment is real once you move to paid. But if you have a coaching offer and a list that's actively working, $39 a month isn't a tool expense. It's the infrastructure cost of a business that pays you back.
Can you sell digital products directly through Kit?
Yes, and this is one of the features that makes Kit particularly well-suited for coaches building out their first offers. You can sell a low-ticket guide, a workbook, a workshop replay, or any digital product directly through your Kit account without needing a separate storefront or third-party payment integrations. For a new coach who's trying to keep operations lean while she figures out what's working, that matters. Complexity is expensive. Simplicity is scalable.
The Features That Don't Get Talked About Enough
What is email deliverability and why does it matter for coaches?
Deliverability is whether your emails land in your subscribers' inboxes or get routed to spam. It doesn't matter how good your content is if your subscribers never see it. Kit has a strong deliverability reputation, and that's not by accident. The platform was built for creators sending content-based emails rather than mass promotional campaigns, and that distinction affects how email clients treat messages that come through the Kit infrastructure. When subscribers open, click, and engage, those signals tell inbox providers that emails from your list are welcome. It becomes a self-reinforcing cycle.
What if you don't have a website yet?
Kit includes landing pages, which means you can start building your email list today with no website, no developer, and no waiting until everything is perfect. You can create a simple opt-in page for your lead magnet, share the link on social media, and start collecting subscribers right now.
I want to be direct about this one because I see it slow so many coaches down. You don't need a finished website to have an email list. You need one landing page and a reason to subscribe. That's the whole equation at the beginning. And when you stop making your list-building contingent on things you haven't finished yet, you'll be surprised how fast your foundation starts to come together.
Your Email List Is the Only Asset the Algorithm Can't Touch
This is the part of the conversation that I think matters most, so I'm going to say it plainly.
Your Instagram following isn't yours. Your TikTok views aren't yours. Your LinkedIn connections aren't yours. Any platform can change its algorithm, reduce your reach, or close your account without notice and without warning. It has happened to coaches with tens of thousands of followers who woke up one day and couldn't reach their audience anymore.
Why is an email list a coaching business asset?
Your email list is yours. Nobody can take it from you. No algorithm change can reduce your ability to reach the people on it. You built it. You own it. And when you're ready to launch an offer, promote a workshop, or fill a program, your email list is the most direct path to revenue you have.
Strong client relationships and sustainable business culture start before someone becomes a client. They start in the inbox. The way you show up consistently in email is how people learn to trust you before they ever invest in working with you.
This is also why Kit's platform isn't just a tool recommendation from me. It's a recommendation rooted in what I've observed after years of building online, and what I've seen make the biggest practical difference for coaches who are serious about building something that lasts.
A Few Things Kit Isn't
I want to be honest here because I think overpromising on a tool recommendation does more harm than good.
Kit isn't the right fit if you need highly designed, template-heavy email campaigns. If visual customization is central to your brand experience from day one, there are other platforms built more specifically for that. Kit also doesn't offer the level of advanced analytics or A/B testing that larger marketing operations typically need. For a new coach, those gaps rarely matter. But it's worth knowing they exist so you can make an informed decision about where Kit fits in your long-term strategy.
What Kit is, at its core, is a platform built for people who sell knowledge, designed for solo operators, and structured in a way that makes it possible to get started without a team, a developer, or a six-week tutorial marathon.
The Bottom Line
Your email list is your most important business asset. Not your follower count. Not your engagement rate. Your list. And you need a tool that makes it easy to start, sustainable to maintain, and practical to grow.
If you're a professional woman stepping into coaching for the first time, or you've been thinking about it and haven't started yet, the best time to build your email list is now. I've been building online since 2008, grown a YouTube channel past 150,000 subscribers, and spent years in corporate marketing before building Her Income Edit. The tool recommendation in this post isn't based on a sponsored talking point. It's based on what I've seen work, and what I've personally used to build. The free plan gives you a real runway.
The platform was built for someone who sells what you sell. And the simplicity of the interface means you can get your first landing page up and your first email sent without losing a month of your life to tutorials.
Start where you are. Build the list. Protect the asset.
FAQ
What is Kit and is it the same as ConvertKit?
Yes. Kit is the same platform as ConvertKit. The rebrand happened in October 2024. The platform was founded in 2013 by Nathan Barry and has long been one of the most widely used email marketing tools among creators, coaches, and digital product sellers. The name change was a strategic decision to reflect the platform's identity as a creator-first tool.
Is Kit's free plan truly free or just a trial?
As of the time this post was written, Kit's free plan is a permanent tier, not a time-limited trial. It allows you to grow your list to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited email sends, unlimited opt-in forms, one automation, and one email sequence. You don't need a credit card to start.
Does Kit work for coaches who don't have a website yet?
Yes. Kit includes a built-in landing page builder that lets you create opt-in pages for your lead magnets and start collecting subscribers without a website. This is one of the features that makes it particularly practical for coaches in the early stages of building.
Can you sell coaching offers or digital products through Kit?
Yes. Kit allows you to sell digital products directly through the platform, which means you can offer workbooks, guides, workshop replays, and other digital products without needing a separate storefront or payment integration. Coaching services with external scheduling or payment tools will still require those integrations, but for digital products Kit handles it natively.
How much does Kit cost when you're ready to upgrade?
The Creator plan, which adds unlimited automations, third-party integrations, and additional features, starts at $39 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers. Pricing increased in September 2025. From there, pricing scales with your subscriber count. The free plan gives you a real foundation to work from before that investment is necessary.
When should a coach upgrade from the free plan to a paid plan?
The most common triggers are reaching the automation limits on the free plan, needing integrations with other tools in your business stack, or growing past the features that the free tier supports. For most coaches starting out, the free plan is genuinely sufficient to collect subscribers, deliver lead magnets, and send consistent emails while your offer and audience develop.
Is email marketing still worth building for coaches in 2025 and beyond?
Completely. Social media platforms change their algorithms, reduce organic reach, and close accounts. Your email list is the only audience asset you fully own. Coaches who invest in building their list consistently have a direct communication channel with their audience that no platform change can disrupt.
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This post reflects my honest, personal experience with Kit (formerly ConvertKit) and may contain affiliate links, meaning I may earn a small commission if you sign up through my link at no additional cost to you. I only recommend tools I personally use and believe in. Please do your own research to determine whether any platform is the right fit for your specific coaching business.
