Switch from Kit to FlockStack

Before you start

Your subscribers move. Your automations and sequences don't, and paying readers don't move as paying readers.

• Your subscribers. Kit exports them as a CSV, and FlockStack reads that export as it comes, with each reader's status and signup date. The import checks the addresses it brings in: invalid and misspelled ones, role addresses, duplicates and anyone who left before. It can also take tags and custom fields.
• Not your automations or sequences. They stay in Kit. Step 4 says how to rebuild them.
• Not your past posts. FlockStack imports past posts only from Substack, beehiiv, WordPress and Ghost exports.
• Not paying readers, as paying readers. FlockStack can't move a paid subscription from Stripe today. Step 5 covers it.

Keep Kit running until your first issue has gone out from FlockStack and your paying readers have moved. You are responsible for having permission to email the readers you import.

1. Export from Kit

Per Kit's help center, as of October 21, 2026: open Subscribers and use the Status filter, where Confirmed gives your active subscribers. Select the checkbox for the page and then Select all, or only the current page is exported. Open the three-dot menu and choose Export. Kit emails a download link to the account owner, and it expires after 5 days. Large exports can take several minutes. A segment can be exported the same way from its own page. Menus change, so follow Kit's page if yours differs.

The file has first name, email address, the date created, status, tags, location, attribution data and your custom fields.

2. Choose what to import

Import the confirmed subscribers. Per Kit's help center, Kit counts only confirmed subscribers toward your bill and counts cold ones too, meaning those with no open or click in 90 days, or 30 days if they joined recently. Cold readers export with the rest. Decide whether to bring them: FlockStack sends a first slice to contacts it has never emailed and holds the rest back if that slice draws bounces or complaints. Leave out unconfirmed, unsubscribed, complained, bounced and blocked subscribers, and keep those files so nobody who left is added back. The import API can take a contact with a status of unsubscribed, bounced or complained, and an existing contact keeps its status unless a row gives a stricter one.

3. Import your subscribers

FlockStack's README lists Kit's CSV export among those it reads as they come, with each reader's status and signup date. Even so, import a small batch first and check the result on the Contacts page: the addresses, the tags and the dates. Then import the rest.

On the Contacts page, choose the import and upload the CSV. An import can add tags, from a column named tags or as one tag for the whole file. Tag the whole file, for example from-kit, so you can find these readers later. If you know who pays on Kit, add a tags column with paying-elsewhere on those rows first. Step 5 uses it. Custom fields are set from columns named after them.

Importing contacts starts no automations, so nobody gets a welcome series. The same import is in the API and the MCP server as import_contacts; it takes a status, a sign-up date and tags on each contact. Moving between platforms in the docs describes it from the app's side.

4. Rebuild your automations

Kit's visual automations and sequences don't move. Write down each one in Kit: what starts it, each email and each wait. Then build it in FlockStack, which starts an automation from 15 triggers and builds it from 10 kinds of step, among them waits, branches, splits and webhooks. Newsletter automation lists them. Tags come across on import, and a newsletter can save up to 50 segments in FlockStack, built from 13 kinds of condition.

5. Bring your paying readers across

Kit sells subscriptions through a Stripe account it manages for you, and FlockStack sells them through your own. It can't attach a subscription that exists on Kit to a contact. A reader who pays on Kit comes in from the import as an ordinary active reader. They subscribe again, in four steps:

1. Set up your paid tier on the Payments page and connect Stripe. The paid newsletter platform page explains each step.
2. Make a segment of the contacts tagged paying-elsewhere, from step 3.
3. Send that segment an issue that explains the move and links to your subscribe page.
4. Cancel their subscriptions on Kit once they have moved, so nobody pays twice.

6. Send your first issue

Start with the same kind of issue you sent on Kit. FlockStack warms up your sending: contacts you have never emailed go out as a first slice of 5% of the list (at least 200 and at most 2,000 contacts), and the rest follows after 3 hours if the slice's bounces and complaints stay low. Set up your sending domain on the Domains page first, so the email comes from your own address, and read SPF, DKIM and DMARC for newsletters for what the mailbox providers ask of senders.

7. Downgrade or cancel Kit

Per Kit's help center, moving to a lower tier is your choice, made in Account and Billing, and the lower price starts on your next billing date. Kit's Free plan holds up to 10,000 subscribers, if you want to keep a small audience or a few products there.

Where FlockStack is the weaker pick

If you use Kit's Creator Network, its paid recommendations or its visual automations, FlockStack has no paid recommendation network, and its automations are built differently. FlockStack vs Kit compares the two with dated sources. FlockStack is open source under the AGPL-3.0 at github.com/ankurmans/flockstack, so the next move, if you ever want one, is yours to make: account export writes your contacts as a CSV and every issue as Markdown and HTML.