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You’ve decided to migrate to Kit. Whether you’ve been thinking about it for months or the decision clicked into place last week, you’re ready to move your email marketing to a platform that actually works the way you need it to.
The temptation now is to dive straight in. Open a Kit account, start building forms, and recreate your sequences. It feels productive. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from years of helping people with email migrations, it’s this: the ones who take time to prepare have a far smoother experience than the ones who start building on day one. That doesn’t mean it has to take a long time, but pausing for a moment and making a plan really helps.
This guide walks you through the full process of moving to Kit, from assessing what you already have to setting up your new account, rebuilding what matters, and sending your first emails without damaging your deliverability. So that by the end of it, you’re happy on Kit and all felt easy and smooth.
Audit Before You Build
Before you go into Kit to build things, let’s open your current email platform and take a proper look at what you have. Most people skip this step because they’re excited to get going. But moving to a new platform without understanding what you already have is like packing for a house move by throwing everything into boxes without checking what’s in the cupboards first. You’ll end up unpacking things you should have thrown away and realising you can’t find the things that are important to you.
Here’s what to look at:
Your automations and sequences. Which ones are still active? Which ones are actually doing what they’re supposed to do? If you have a welcome sequence that hasn’t been updated in two years, now is the time to notice that, not after you’ve rebuilt it in Kit.
Your tags and segments. How many tags do you have? Are they all still relevant, or have some become clutter from a launch you ran three years ago? A new platform is a chance to start with a clean tagging system, but only if you know what you’re working with.
While you’re reviewing your tags, resist the urge to rename or combine them on your old platform. Combining tags can trigger automations you’ve forgotten about. Remove the ones you don’t need, but save any renaming for after the migration, unless you’re already using your new naming convention as you build in Kit.
Your forms and landing pages. Where are people signing up? Are all those forms still embedded on your website, or are some attached to freebies you no longer offer?
Your subscriber list. How many subscribers do you actually have? How many of them have opened an email in the last six months? We’ll talk more about list cleaning in a bit, but for now, just get an honest picture of your numbers.
Once you’ve reviewed everything, make a list of everything that you want to have in the new account. Which automations are you rebuilding? Which tags are you keeping? Which forms still need to exist (and where do they currently live??). This list becomes your blueprint for setting up Kit.
The point of this audit isn’t to fix everything before you move. It’s to make informed decisions about what’s worth rebuilding and what can be left behind. When you migrate to Kit, it’s one of the rare moments when you can start fresh without having to start from scratch. Use it.
Clean Your Subscriber List
Let’s immediately clean your list too.
Your list almost certainly includes people who haven’t opened an email from you in months, possibly years. Moving them to Kit costs you money (Kit charges based on subscriber count) and, more importantly, it can damage your deliverability when you start sending. When you email people from a new platform who haven’t engaged in a long time, they’re more likely to ignore you, or worse, mark you as spam. That tells email providers like Gmail that your emails aren’t wanted, and it affects whether your emails reach everyone else too.
So let’s check who is actually interested in your emails. Start by filtering your list. Look for subscribers who have opened or clicked an email in the last six months. Those are the ones worth moving. For everyone else, consider running a re-engagement campaign on your current platform first. Give them a chance to say “yes, I still want to hear from you” before you bring them to Kit. And if they don’t, consider not moving them over.
Want to try out Kit? Check out my special affiliate link below with a 30 day free trial.
Set Up Your Foundation First
Now, while this is the time to open Kit, we’re still not ready to create a form or email in Kit. Bear with me, we’re almost there.
We’ve got to set up some really important foundations first.
Your sender details. This is the name and email address your subscribers will see when they receive your emails. Use your actual name or business name and a professional email address (yourname@yourdomain.com, not a Gmail or Outlook address).
VSD authentication. This sounds technical, but it matters more than almost anything else you’ll do during this migration. Verified sending domain authentication is how email providers like Gmail and Outlook verify that your emails are genuinely coming from you and not from someone pretending to be you.
→ There are three records to set up: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Kit will give you the exact records to add, and you’ll add them through the platform you use to manage your domain (your hosting provider or a service like Cloudflare or Namecheap). If you’ve never done this before, Kit’s help docs walk you through it step by step, or you can ask your web developer to handle it.
Don’t skip this. Without proper authentication, your emails are more likely to end up in spam folders, and that’s especially risky when you’re sending from a new platform for the first time.
Your branding. Kit lets you set up email templates with your brand colours, fonts, and logo. Take a few minutes to get this in place before you start building sequences. It’s much easier to build emails that already look right than to go back and update twenty emails later.
Oh and by the way, you can now set up your colors once and then easily pick them from the menu. Saves you time each time remembering that hex code for that purple you use.
Rebuild Your Automations, Sequences, and Forms
Yes, finally! We get to build. And yes, unfortunately, you can’t move a sequence from one platform to another with the click of a button. Everything needs to be rebuilt.
Here’s how to approach it in a practical order.
Start with your forms. Forms are the entry points to your email marketing, so they need to be ready before anything else. For each form on your blueprint, create it in Kit. Make sure you set the settings correctly for if it should show a thank you message or send to a page. Set a double opt-in (known as incentive email in Kit) if you want. Don’t put the forms on your website yet. Just get them built and ready.
Then build your visual automations. This is where Kit really shines. Visual automations let you map out what happens when someone subscribes, gets tagged, or makes a purchase. Your sequences are built within these automations, so you’re creating the full journey in one place. Start with the essentials: your welcome automation, your freebie delivery flows, and any purchase-related sequences.
If you’re new to building in Kit, How to Set Up Kit Visual Automations walks you through the whole process, and How to Set Up Freebie Automations (Without Duplicating Everything) covers how to structure things so you’re not maintaining dozens of near-identical sequences.
You don’t need to create all your tags upfront. Create tags as you need them in an automation. The rest of your tags will come across when you import your subscribers later.
Test everything before moving on. Subscribe to your own forms. Trigger your own automations. Check that tags are applied correctly, emails look right, and links work. It’s far easier to catch a broken link now than after a hundred people have received the email. (Make sure your automations are active or they won’t work and you’ll be left wondering what’s wrong)
Point Everything to Kit
This is the big moment in your migration to Kit: the switch from old platform to new. Before you import any existing subscribers, you want to make sure everything is working for new people first.
Replace your forms. Every sign-up form on your website, every freebie landing page, every opt-in that’s still pointing to your old platform needs to switch to Kit. Check everywhere: your homepage, blog posts, footer, pop-ups, landing pages, link-in-bio tools, and course platforms. It’s easy to miss one hiding on an older page.
Connect your integrations. If you use tools like ThriveCart, Zapier, Make, a course platform, or a scheduling tool that connects to your email marketing, those integrations need to point to Kit now. Check each one and update the connection. Some tools have native Kit integrations, others will need a Zapier or Make workflow to bridge the gap. You might need to update automations so that they trigger correctly from the native integration.
Confirm new subscribers are landing correctly. Before you move on, test the full journey again. Sign up through a form on your website, check that you land in Kit with the right tags, and confirm that the correct automation triggers. Also check if other new sign-ups are coming through. This is your safety check. Once new subscribers are flowing into Kit properly, you’re ready to bring across the rest.
Import Your Subscribers and Warm Up
Can you import all at once (or not)?
If you have a bigger list you want to ‘warmup’ your subscribers on your Kit account. This is important because Kit has a different IP address than your old email platform and email readers could not like it if you suddenly start emailing everyone from a new IP. So by doing this in bits you’re telling the email reading platforms, like hey this is okay, it’s still me, I’m not spamming and I’m just moving platforms. Warming up gradually builds your reputation as a trustworthy sender.
If you have a smaller list (under about 5000 subscribers), you can import everyone at once. No special warm-up needed. Send your first broadcast and you’re officially running on Kit.
If you have a larger list (5000+ subscribers), warm up your sending. Warming up means importing and sending in stages rather than all at once. Start with your most engaged subscribers, the people who regularly open and click your emails. Send to them first. Next send, import the next batch and send your second email to that first group, the second group and all of your new subscribers. Then gradually expand.
So now that you know who you should import, let’s discuss how to import your subscribers.
Exporting and importing your subscribers
Start by exporting the subscribers you’re keeping as a CSV file. Make sure the export includes email addresses, first names, and any tags or custom fields you want to bring across. If you’re only bringing over part of your subscribers now, make sure you know which ones you’re importing into Kit. Tag them in your old system so you’re not emailing from both accounts.
Don’t import just yet.
Before you import anyone, pause your tag-triggered automations in Kit. This is important. When subscribers arrive with their tags, any automation triggered by those tags will fire immediately. That means people could get welcome emails even though they’ve been on your list for years or end up in sequences they were never supposed to enter. Pause your automations before you import your subscribers.
Now upload your cleaned CSV file through Kit’s subscriber import tool, map the columns to the right fields, and then carefully turn automations back on once everyone is in place.
Kit's Concierge Migration (and When to Get Help)
If you’ve read this far and migrating to Kit feels like a lot, there are two things worth knowing.
First: if you have more than 10,000 subscribers, Kit will migrate your account for you. This is their concierge migration service, and it’s included when you sign up for a paid Kit plan. Their team will import your subscribers, recreate your automations and sequences, and move your forms across. It’s a genuine, hands-on migration, not just a CSV import.
If you’re eligible for this, you can sign up for Kit through my affiliate link and request me as your migration specialist on the migration form. I’m not only a Kit Certified Expert but I’m also a Migration Specialist, meaning I’m one of the people who handles these concierge migrations. I’d love to help you make the move.
If you have specific things that fall outside what the migration covers, or maybe you want someone to audit your setup before the move so you’re only rebuilding what’s worth rebuilding, that’s something I help with through Digitalie. You can book a Kit Account Audit to get a clear picture of where things stand, or use Tech Hours if you want hands-on help with the parts you’d rather not tackle yourself.
If you have fewer than 10,000 subscribers, Kit will import your subscribers for you when you sign up for a paid plan, but they won’t migrate your automations, sequences, or forms. That’s the DIY part this guide has been walking you through.
If you’re not really into DIYing, I’m happy to help with this too. I’ve done full migrations for a lot of small business owners and have helped with the parts they got stuck with.
Check out my Kit services here.
No matter if you get a concierge migration, DIY it, or ask me for help, you’ve got this. Moving platforms feels like a big deal, and it is. But it’s also one of those things that, once it’s done, you wonder why you waited so long. Your emails will land where they should. Your automations will make sense. And you’ll be on a platform built for how you actually run your business.
If you have questions about any part of this process, or you want to talk through whether Kit is the right move for you, you’re welcome to book a free connection call. No pressure, just a conversation about what would work best for your situation.
