Kit
Kit (ConvertKit) for an email course: the questions to ask
Last reviewed 18 September 2026
Features and pricing change, and this page does not track them. Everything below is written as what to check and where to check it, rather than as what is true of a product today. Read the date above, then answer the questions in the product itself.
Kit: https://kit.com
The questions that decide a five-day course in Kit are about the sequence rather than the broadcast: what starts the clock, what else can apply the thing that starts it, whether one address can enter twice, and what an unsubscribe reaches. Each is a setting with a default somebody else chose, and each has an answer you can produce yourself in an afternoon.
Most people asking this already have a list in Kit and want to know whether the course can live beside it rather than somewhere new. Usually it can, and what settles it is not on a feature page. It is in four areas of the account and one rehearsal with two addresses.
The line between a broadcast and a sequence
A newsletter-native tool holds two quite different things side by side: a broadcast, written once and sent to everybody now or at an hour you pick, and a sequence, written once and sent to each person in turn from whenever that person entered it. A course belongs entirely to the second, so the first thing to establish in a Kit account is which of the two screens you are composing in.
It matters because both produce five emails on five mornings and only one keeps producing them. Five broadcasts a day apart serve the people on the list that week; everybody arriving on Wednesday starts at day three of something whose beginning they never saw. If the two screens are hard to tell apart on the way in, ten minutes spent telling them apart is cheaper than a month of readers starting in the middle.
The second thing to establish is what one person is. A course wants one record per human with one run of the sequence attached, so a reader who writes in on day three gives you one place to look. Add an address that is already on the list through a second form, and see whether one record or two comes back and whether the sequence starts again.
Where to look, and what to look for there
Labels move between releases and screenshots go stale, so what follows names areas rather than buttons. If a name has changed since the date above, the area it describes is still the area to open.
The forms and landing pages area answers the confirmation question for one door only. Find the setting that decides whether a new address is asked to confirm before anything else, then go and find out what the other doors do: an address added by hand, an address arriving through the API, a spreadsheet import, and whatever an integration with a shop or a webinar pushes in.
The sequence area answers the clock. Look for what the first step waits on, and what each later delay is counted from: the reader entering, the previous message actually leaving, or a date. Look for a send window or a fixed hour, and for whether a time zone is read from the reader or from the account. Then look for what happens when the same person enters the sequence twice.
The account settings answer identity: the From name, the address a reply reaches, and the domain the mail is authenticated against. Settle the last one first. Ask what has to be added to DNS, because that answer is the one a later upgrade rarely changes.
If you already use Kit, test these four things first
A list that is already there is a real reason to stay, and the fastest way to find out whether staying works is to behave like two readers for two days. Use addresses you own at a mailbox provider you do not otherwise use, and put a real lesson behind the form rather than a message saying test.
Four tests, in the order that finds problems earliest:
- Join today with one address and tomorrow with a second. The second should receive day one, and that single result settles the clock.
- Apply the thing that starts the course to an address by hand, then apply it again, and count what arrives.
- Import a one-row spreadsheet already carrying it, and see whether anything asks that address to confirm.
- Unsubscribe on day three with the mail client’s own button, then send yourself a broadcast and see whether it arrives.
What no settings screen will show you
Some of this is invisible from inside any account, and a page that pretends otherwise is selling something. A send is a request to a mail provider, and the failure that decides whether a tool is trustworthy is the request that returns nothing after the message was already accepted. Sent late is an inconvenience; sent twice is a complaint.
Two questions about it are worth asking in writing rather than hunting for in a menu: is a duplicate send prevented by the database or by the sending code, and what happened the last time the mail provider timed out mid-send. This page has no way to answer either, and neither has any other page written from outside the building.
What to check, and why each one matters
In the sequence screen, what does the first step wait on, and what is each later delay counted from?
A course is timed from each reader and a broadcast from an hour somebody picked, so the screen the five days were composed in decides the whole thing, and that screen is the only place that answers it. A delay counted from the previous send also drifts later every time a queue runs behind.
What happens when the tag or form that starts the course reaches somebody already inside it?
A tag is applied by more things than the form: an import, a bulk edit, an integration. Where a second entry is allowed, that reader receives a second day one beside the first.
Is the confirmation step bound to the form or to the record, and which doors skip it?
An address imported with the starting tag already on it can reach day one having confirmed nothing. The form is one door; the import, the API and the manual add are three more.
When somebody unsubscribes, what is removed: the tag, the sequence, the list, or the person?
A reader taken out of a sequence and left on the list keeps receiving broadcasts after asking to stop, and the next message is reported as spam rather than unsubscribed from.
What is configured at the end of the sequence, and what does that reader get the following morning?
The end of a sequence is a step like any other, so something is set there already. Silence is a fair choice; an unchosen silence wastes the morning somebody just finished something.
If you edit day four now, which of the people currently inside receive the edited version?
Some tools push a change to everybody; some hold each person to the sequence as it stood when they entered. The answer decides whether fixing a broken link is a two-minute job.
What does the sending settings screen ask you to add to DNS, and what goes out if you add nothing?
No records means a shared sending domain: quick to start, with a reputation shared with everybody on it and a complaint rate mailbox providers report to the domain owner rather than to you.
What is in an export: addresses, or addresses with the consent wording, the timestamps and everyone who left?
Addresses come out of anything. The consent record answers a complaint years later, and the suppression list stops a first send somewhere new from reaching everybody who already left.
Common questions
Can I run a five-day email course in Kit?
A five-day course needs a tool that sends a fixed sequence to each person from the day they confirmed, rather than a broadcast to everybody at once. In a newsletter tool the two live side by side, so what to establish in the account is which screen you are composing in and what the first step of a sequence waits on. Join with one address today and a second tomorrow: the second should receive day one.
What should I check first in Kit before moving a course there?
The clock and the doors. Open the sequence screen and find what the first step waits on and what each later delay is counted from. Then find which doors onto the list ask for a confirmation and which let an address straight through: the form is one door, and an import, an API call, a manual add and an integration are four more.
Does an unsubscribe in Kit stop everything?
That is a question to answer in the account rather than to assume. Unsubscribe from a second address on day three using the mail client’s own button, then send yourself a broadcast. What arrives afterwards is the answer, and it decides whether a reader who left reports the next message as spam instead.
Can I send an email course from my own domain in Kit?
Open the sending or domain settings and look for the DNS records you are asked to add. Records to add means a domain of your own is on the table; nothing to add means the mail leaves on a shared domain, which starts faster and keeps your own complaint rate inside everybody else’s. Settle this one first, because it is the answer a later upgrade rarely changes.
Nothing here states what Kit does today, because products move and pages written from outside do not notice. It says which four areas of an account hold the answers and which two days of rehearsal produce the rest. A list that is already in place is a good reason to stay; the clock and the doors are the two answers worth having before the first stranger joins.
Sources
Read next
- Choosing software for an email course: the decision, in order
The order to decide in when you pick a tool for a finite daily email course, what a feature grid hides, and how to test one in an afternoon.
- MailerLite for an email course: what to check before you commit
What to check in a MailerLite account before running a five-day email course on it: what the workflow waits for, which doors skip confirmation, and how it ends.
- beehiiv for an email course: what to check before you publish
What to check in a beehiiv account before you run a five-day email course: what starts the sequence, where new readers come from, what an unsubscribe reaches.
- Substack for an email course: what to check first
What to check before running a five-day email course on Substack: whether a sequence is timed per reader, what a lesson leaves behind, and what leaves with you.
- Mailchimp for an email course: what to check in the account
What to check in a Mailchimp account before a five-day course: which audience the journey watches, what could end it early, which doors skip confirmation.
The longer writing about email courses as a format, with no product named anywhere in it, is in the guides. What this site itself does is on the home page, and the rest of this set is on the comparison index .
Elsewhere on this site
The rest of this site comes at the same subject from other directions: guides on the format itself, a tool for one job each, a page for each kind of work, and what to check when choosing software.
Thinking of writing one of these?
5dayemail hosts a five-to-ten day email course: you write it once, and everyone who joins your list gets one email a day, in order, starting from the day they confirm.
Accounts are opened a few at a time rather than by signing up. Leave your address and you will be written to when the next ones open.
One message, when there is room. No course emails, no newsletter, and the address is not passed on. Ask and it is deleted; what is kept, and for how long, is in the privacy policy.