[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":184},["ShallowReactive",2],{"day-guide-how-long-should-an-email-course-be":3},{"guide":4,"related":125,"pillar":173,"cluster":174,"elsewhere":175},{"slug":5,"kind":6,"cluster":7,"title":8,"description":9,"reviewed":10,"published":10,"summary":11,"lead":12,"sections":13,"closing":86,"faq":87,"sources":103},"how-long-should-an-email-course-be","article","email-courses","How long should an email course be? Days, emails, words","Five to seven daily emails is the usual answer. What the published guidance and fourteen live courses show, and how to fit the length to one promise.","2026-09-26","An email course should usually be five to seven daily emails, and ten is the practical ceiling for a daily course. Published guidance clusters at five to seven, and nine of fourteen free courses checked in September 2026 run five. Fit the length to the promise rather than to a number: one outcome per course, one idea per day, and each lesson 200 to 500 words, readable in a few minutes.","Nearly every guide to writing an email course answers this question in passing, and the answers agree more than they seem to. They differ on words per email, where the range is wide, but hardly at all on the number of emails. This page puts the published advice in one table, sets it against what fourteen live free courses actually do, and ends with a way to find the right length for your own course from the promise it makes.",[14,52,59,66,73,80],{"id":15,"heading":16,"paragraphs":17,"table":20},"the-short-answer","The short answer, and where it comes from",[18,19],"Five daily emails is the default, seven when the method genuinely has more steps, and ten is where a daily course stops being a course a stranger will finish. That is not a rule from any authority; it is where the published advice from the people who run email software and write about courses keeps landing, and it is what most working courses do.","The sources disagree much more about length per email than about the number of emails. Three of them suggest anywhere from about five hundred to twelve hundred words, and one simply says a lesson should take a few minutes to read. The reason for the spread is that they are describing different readers: a lesson read at a desk can be long, and a lesson read on a phone before work cannot.",{"caption":21,"columns":22,"rows":27},"Published advice on email course length, as each source states it. Read on 26 September 2026; the date is the one each page carries.",[23,24,25,26],"Source","How many emails","How often","How long each one",[28,33,38,43,48],[29,30,31,32],"Kit (updated August 2024)","5 to 10 emails over one to two weeks, with no hard rule","Daily for 5 to 7 days on quick-win topics; every 2 to 3 days or weekly for heavier ones","A few minutes to read, in short paragraphs",[34,35,36,37],"Double Your Freelancing (undated)","Five emails over five days, the format the author favours","The first one straight after opt-in; daily when the lessons are information","Not given",[39,40,41,42],"EmailOctopus (2021, updated 2025)","At least five","One lesson a day at a similar time","About 500 words as a benchmark for a short course",[44,45,46,47],"Instapage (undated)","A common length is 5 to 7 days","One email a day","Up to about 1,000 words",[49,50,37,51],"Inbox Collective (April 2025)","Probably five to seven","800 to 1,200 words per lesson",{"id":53,"heading":54,"paragraphs":55},"what-live-courses-do","What fourteen live courses actually do",[56,57,58],"Advice is one thing and practice another, so it is worth checking. On 26 September 2026, fourteen free email courses were read on their own sign-up pages. Nine run five lessons, one a day. Three run seven. One, Double Your Freelancing’s course on raising your rates, runs nine. One, AWeber’s Everyday Email, runs thirty tips of about a minute each. The courses, their links and what each page promises are in [the list of email course examples](\u002Fguides\u002Femail-course-examples).","Outside that list, one vendor has published the shape of a much longer course. Close, which makes sales software, describes its free Startup Sales Success Course as thirteen emails spread over thirty-five days, taken by almost ten thousand people. That is a drip course for a professional audience, spaced out so there is time to act between lessons, and it is a different product from a daily course a stranger finishes in a week.","So the pattern in practice matches the pattern in the advice. Five is what most people ship. The longer courses are longer for a stated reason: a bigger outcome, lessons small enough to fit a month, or a working audience who need days between steps.",{"id":60,"heading":61,"paragraphs":62},"how-often","Daily, every other day, or weekly",[63,64,65],"Kit lists three cadences: daily for quick-win topics, every two or three days for courses that need real implementation, and weekly for slower, community-style subjects. Double Your Freelancing puts the rule more simply: the gap between emails should match the time a reader needs to do what the last one asked. A lesson that is information can follow the next morning; a lesson that asks for a piece of work needs the time the work takes.","Daily is the default for a free course because it keeps the thread. A reader who gets day two the morning after day one still remembers why they signed up. James Greig sent his seven-lesson freelancing course every 48 hours and published the result in 2016: opens fell from 79.9 per cent on the first lesson to 60.9 per cent on the seventh. Those figures predate Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection, which now inflates opens, so read them as a shape rather than a benchmark. The shape is the useful part: attention falls with every lesson, and every day of gap is more time for it to fall.","Whatever the cadence, keep it fixed and say it on the sign-up page. A course that arrives every morning is a promise a reader can plan around; one that arrives on uneven days is a newsletter that happens to end.",{"id":67,"heading":68,"paragraphs":69},"how-long-each-email","How long each email should be",[70,71,72],"The published range runs from about five hundred words to twelve hundred, and Kit declines to give a number at all, asking only that a lesson take a few minutes to read. For a course read on a phone in the morning, the practical answer is shorter than most of those figures: 200 to 500 words, which is two to three minutes of reading. Much below that and a lesson rarely says enough to justify arriving; much above it and the length itself becomes the reason to save it for later.","The rule underneath the word count is that each email carries one idea a reader can act on the same day. A lesson that needs two ideas is two lessons, and that is usually how a five-day course honestly becomes a seven-day one. A lesson that cannot fill two hundred words is probably half of the day before it.","The line above each email matters as much as the body. Numbering it, Day 2 of 5, tells a reader where they are in something they can see the end of, which is the whole reason a course is finished more often than a newsletter is read. [The subject line guide](\u002Fguides\u002Femail-course-subject-lines) covers that pattern.",{"id":74,"heading":75,"paragraphs":76},"when-to-go-longer","When to go longer, and where the ceiling is",[77,78,79],"Go past five when the promise needs practice rather than information. A habit needs days of doing, a skill needs repetitions, and a method with seven real steps needs seven mornings. Go past seven when each lesson is very small, as AWeber’s one-minute tips are, or when the audience is a working one who will act between lessons and the cadence is not daily.","Ten is the practical ceiling for a daily course, and the reason is attention. Both published sequences cited here show attention falling lesson by lesson: Greig’s opens fell from 79.9 to 60.9 per cent over seven lessons, and Close reports opens of 62 per cent on its first email and 44.7 per cent on its twelfth. Each extra day is another morning a reader can stop. Past ten, a daily course is asking for a fortnight, which is what a newsletter asks without a newsletter’s reason to keep saying yes.","Measure whether the length is right with a click on the last day, not with opens, and compare it with the same course at a different length if you can. [The guide to completion rates](\u002Fguides\u002Femail-course-conversion-rate) sets out what to expect at each stage.",{"id":81,"heading":82,"paragraphs":83},"fit-the-length","Fit the length to the promise: a two-minute test",[84,85],"Write the promise in one sentence: by the last day you will have done this. Then list every step a reader has to take to get from where they start to that sentence. Merge any two steps that fit one morning, and split any step that does not. The number you are left with is the length of the course.","If it comes to five, you have the common case. If it comes to three, the promise is probably too small to feel like a course, and both EmailOctopus and Inbox Collective suggest at least five for that reason. If it comes to twelve, the promise is two courses, and the better one to write first is the one whose last day a stranger can picture. [The outline generator](\u002Ftools\u002Femail-course-outline-generator) turns the promise into a day-by-day outline, and [the five-day template](\u002Fguides\u002F5-day-email-course-template) writes one out in full.","Choose five daily emails unless the promise needs more, go to seven when the method has seven real steps, and treat ten as the ceiling for a daily course. Keep each lesson to one idea and 200 to 500 words, send it at the same hour every day, say the length on the sign-up page, and judge the result by how many readers click on the last day.",[88,91,94,97,100],{"question":89,"answer":90},"How many emails are in a 5-day email course?","Five lessons, one a day, with one confirmation email before them and, optionally, one follow-up on day six. The confirmation asks the reader to click a link and is not a lesson; the follow-up says what comes next. So a reader receives six or seven messages in all, and five of them are the course.",{"question":92,"answer":93},"Can an email course be three days long?","It can, if the promise really is that small, but most published advice asks for at least five. EmailOctopus suggests five as a minimum and Inbox Collective says anything shorter is a less compelling offer. A three-day course is often a five-day course whose middle has not been written yet.",{"question":95,"answer":96},"Is a 30-day email course too long?","With lessons of normal length, yes: thirty mornings is far more attention than a stranger gives a free course. It works only when each lesson is tiny. AWeber’s Everyday Email, one of fourteen courses checked in September 2026, runs thirty tips of about a minute each.",{"question":98,"answer":99},"How long should each lesson take to read?","Two to three minutes. Published advice ranges from about 500 to 1,200 words per email, but a course read on a phone in the morning works best at 200 to 500 words, carrying one idea the reader can act on the same day.",{"question":101,"answer":102},"Should the confirmation email count as day one?","No. The confirmation email has one job, asking the reader to prove the address is theirs, and it should carry nothing else. Day one is the first lesson, sent as soon as the reader confirms, while they are still looking at their inbox.",[104,107,110,113,116,119,122],{"label":105,"url":106},"Kit, how to create an email course","https:\u002F\u002Fkit.com\u002Fresources\u002Fblog\u002Fcreate-an-email-course",{"label":108,"url":109},"Double Your Freelancing, creating email courses","https:\u002F\u002Fdoubleyourfreelancing.com\u002Fcreating-email-courses\u002F",{"label":111,"url":112},"EmailOctopus, how to create an email course","https:\u002F\u002Femailoctopus.com\u002Fblog\u002Fhow-to-create-an-email-course",{"label":114,"url":115},"Instapage, how to create an email course","https:\u002F\u002Finstapage.com\u002Fblog\u002Fhow-to-create-an-email-course\u002F",{"label":117,"url":118},"Inbox Collective, repackaging content into email courses (April 2025)","https:\u002F\u002Finboxcollective.com\u002Fhow-to-repackage-your-best-content-into-email-courses-that-grow-your-list-and-convert-readers\u002F",{"label":120,"url":121},"James Greig, what he learned from his first email course (2016)","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.greig.cc\u002Ffirst-email-course\u002F",{"label":123,"url":124},"Close, the Startup Sales Success Course drip campaign","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.close.com\u002Fblog\u002Femail-drip-campaign",[126,129,133,137,141,145,149,153,157,161,165,169],{"slug":7,"title":127,"description":128},"How to create an email course people finish","How to create an email course: what it is, how long to make it, how each day is shaped, the opt-in page, confirmation and timing, and completion rates.",{"slug":130,"title":131,"description":132},"email-course-ideas","40 email course ideas by niche, and how to test one first","Forty email course ideas across coaching, software, trades and teaching, each with a five-day sketch, and the five conditions an idea must pass first.",{"slug":134,"title":135,"description":136},"email-course-examples","Email course examples: 14 free courses, taken apart","Fourteen free email courses, checked on their sign-up pages in September 2026: how many days each runs, how often it sends, and what comes after it.",{"slug":138,"title":139,"description":140},"how-to-write-a-5-day-email-course","How to write a 5-day email course, in 6 steps","A method for the whole job: pick one promise, cut it into five mornings, write the last day first, and keep every email readable on a phone.",{"slug":142,"title":143,"description":144},"5-day-email-course-template","Email course template: five days written out, free to copy","A free email course template: five emails written in full with subject lines, preheaders and one call to action each, plus 7- and 10-day variants.",{"slug":146,"title":147,"description":148},"email-course-subject-lines","Email course subject lines: the Day N of M pattern","Why a Day 2 of 5 prefix beats a clever subject line, how long the rest can be on a phone, twenty worked examples, and copy-ready sets for 5, 7 and 10 days.",{"slug":150,"title":151,"description":152},"email-course-conversion-rate","Email course open, click and completion rates: the numbers","Open, click and opt-in numbers four real email courses published, planning bands for conversion and completion, and a funnel from 1,000 visitors.",{"slug":154,"title":155,"description":156},"email-course-vs-newsletter","Email course or newsletter: which one to write first","A finite course and an open-ended newsletter ask a reader for different things. How to tell which one your idea is, and what each costs to keep.",{"slug":158,"title":159,"description":160},"email-course-vs-drip-campaign","Email course vs drip campaign vs autoresponder","An email course, a drip campaign and an autoresponder run on the same automation. What each promises, what breaks when a course runs in a drip tool.",{"slug":162,"title":163,"description":164},"send-an-email-course-from-gmail","Can you send an email course from Gmail?","What Google publishes as a sending limit, why the limit is the least of the problem, and the six mechanisms a mailbox does not have that a course needs.",{"slug":166,"title":167,"description":168},"email-course-software","Email course software compared (September 2026)","Kit, Mailchimp, MailerLite, beehiiv, Substack and 5dayemail compared for an email course: sequence plans, prices, free limits, opt-in and time zones.",{"slug":170,"title":171,"description":172},"email-course-cost","What an email course costs: sending, domain and your hours","What an email course costs to run: the four ways sending is billed, ten to twenty dollars a year for a domain, and the hours that dwarf both.",{"slug":7,"title":127},[],[176,180],{"path":177,"title":178,"kind":179},"\u002Ftools\u002Femail-course-outline-generator","Email course outline generator: free, no sign-up","tool",{"path":181,"title":182,"kind":183},"\u002Fguides\u002F5-day-challenge","How to run a 5-day challenge by email","guide",1791064927306]