“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter (2008).
This week I found a link tucked three clicks into my ConvertKit billing settings. “Switch to a lower tier.” I clicked it, ran the math and my stomach dropped. My email list sat under the limit for months while I paid the rate for the tier above it.
The full numbers tell it plainly. I’ve paid ConvertKit (now Kit) more than $24,500 since February 2023. The timeline:
- January 2024: my list crosses 65,000. Kit auto-upgrades me to the 75,000 tier and charges about $700 prorated that same day.
- Since then: $663 a month.
- Today: back under the 65,000 line and there a while now.
I pruned my list of inactive subscribers. That lifts deliverability, the share of emails that reach the inbox. It should cut the bill too.
So I asked Kit one question. When did my count last fall below 65,000 and could they credit what I overpaid after that? The money was small. The answer mattered more than the dollars. The first reply skipped both parts and closed the ticket.
I wrote back and pushed. This time Kit went into the billing logs. I should have been on the 65,000 tier from June through August 2025, then the 55,000 tier from September through January. Eight months, two tiers, about $936 in overcharges by their own count, plus the months since.
Their answer was a three-month credit. That’s a fraction of the total. The rest, they said, falls outside a 30-day refund window.
When my list grew past the tier, the charge hit the same hour, prorated to the cent, before I lifted a finger. When I cut the list back under, the price held. Silence on their end. The downgrade waited as a link I had to go find, parked behind a menu I rarely open.
Up was automatic. Down was my job.
That asymmetry is a choice. A system that clocks my growth to the same hour can clock my shrinkage just as fast. ConvertKit built the automatic move in the direction that bills me more and left the other direction for me to stumble onto. The increase runs itself. The decrease is a scavenger hunt.
The billing was the first problem. The way Kit handled it was the second. They had the exact overcharge in hand, to the month, then offered back a sliver of it and called the rest old. Faced with the total, Kit reached for the smaller number.
So I’m leaving.
Run the math from the vendor’s side. Kit held the line on about $936. The customer behind that $936 paid them close to $8,000 a year for more than three years and would have kept paying. That customer is gone.
Extraction looks like profit until you price in reputation and churn.
🧾
What’s a loyal customer worth to you over the years?
