Which email tools actually allow affiliate links

Quick verdict

Ranked on published policy only. A permissive policy is not the same as good deliverability, good value or a platform that will keep its current wording — and Brevo could not be read at all, so it is absent from this ranking rather than judged by it.

Why searching this gives you the wrong answer

There is a query collision sitting on top of this subject. Search for email marketing and affiliate anything, and almost everything returned is about earning commission by promoting an email platform — best affiliate programs, how much GetResponse pays per sale, beehiiv's recurring rates. That is a different question from the one most people are asking: whether they are allowed to put an affiliate link in a newsletter without losing the account.

The second question is answered in documents almost nobody reads — acceptable use policies and terms of service. So we read them. What follows is what five vendors say in their own words, plus one we could not read at all.

What each platform actually says

Three things vary independently, and lumping them together is what makes the published advice unreliable. A platform can permit affiliate links, restrict the affiliate-only business model, and separately restrict money-making as a topic. Most do at least two.

Read in September 2026 from: getresponse.com/legal (terms effective August 11, 2026) plus its two linked prohibited lists; mailerlite.com/legal/terms-of-service (updated June 15, 2026); beehiiv.com/aup (updated July 16, 2026); help.kit.com acceptable use policy (updated May 7, 2026) and Kit's affiliate marketing help article (updated June 29, 2026); mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use (updated September 26, 2025).

The GetResponse row is a negative finding, so we checked it three ways: its terms of service, its prohibited practices list and its prohibited goods and services list. None contains the words affiliate, referral or commission in any clause governing what customers may send. Its nearest restriction bans "fraudulent goods, services, schemes, or promotions (e.g. make-money-fast schemes, chain letters, pyramid schemes), payday loans", plus a rule that cryptocurrency "may not be promoted without our prior written permission". An absence is weaker evidence than a permission — GetResponse could add a clause tomorrow — but on what is published today it is the least restrictive of the six.

At the other end, MailerLite is the only one that explains itself: "Affiliate Marketing and Affiliate Links are two different things" and "Affiliate Marketing is prohibited in MailerLite, but Affiliate Links are fine in most cases", with the banned version defined as "the promotion of multiple referral links from various third-party companies purely to generate commission-based income". We go through that clause line by line in our MailerLite review.

beehiiv lands in the same place with fewer words: "While the occasional use of affiliate links is allowed, Content created primarily for affiliate marketing or lead generation purposes are not permitted on beehiiv." It adds a quality test the others do not, objecting to "excessive or manipulative use of affiliate links solely for revenue generation, without adding genuine value to the Content". If you are weighing beehiiv for a paid newsletter, the money side is costed in our Substack vs beehiiv vs Ghost comparison.

Only one platform publishes a number

Every rule above is a judgement call except one. Kit's help centre gives an actual ratio:

Quoted verbatim from Kit's help centre article on what type of affiliate marketing is and is not allowed, updated June 29, 2026 and read twice. The same article states the underlying requirement more bluntly: you need to "have your own business/content outside of affiliate marketing."

That converts into the only self-test available in this category. Look at your last ten emails. If more than two or three exist mainly to push an affiliate link, you are outside Kit's published guideline — and probably outside the spirit of the other four, none of which will tell you where their line sits. Holding yourself to Kit's number on any platform is a cheap way to stay clear of a rule you cannot read.

Kit is stricter than its reputation in a second way. Its acceptable use policy bans affiliate links in four categories regardless of ratio — "education, loans, online pharmacies, or 'get rich quick' types of software" — and separately prohibits "CPA affiliate type sites or similar affiliate type of sites, network marketing sites, affiliate educational offers, insurance sales or promotions." Kit's stated reason is deliverability rather than morality: such content "is often used in spam emails and thus can cause below average deliverability rates." Anyone planning to promote courses on affiliate terms should read that second clause carefully, because "affiliate educational offers" is exactly that plan.

The second rule: the topic, not the links

This is the finding that changed how we read the rest, and it is missing from every roundup we found. The restrictions on affiliate links and the restrictions on making-money-online content are separate clauses, and you can breach the second with no affiliate links at all.

Kit prohibits "Make-money-online or get rich quick schemes" as a category in its own right. Mailchimp lists "Work-at-home scams, make money online schemes" among businesses it may not allow. GetResponse — which has no affiliate rule whatsoever — still bans "make-money-fast schemes". beehiiv disallows "'get rich quick' schemes, including investment opportunities or other services that promise high rewards for little effort."

Read the wording and the common thread is the promise, not the subject. Every one of those clauses names a scheme: fast money, easy money, high reward for little effort. None bans writing about business, freelancing, software or income. A newsletter that teaches a named skill, shows its sources and makes no earnings claim is a different object from one selling a shortcut, and the policies are drafted to catch the second.

That distinction matters to this site, so we will state our position plainly: this is our own research, published under our name, with affiliate links disclosed — the pattern four of these five policies describe as permitted. But we sit in a subject area three of them name, which is why we read the clauses before recommending anything. The affiliate programs themselves apply a second layer of gates — Amazon withdraws your application if you miss three qualifying sales in 180 days, and ClickBank holds payment until five sales have cleared — which we cover in how beginners actually get paid. Either way, building a list from scratch matters more than the platform.

What happens if you get it wrong

The consequence language varies more than the rules do, and Kit publishes the harshest version we read:

Both quoted from Kit's acceptable use policy, read twice in September 2026. beehiiv states a broader discretion rather than a harsher penalty, reserving the right to suspend accounts that pose "reputational, legal, or deliverability risks to the services, even if the specific content or behavior is not explicitly listed in this policy."

Put that beside a fact from our beginner email tools comparison: Kit's free plan holds up to 10,000 subscribers, forty times MailerLite's 250. The platform handing out the most free capacity is the only one of the six telling you that termination is permanent. That is not a reason to avoid Kit — its policy is legible and its reasoning is deliverability, a real problem on shared infrastructure. It is a reason not to let 10,000 subscribers accumulate somewhere you have never read the rules, and to export your list on a schedule wherever it lives.

One ordering trap is worth knowing, verified on MailerLite and likely to apply elsewhere: approval sits between signing up and sending, not between signing up and building. You can design a form, write a lead magnet and draft a welcome sequence before discovering you cannot mail any of it. Get approved first, then build.

Four rules that keep you inside all of them

Every policy we read reduces to the same four tests. Follow these and you are inside the published wording of all five readable platforms at once, without needing to pick the most permissive one.

1. Send your own content, and link out from it. The permitted pattern everywhere is a newsletter that says something, with links inside it. The prohibited pattern everywhere is a mailing whose reason to exist is the links.
2. Keep affiliate-led emails to two or three in ten. Kit's published ratio, applied as a house rule. It is the only number in the category.
3. Disclose, and never imply the product is yours. MailerLite requires links be "clearly presented as offers from another company"; Kit asks you to mention that the link redirects elsewhere and to avoid letting subscribers believe these are your products.
4. Never mail a bought, rented or scraped list. It is prohibited on every platform we read without exception, and it is the fastest route to a closed account.

Two categories fall outside those rules however carefully you write: promoting other people's courses on affiliate terms, which Kit names directly, and anything promising easy or fast income, which all four topic clauses catch. If either is the plan, verify with the vendor in writing first.

What we could not verify

• Brevo, entirely. Five URLs — its terms of use, two variants of its terms of service, its anti-spam policy and its help centre — returned pages containing nothing but their own title, HTTP 404 or HTTP 403. No Brevo position appears in the table above, and we make no claim about it in either direction. This is the fifth consecutive cycle Brevo has been unreadable to us.
• How any of this is enforced. Every finding on this page is published wording. We have not tested enforcement, we do not know how often accounts are actually closed for affiliate content, and we state no rate. A permissive clause is not a promise, and a strict clause is not always enforced strictly.
• Mailchimp's exact scope. Mailchimp's wording is that it "may not allow" businesses in the listed categories, which is softer than an outright prohibition and leaves room for case-by-case judgement. We have reported it as listed rather than as banned.
• Where any borderline case actually sits. The classifications in the table are our reading of each vendor's wording, not a vendor-published categorisation. Borderline cases are the platform's call, not ours.

All six policies are September 2026 snapshots of documents that change without announcement — four of the five readable ones were updated within the last four months. The affiliate clauses are the load-bearing facts here; a change to any of them moves the conclusion, not just a detail. Read the current version on the vendor's own site before you commit, and treat this page as a map of where to look rather than a substitute for looking.

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