If you’re building an email newsletter, Beehiiv is our recommended tool. The decision usually comes down to Beehiiv vs ConvertKit which we’ve done a full breakdown on. The TLDR, we think for most newsletters Beehiiv is the best option. It will be cheaper (especially at higher numbers of subscribers), it has a better email designer, and the rate of new features rolling out is unmatched. The newsletters that we don’t recommend Beehiiv for are those with smaller lists who plan to do lots of automations and want to monetize by selling digital products to their list. For those newsletters, we recommend ConvertKit.
Beehiiv gives you all the tools you need to build your newsletter at a price that's hard to beat.
Tyler Denk founded Beehiiv in 2021 alongside co-founders Benjamin Hargett and Jake Hurd, after gaining experience building the tech infrastructure for the popular business newsletter Morning Brew. Denk was inspired to create a platform that would provide the tools and capabilities he helped build at Morning Brew to other newsletter creators and publishers. After initially developing Beehiiv as a side project while working full-time jobs, Denk and his co-founders raised a $2.6 million seed round in the summer of 2021, left their jobs, and launched Beehiiv officially in November 2021. Within one year, Beehiiv reached nearly $1 million in ARR, thousands of customers, and sent over 275 million emails, establishing itself as a leading newsletter creation and publishing platform.
Beehiiv is an ESP (Email Service Provider) designed to help creators build a newsletter. It gives you the tools to build an email list (collect emails), send emails to the list, and monetize your list. It is similar to Substack, but we think it is a better option for most newsletter builders.
Beehiiv gives you all the tools to build and customize a newsletter landing page.
Beehiiv doesn’t give you a ton of customization options, but we think that’s okay. When you’re designing a newsletter landing page, simple is often better. You want to convey your key value prop and give the user one action to take - sign up for your newsletter. Simpler newsletter landing pages will convert better than complex landing pages. Many newsletters have used Beehiiv’s stock landing pages to grow to over 50,000 subscribers.
For those looking for more customization options, we recommend Carrd. It only costs $19 per year and integrates with both Beehiiv.
We think one of the best features of Beehiiv is their email editor. Using their editor you will be able to design beautiful looking emails. The one drawback to Beehiiv’s email editor is that they don't provide pre-built email templates, so you will need to use the email editor alone to design your email templates. Using the email editor you will be able to easily embed Twitter and Instagram posts as well as Tiktoks. You can also add images, videos, and quote blocks quickly and easily.
Beehiiv has recently improved their segmenting and automations, however, they still trail ConvertKit. Automations are triggered email sequences when certain actions are taken. With automations you can create IF THEN logic to trigger email sequences based on certain criteria being met (e.g., send welcome flow when a new subscriber signs up). We think the Beehiiv segmentation and automation features are good enough for most newsletters, but if you are looking to use complex automations, then we recommend ConvertKit.
When it comes to monetizing your Beehiiv newsletter, there are multiple paths to take. We'll break down each below.
Co-registration
One of the easiest ways to monetize your newsletter is to recommend other newsletters and get paid per active subscriber you recommend. Beehiiv's co-registration product is called Boosts. With Boosts you can show a popup that promotes other newsletters after someone has subscribed to your newsletter. It's a great way to offset the costs of paid promotion for your newsletter.
Sponsored posts
Adding sponsors to your newsletter is another great way to monetize your newsletter. Beehiiv has a marketplace for this, but we think it’s in the early days, and we don't recommend it at this point. We think the best way to find sponsors is to reach out yourself. It's more work, but the earnings per send will be higher.
Digital products
Selling digital products (courses, info products etc.) to your subscribers is one of the best ways to monetize your email list. This is where ConvertKit really has an edge. ConvertKit has the integrated tools to facilitate digital product sales. With Beehiiv you will need to use other third-party tools like Gumroad to sell your digital products.
Paid newsletter option
Having a paid tier of your newsletter is another great way to monetize. You can have a free email that goes out to everyone and additional emails that only go to your paid subscribers. Beehiiv has the tools that let you quickly and easily add a paid subscription option.
You can find the list of Beehiiv integrations here.
It’s a decent list of integration partners, but Beehiiv still trails competitors like ConvertKit when it comes to integrations. The good news is that they are adding integrations at a rapid clip. We expect Beehiiv to close the integration gap soon.
Another area Beehiiv excels is in their analytics. With Beehiiv you will be able to track the Source and Medium of subscribers via UTM parameters in order to analyze subscribers by acquisition source. For example, you can compare the open rates for subscribers you acquire via Meta (Facebook) and compare them to subscribers you acquire via X (Twitter).
One great benefit to Beehiiv is the Slack community of newsletter operators. In it, people can ask questions and share advice in a free community of like minded newsletter operators.
Beehiiv has historically had very affordable pricing, however, in April 2024, Beehiiv raised their prices and began basing pricing on subscriber count (similar to the pricing model of most competitors like ConvertKit). They are still the most affordably priced option, but the difference is less dramatic than it was.
Beehiiv has four pricing tiers: Launch, Scale, Max, and Enterprise.
The Launch plan is free for up to 2,500 subscribers. This is a great way to test a newsletter concept and is one of the highest free subscriber tiers of the email platforms we've reviewed. The launch plan includes everything you need to get your newsletter off the ground: custom website (landing page) to collect emails, an email designer to create emails to send, and unlimited email sends.
The Scale plan starts at $39 per month ($34 per month when billed annually). With the Grow plan you get access to everything in the Launch plan as well as email segmentation and automations in addition to access to the ad network and referral program.
The Max plan starts at $99 per month ($86 per month when billed annually) and includes everything in the Scale plan as well as the ability to remove Beehiiv branding, priority support and access to the Newsletter XP course.
Pricing for the Enterprise plan is not disclosed. The Enterprise plan includes everything in the Max plan in addition to a dedicated sending IP address, designated account manager, concierge onboarding, and support for unlimited subscribers.
Direct Competitors
Ghost
Substack
Medium
ConvertKit
Ecommerce focused ESPs
Mailchimp
Klaviyo
Omnisend
Digital product sales focused
Gumroad
Lemon Squeezy
Is Beehiiv free?
Yes, Beehiiv offers a free plan called the Launch plan. It’s free for up to 2,500 subscribers.
Is Beehiiv good for SEO?
We think Beehiiv is okay for SEO. With Beehiiv you have the ability to customize slugs, H tags, Metatitles, and descriptions of your posts, but you won't benefit from the strong domain authority of a platform like Medium. You also can’t add canonical URLs which will potentially hurt your SEO if you are publishing your content on both Beehiiv and your own website. We think that those who are serious about SEO should post their content on their own website and just use Beehiiv to send emails to their newsletter list.
Is Beehiiv better than Convertkit?
We think Beehiiv is better than ConvertKit for most newsletters. It will be cheaper (especially at higher numbers of subscribers), it has a better email designer, and the rate of new features rolling out is unmatched. Read our full breakdown on Beehiiv vs Convertkit.
How do you make money on Beehiiv?
There are many ways to make money with a Beehiiv newsletter. Co-registration is one of the easiest ways to monetize. You get paid for recommending other newsletters to your email subscribers. Another way to monetize is through newsletter promotions (paid ads in your newsletter). Beehiiv has a network for this, but it’s still in its early days. You can also monetize by adding a paid subscription option where subscribers pay you monthly or yearly to get access to your premium newsletter content.
Does Beehiiv give you a website?
Yes, Beehiiv will give you a landing page and a website that shows all of your past posts. By default it will be hosted on a Beehiiv page, but you can add a custom domain in the Grow and Scale plans. You will be somewhat limited in terms of design and control over the landing page and website, so we recommend other options to host your website for those looking for more control over those aspects. With this setup, you would just be using Beehiiv to manage your email list and send emails to your list.
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