Substack vs Beehiiv: Which is Better for Your Newsletter?
Substack and Beehiiv are two great ways to monetize your content. What’s surprising is the fact that they’re unique in their own ways.
What you might find in one platform might not be available in another and vice-versa. More importantly, it’s more of an old school vs new school thing.
Sounds interesting? Let’s see how both platforms can help you achieve your goal as a content creator.
1st - Check This if You Hate Reading..
| Feature | Substack | Beehiiv |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | Since 2017, Substack has revolutionized newsletter creation and monetization for writers. The platform quickly became a favorite choice among writers to generate income independently. | Founded in 2021, Beehiiv offers an email newsletter platform that enables creators to produce, monetize, and expand their newsletters. The platform enhances audience engagement, growth, and monetization. |
| Ease of Use | 7/10 (took me a while to understand how it works) | 10/10 (everything was quite easier to learn) |
| Integrations | Integrate with Zapier and connect with over 3K apps. Supports basic integrations for analytics and audience management tools as well. | Connect using API, webhook, Mailchimp, Zapier, etc. |
| Starter’s Plan | Free, $39 per month | Free, there’s no upfront cost. All you have to pay is 8% of your total earnings, additional fees, and payout charges. |
| Best suited for those who want to... | A full-fledged platform to publish and market their newsletters in one place. Although it’s free, the real fun begins with premium options. | A free way to make a system where it’s easy to make money from paid newsletters without any upfront cost. |
2nd - Let’s Read!
Substack Overview
Since 2017, Substack has been a platform where writers can publish their work and offer their readers a subscription for their newsletter.
What I like the most about Substack is that you can add a custom domain to your newsletter website. Apart from that, you get all the marketing tools you need to market yourself.
Key Features
Customization
- Enable features such as a notes tab, color-customizable links, and links to yours posts
- Upload your site's square logo, wordmark, and a cover photo
- Customize the site design to suit your specific needs as a writer
- Supports seven different languages
- Set up navigation with pages, sections, and tags to mirror a full-scale website
- Include a personal biography on your profile
- Create a distinct About page
- Integrate with Google Analytics via Measurement ID and Tag Manager
- Connect to social media insights with Facebook, Parse.ly, and Twitter tracking pixels
- Utilize intelligent image cropping for optimizing post thumbnails
Monetization
- Integrate Stripe to enable monthly paid subscriptions from readers
- Add affiliate links into your articles to earn commissions
Analytics
- Monitor total traffic and identify top referral sources
- Analyze subscriber engagement and activity reports
- Review email open rates
- Access reports from your surveys
- Receive monthly statistics via email
Marketing
- Chat feature to facilitate real-time conversations with subscribers
- Add social media links
Management
- Send email reminders for draft submissions
- Provide live chat support
- Help center
Beehiiv Overview
Launched in 2021 by former Morning Brew employees, Beehiiv helps creators scale and monetize their audiences.
The platform was designed to break down barriers to content sharing, making it easier for creators to reach their full potential.
As someone who appreciates tools that empower creators, I believe Beehiiv holds significant promise for growing and enhancing the creator community.
Key Features
Customization
- Pre-built templates and themes
- Custom pages
- In-built site builders
- Add guest authors to your post
- Show byline in email
- Hide your articles from feed
- Start up to 3 publications in the free plan
Monetization
- Earn with ads
- Get paid by charging a monthly subscription fee to your users
- Make money from your newsletter by boosting other publications in the beehiiv network
Analytics
- Subscribers report (Scale plan)
- 3D post analytics
- 3D click analytics
Marketing
- Get API access
- Let people refer you using the referral program (Scale plan)
- Recommend other publishers so that they can recommend you
- Build a custom magic link to boost conversions with 1-click subscribe links
- Use boosts as a way to advertise yourself
- Automate your marketing tasks with certain triggers
Management
- Chatbot assistant that can resolve your queries
- Submit a support ticket and get response within 24-48 hours
- Knowledgebase and video tutorials
Substack vs Beehiiv: Comparison & Walkthrough!
#1 - Popularity
In 2023, Beehiiv got over 50 million unique readers. Well, that’s the kind of number Substack got in a month.
A report from Backlinko suggests that Substack got over 49 million readers in January 2024.
So there’s no match when it comes to popularity.
Winner: Beehiiv
#2 - Writer’s Dashboard
On Beehiiv, you can see that everything is available on the left side. From posts to monetization techniques, there’s everything you need.
If we look at Substack, it’s quite simple:
Even though Substack is quite simple, its interface doesn’t excite me the way Beehiiv’s did. For instance, I could figure out what to do within seconds.
That’s not it, the internal guidance helped me learn everything without hassle.
Winner: Beehiiv
#3 - Platform’s Editor
Substack has an easy to use word editor that can help you create and publish great articles. To be honest, sometimes it reminds me of the old style Blogger’s interface.
Beehiiv’s editor isn’t less than Substack. Not only that, you can have a lot more features here.
Look at the top and you’ll see things like email, website seo, and delivery.
Compared to Substack, Beehiiv offers a lot more.
Winner: Beehiiv
#4 - Analytics
Unless you opt for the scale plan, forget about analytics.
On the contrary, Substack lets you track where your traffic is coming from, top sources, pledges, subscriber reports, and a lot more for free.
Winner: Substack
#5 - Profitability
Want to see how much Beehiiv users earned last month? Look what I’ve got here:
So that proves people are earning here. In fact, there are some newsletters that are making millions on Beehiiv.
Now if we talk about Substack, there are stories which explain how top earners are making $25 million a year.
Winner: Tie
Final Thoughts!
You sure newsletter is your thing? In that case, I’d recommend Beehiiv with a custom domain name and a plan of course.
If it’s an on and off thing for you, I would recommend Substack over Beehiiv. At least, you won’t have to pay for features like analytics.
Also, Substack gets more visitors from Google. So you might find your luck and try both later.
Yes, this can happen. Substack’s top newsletter Lenny Rachitsky is quite famous on Beehiiv as well.
Actually, they did the right thing to shine everywhere. And that’s the kind of strategy I’d suggest you as well.
Start small with Substack and grow bigger with Beehiiv.
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