Beehiiv vs Substack: Which Newsletter Platform Should You Choose?
Choosing a newsletter platform can feel strangely personal.
You are not simply picking software. You are choosing the place where your thoughts will live, where your readers will hear from you regularly, and, hopefully, where a small but meaningful relationship with your audience can grow.
Two names come up again and again: beehiiv and Substack.
I have helped people set up both platforms, and the honest answer is that neither is universally “better”. The right choice depends on what you want your newsletter to become: a simple writing habit, a paid publication, a community, a business asset, or something in between.
I also ghostwrite a newsletter for someone using beehiiv, which gives me a welcome excuse to scratch my creative itch outside of the more technical CRM work I do. So I have seen both platforms not only as a marketer and setup partner, but from the perspective of someone trying to make regular publishing feel enjoyable, sustainable and worth reading.
The short version
Choose Substack if you want the quickest, simplest route to publishing thoughtful writing and potentially building a paid reader community.
Choose beehiiv if you want more control over branding, audience growth, website pages and the practical marketing side of building a newsletter-led business.
Substack feels like moving into a lively writers’ neighbourhood. Beehiiv feels more like having your own publication, with the tools to build out the rest of the house around it.
Neither approach is wrong. But they lead you in slightly different directions.
What Substack does well
Substack made newsletters feel accessible again.
You can set up an account, start writing, invite readers and publish without spending weeks thinking about design, integrations or complicated audience structures. That ease is a large part of its appeal.
For writers, commentators, journalists, creators and subject-matter experts, that can be exactly what is needed. You have something to say. People want to read it. The platform gets out of the way.
It is designed for publishing first
Substack’s strength is its simplicity.
The writing experience is clean and familiar. You can publish posts, send them as emails, create paid subscriber tiers, host podcasts and video, and allow readers to comment or interact with your work.
It is especially good for people who want to develop a consistent publishing practice without turning every issue into a miniature marketing project.
If you are starting with a personal newsletter, perhaps essays, recommendations, cultural commentary, industry observations or behind-the-scenes reflections, Substack makes it easy to focus on the work itself.
It has a built-in discovery culture
Substack is not just email software. It is also a network of readers and writers.
Its recommendations, notes and publication ecosystem can help readers discover work beyond the newsletters they already subscribe to. That is useful if your goal is to be part of a wider conversation and find new readers who are already in the habit of subscribing to independent writing.
The trade-off is that your newsletter exists within Substack’s world. That can be helpful for discovery, but it can also mean your publication feels a little less distinct from the platform around it.
It is straightforward for paid subscriptions
If you plan to charge for your writing, Substack has made this model very familiar to readers.
The reader journey is simple: someone subscribes for free, enjoys your work, then chooses to become a paid supporter for access to additional posts, archives, community elements or a closer relationship with your publication.
That model works particularly well when your writing itself is the product.
Think: deep expertise, reporting, regular analysis, a sharp point of view, fiction, specialist research, a niche community or a publication readers want to support because they value its existence.
What beehiiv does well
Beehiiv is built for people who see a newsletter as more than a weekly email.
It is a stronger fit if you are building a media brand, a business, a publication with several contributors, or a newsletter that needs to connect more visibly to products, services, sponsorships, lead generation or a broader content strategy.
Where Substack prioritises ease and community, beehiiv tends to offer more room to shape the experience around your own brand.
It gives you more brand control
Beehiiv is often the better choice if you care about how the newsletter looks, how the archive is presented, what sits on your website and how readers move from one part of your world to another.
You can create a more branded publication home, build landing pages, organise content, add useful calls to action and make the experience feel closer to your own website rather than a profile on someone else’s platform.
For consultants, agencies, ecommerce brands and founders, this matters.
Your newsletter may not be the final destination. It may be the beginning of a relationship that leads to an enquiry, a consultation, a course, a product, an event, a membership or a future purchase.
It is better suited to audience growth
Beehiiv has a strong reputation for helping publishers grow their lists.
That does not mean it magically supplies an audience. You still need good ideas, consistency and a reason for people to sign up. But it gives you more tools for referrals, recommendation-style growth, signup pages and audience acquisition.
This is useful when you are treating your newsletter as a serious brand channel rather than simply a place to publish.
It works well for newsletter-led businesses
Beehiiv is a good fit when you want a newsletter to support multiple revenue streams.
That could include paid subscriptions, sponsorships, advertising, affiliate links, events, digital products, client work or products sold elsewhere. It is more naturally set up for people thinking like publishers and operators as well as writers.
That is partly why I enjoy ghostwriting on beehiiv: it gives the writing a proper editorial home, while leaving space for the publication to grow into something bigger than the email itself. We sell courses and promote a youtube channel, so it all sits together in one space.
Which should you choose?
The easiest way to decide is to start with your ambition, rather than the feature list.
Choose Substack if…
You want to begin publishing without overthinking the setup
Your primary product is your writing, analysis, reporting or perspective
You are drawn to the idea of being discovered by readers already active on Substack
You want to build a paid community around your work
You prefer a simple, editorial experience over a more customisable one
You would rather spend your time writing than building pages, systems and audience journeys
Substack is a very good option for someone who has been saying, “I should start a newsletter,” for six months.
Choose beehiiv if…
You want your newsletter to feel more like your own publication or brand
You need more than one signup page or audience pathway
You want to use your newsletter to generate leads, sell services or support a wider business
You care about growth and want more practical tools to support it
You may bring in contributors, sponsors, products or multiple revenue streams later
You want more flexibility as the newsletter grows
Beehiiv is particularly compelling if you are already running a business and want the newsletter to become a meaningful part of it, not an isolated side project.
A note on email marketing
This is where my CRM hat comes on.
Neither Substack nor beehiiv is a replacement for a fully developed customer lifecycle programme if you run an ecommerce business.
If you sell products online and need welcome journeys, browse abandonment, basket abandonment, post-purchase education, replenishment reminders, customer segmentation and tailored campaigns, you will likely still want a dedicated email platform such as Klaviyo.
But newsletters can work beautifully alongside that.
A brand might use Klaviyo for customer communications and revenue-driving automations, while the founder or brand champion uses beehiiv or Substack for a more editorial-style publication. One is designed to help customers have a better relationship with the business. The other can help people have a better relationship with the brand’s ideas, or drive a B2B awareness.
Those are not the same job, and they do not need to be.
If you are still stuck between Substack and Beehiiv, choose the one that makes you most likely to send the first email. You can refine the infrastructure later. It is much harder to build momentum if you never begin!
