Beehiiv vs Substack — Blogging or a Newsletter Platform?
No code, no complex functionalities, and the best features for newsletter growth — Beehiiv vs Substack are similar platforms with different use cases.
Beehiiv is a modern newsletter and blogging platform with good SEO capabilities. It’s pretty straightforward and you don’t need any coding skills to use their advanced features. Professionals, as well as starters, can immediately begin monetizing their newsletters with 0% fees or advertisements.
Substack combines a blog, newsletters, and payment systems integrated into a simple interface. The platform is free for all and takes a 10% commission on subscription revenue. Although praised for its simplicity, Substack comes short on features. The platform is an excellent fit for seasoned writers with a vast subscriber list.
So, which one should you choose to monetize and grow your newsletters? There’s only one way to know — a detailed overview of their features and pricing to help you make an informed decision.
Beehiiv vs Substack — Which One is Better?
Choosing between the two platforms can be challenging since they have almost identical features. While Beehiiv can be seen as a modernized version of Substack, the latter helps you start a newsletter for free.
We listed and compared the following features to help you make the right choice:
- Deliverability tools,
- Custom newsletter builder,
- Analytics and reporting,
- Integration,
- Monetization and growth,
- Pricing.
1. Email Deliverability Tools
Whether marketing newsletters or generic emails, there’s no point in sending one if they don’t reach your subscribers’ inboxes. Email deliverability tools ensure prompt inbox placement, increasing the likelihood of higher opens and click-throughs.
Beehiiv takes critical measures to maintain a high deliverability rate — it configures custom sending domains, uses integrated third-party email validation, and custom guardrails to remove poor senders from the platform.
The platform cross-references suppression lists and uses custom IP reputation to maintain the highest quality IP reputation per send. Besides, they have a deliverability support team to help you through challenges.
Many users are happy with the instant newsletter growth and tools they can’t find elsewhere.
Substack implements DKIM and SPF authentication to ensure the emails come from trusted sources. The platform also monitors email infrastructure — according to a survey, Substack newsletters have 50% average open rates. Overall, Substack focuses on improving email deliverability so users can continue reaching more audiences.
Winner: Between both, Beehiiv implements stricter security protocols.
Substack vs Beehiiv: Comparison at a Glance
Do the platforms have appropriate deliverability tools to support your needs? Let’s take a look.
| Email Deliverability Tools | Beehiiv | Substack |
|---|---|---|
| Custom Sending Domain | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| Authentication Protocols | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Deliverability Support | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | — |
Campaign Refinery understands the importance of email deliverability, and that’s how we achieve such incredible inbox placement for our clients. We implement mandatory domain authentication, use integrated email list cleaning, apply authentication protocols, and maintain consistent email send times.
2. Customization
Personalizing your newsletters can help you increase open rates and conversions, and create a memorable impact among your audiences.
Beehiiv makes it easy to customize newsletter templates with live updates to help you refine your choices. You can personalize all newsletter elements, such as email fonts, colors, and the overall look. With their simple drag-and-drop editor, you can add polls, embed images, use the paywall feature, or create buttons. You can also customize the website with options limited to fonts, button colors, and switching between dark and light modes.
Beehiiv users say the platform is intuitively designed and strikes the right balance between simplicity and sophistication.
With Substack, you can change the welcome page, homepage, post, as well as customize different fonts and layouts. If you feel overwhelmed to create from scratch, you can pick a newsletter template from their ‘Themes’ category.
However, Substack may not be the best option to create newsletters with different designs. All Substack pages have a similar appearance, making it difficult for creators to maintain a unique brand identity.
Although users find the simple interface useful for creating newsletters and blogs. A few report missing embed options in the editor.
Winner: Between the two services, Beehiiv offers extensive customization options, including custom domains.
Substack vs Beehiiv: Side-by-side comparison
Let’s take a look at how they compare against customization features.
| Custom Newsletter Feature | Beehiiv | Substack |
|---|---|---|
| WYSIWYG Editor | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Live Updates | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| Newsletter Templates | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
Campaign Refinery provides best of a kind email campaign templates for any type of email, including newsletters. You can choose from dozens of pre-built email campaigns and create customized newsletters in minutes.
3. Analytics and Reporting
The analytics and reporting features help you gauge the effectiveness of your newsletters.
Beehiiv’s 3D analytics dashboard shows advanced newsletter reporting to help you understand your email performance. You can choose the date range and acquire data for the selected time, understand how subscribers vary by sources and channels, and filter results by specific campaigns. The open rates are split by geographic locations to give you a more detailed view. The only drawback is that the 3D dashboard is only available on the scale plan.
Substack provides analytics data to track subscriber growth, engagement, and content performance. The platform focuses more on open rates to help you view your content performance and optimize accordingly. To identify gaps, you can also view click-through rates, unsubscribes, and bounce rates.
However, Substack only shows data for email subscribers and website visitors. If someone is accessing your content through RSS feeds, you’ll not see the specific data. The analytics doesn’t provide information on demographics or audience interests, which could be a deal breaker for creators.
Winner: Users love Beehiiv for its detailed analytics and a 3D dashboard on the paid plan.
Substack vs Beehiiv: How strong are their analytics and reporting
Will they provide detailed insights into your newsletters? Let’s have a look.
| Analytics and reporting Feature | Beehiiv | Substack |
|---|---|---|
| Advanced Newsletter Reporting | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐ |
| 3D Analytics Dashboard | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | — |
| Easy Filtration by Results | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐ |
Campaign Refinery provides detailed insights into your newsletters — our UI tracks every single detail of your campaign with domain reputation tracking coming soon.
4. Integration
Integration helps you simplify the sharing process — you can share posts to social media, invite subscribers to surveys, or connect to e-commerce stores.
Beehiiv has an API that allows you to integrate with any third-party platform, including Zapier, Shopify, and WordPress. With their RSS feed and free plugin feature, you can automatically sync posts to WordPress or use their customizable forms to collect email addresses.
Similar to WordPress, you can sync your content and data with Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, Privy, and other tools.
Substack integrates with Facebook and Twitter, but lacks an API, making it impossible to connect to other marketing tools. More focus is on data and tracking; you can add Facebook and Twitter pixel ID, Google analytics Pixel ID, etc.
These pixels allow you to monitor readership and engagement levels and integrate with advertising platforms. Substack also offers an import feature, allowing you to import contacts and lists from other platforms such as Mailchimp, WordPress, or TinyLetter.
Winner: With its extensive integration capabilities, Beehiiv is the clear winner.
Substack vs Beehiiv: Full-fledged Integration or not?
Both platforms may provide basic to advanced integration, we’ll look at their differences.
| Integration Feature | Beehiiv | Substack |
|---|---|---|
| API | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | — |
| Data Pixel and Tracking | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Import Option | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
Campaign Refinery provides integration with 800+ marketing tools, including Optinmonster, ClickFunnels, and so on. With native integration and HTML form code, you can design and send newsletters aligning with your brand identity.
5. Monetization and Growth
Newsletter monetization is a strategy that helps you get paid for your writing. Beehiiv and Substack accommodate paywall feature to help you grow.
Beehiiv supports multiple revenue streams such as subscriptions, donations, and ads. The best part is the platform does not take commissions from your net pay or from your membership fee. Users report they are able to grow organically from the referral program and use the audience insights to optimize their newsletters.
Creators can use the ‘Boost’ option to recommend other newsletters and get paid as soon as it grows. If you have a paid newsletter elsewhere, you can migrate to Beehiiv in a few simple steps.
Substack primarily focuses on paid subscriptions. You own all your content and get to choose which posts must be paid. Another advantage is the ‘Discoverability Feature’ that allows subscribers to find and subscribe to newer newsletters.
Their ad model allows you to earn $1000 monthly for up to 40,000 page views daily. Although Substack doesn’t have a built-in sponsorship feature, you can use third-party sites to sponsor your content.
Winner: It’s a tie — Beehiiv supports multiple monetization features, while Substack prefers to keep the platform ad-free to give more power to creators.
Beehiiv vs Substack : Monetization Options
Can you really make more money through your newsletters? We’ll glance through the pros and cons.
| Monetization and Growth Feature | Beehiiv | Substack |
|---|---|---|
| Multiple Revenue Streams | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐ |
| Newsletter Sponsorships | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | — |
| Paid Subscriptions | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
Campaign Refinery’s growth tools help you create and maintain high newsletter standards and revenue. From Engagement Gamification and Evergreen Flash Sales to powerful broadcasts, you can achieve recurring revenue with the highest deliverability rate on the market.
6. Substack vs Beehiiv — Should You Get Started For Free?
Both platforms offer a free pricing tier, however, Substack charges a 10% fee on paid newsletters and 3% on transactions.
Beehiiv provides a pay-as-you-go plan which depends on the number of subscribers you have. But the good part is you can create unlimited newsletters for unlimited subscribers even on the free plan.
This table shows Beehiiv’s pricing plan at a glance.
| Beehiiv Pricing Tier | Monthly Price | Features Included |
|---|---|---|
| Launch | $0 | ‣ Up to 2,500 subscribers ‣ Unlimited sends ‣ Web hosting ‣ Custom newsletters ‣ Campaign analytics ‣ Recommendation network ‣ Optimized deliverability |
| Grow | $49 | ‣ Everything on the Launch plan plus, ‣ Up to 10,000 subscribers ‣ Custom domains ‣ Premium subscriptions ‣ Create segments ‣ Audience polls ‣ Survey forms ‣ Multiple team members ‣ API access ‣ Exclusive Newsletter Community |
| Scale | $99 | ‣ Everything on the Grow plan plus, ‣ Up to 100,000 subscribers ‣ Advanced web builder ‣ Ad Network ‣ Publish to segments ‣ Referral program ‣ Automations ‣ Boosts ‣ 3D Analytics ‣ beehiiv AI ‣ A/B Testing ‣ Priority support |
| Enterprise | Custom pricing | ‣ Private labeled ‣ More subscribers ‣ More publications ‣ Dedicated Account Manager ‣ 250 monthly AI credits ‣ Early feature access ‣ Dedicated IP addresses* ‣ Newsletter XP course access ‣ Advanced security |
Substack is free forever, but has fewer functionality than Beehiiv. The newsletter subscription plans, such as monthly or yearly, are set by the writers, and Substack takes a 10% commission on it. In short, Substack does not have pricing tiers — you can get started for free and use it forever.
Overall, Beehiiv is a worthwhile investment if you want to experiment with your newsletters and grow your audiences.
Beehiiv vs Substack — The Real Newsletter Champ
Both platforms allow you to create and run newsletters on a paid subscription basis. However, Beehiiv has extra features and functionality for newsletter growth.
Let’s break down their feature overview for better comparison.
| Features | Beehiiv | Substack |
|---|---|---|
| Deliverability | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Ease of use | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| Automatic list cleaning | ❌ | ❌ |
| Personalization and segmentation | ✅ | ✅ |
| Integration | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| Customization | ✅ | ✅ |
| Analytics | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| Monetization and growth | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | |
| Social media analytics | ✅ | ✅ |
Overall, Beehiiv is a better newsletter platform than Substack, with simple user interface, advanced features, and newsletter growth opportunities.
However, if you want complete control over your marketing with tools to grow your business beyond newsletters, Campaign Refinery is the best choice.
Campaign Refinery Helps You Grow Beyond Newsletters
Campaign Refinery is an email marketing platform centered around powerful growth tools for creators and businesses. We are laser-focused on providing the highest email deliverability through integrated list cleaning and best email-sending practices.
We help businesses with stagnant results see the light at the end of the tunnel through powerful automation, segmentation, and deliverability.
In short, we simplify email marketing with a set of clever tools and people who support you throughout your journey.
Campaign Refinery is the Right Choice to Grow Your Email Marketing
We know email marketers want simplified tools and processes to expand their business. That’s why we have practical tools to grow your newsletters and overall business.
Here’s a sneak peek of the benefits of a Campaign Refinery client:
- The automatic email list cleaning tool cleans your lists to keep only valid email addresses. Our system filters unwanted and harmful email addresses periodically; from every 30 to 180 days.
- While most ESPs charge for your contacts size, we only charge for the emails you send out — add as many contacts and you won’t be charged until you start sending emails.
- If you want to engage subscribers in a special way, try our Gamification feature. It allows you to set rewards for every subscriber action, such as opens and clicks.
- If you want inspiration to create stunning emails, start with the Campaign Library. You’ll find dozens of pre-built campaigns to start with.
- We value your safety, and require you to implement authentication protocols such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. All clients must go through domain authentication for security purposes.
- You can integrate your email newsletters and campaigns with more than 800 tools to maximize your revenue.
- We screen every client before onboarding and continue to screen them for added safety. That’s one reason we’re able to maintain a lower spam complaint rate than most ESPs on the market.
Is Campaign Refinery Affordable?
Transparent pricing is our second best feature, besides deliverability — you only pay for what you use, not a dime more!
You can upgrade or downgrade your plans anytime with our round-the-clock support team. Or request annual billing for a discounted price. You’ll be starting at $99 for unlimited contacts and can claim custom pricing if needed.
Let’s break down the different pricing tiers.
| Campaign Refinery Plan | Price | Credits | Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business plan | Starts at $99 / month | 50,000 | Unlimited Contacts Built-in Contact Cleaning Engaged Delivery System Automation Rule Builder Free Campaign Library Custom Audience Builder Evergreen Flash Sales |
| Growth plan | Starts at $299 / month | 200,000 | Everything in the Business plan, plus Turn off ”powered by” Text Reduced Overage Cost Increased API Volume Limits |
| Enterprise plan | Starts at $1k+ / month | 1 million | Everything in the Growth plan, plus Dedicated success manager Lowest Overage Cost Custom API volume |
Is it Complicated to Migrate to Campaign Refinery?
If you’re migrating from a different platform, we ensure a smooth process for your opted-in email lists. Our support team is available 24/7 to assist you with queries.
We are a team of elite senders, which means you have to go through a strict vetting process to get access to our premium tools and features.
Once you qualify, you can easily move your lists with simple steps:
- Authenticate your domain,
- Import valid contacts from your existing provider,
- Set custom automation rules and segmentation tags,
- Browse through the campaign library to find the best fit,
- Personalize email campaigns,
- Schedule your newsletters or email campaigns,
- Send and track your analytics,
- Optimize your emails for higher revenue!
Join an elite circle of senders and enjoy higher email deliverability — apply to become a Campaign Refinery client today!
