From the desk of David Utke

Subj: The Lean List-Builder: High-Value Starter Plans for Beginners

While I have a dedicated guide on the best overall email marketing options, I know not everyone is an experience email marketer, a lot of you are just starting out.

If that’s you, then having a feature rich free plan to get started and grow your list with is quite helpful, particularly if you don’t really have an audience yet.

So what are the best free email marketing plans available and what are their ideal use case?

Let’s get to it.

Overview of the best free plans:

Pros & Cons

1. beehiiv

Your own dedicated website and good deliverability.

Pros:

• One-click ad placements and easy premium subscription setups.
• Boost to monetize your list and grow your audience.
• Excellent deliverability.
• Useful automations.

Cons:

• A bit of a learning curve. Can be overwhelming for total beginners who just want to write.
• Boosts, the ad network and automations are locked behind the paywall.

2. Kit

Incredibly generous free plan, your own simple website.

Pros:

• Generous Free Tier: 10,000 subscribers for free is the best value for mid-sized creators.
• Creator Network: Makes it very easy to partner with other writers for mutual recommendations.
• Custom Domains: Unlike many competitors, you can use your own domain even on the free plan.

Cons:

• The email editor is intentionally simple; it’s hard to make “fancy” or image-heavy layouts.
• Once you cross the 10k free limit, or you want marketing automations the paid plans become pricey compared to competitors.

3. Sender

Not positioned for newsletters, more for email marketers but they make my list because their free plan is outstanding.

Pros:

• One of the few platforms that gives you advanced automation workflows on a free plan.
• High Deliverability: Known for having very high “inbox rates,” ensuring your emails don’t hit spam.
• Very intuitive drag-and-drop editor for excellent landing pages and email templates.

Cons:

• You have to keep the “Sent via Sender” badge at the bottom of all free emails.

4. Jetpack Newsletter

Turn your WordPress website into a newsletter website with this plugin.

Pros:

• Truly Unlimited: No caps on subscribers or sends, ever.
• You write in the WordPress editor you already know, no new dashboard to learn.
• SEO Benefits: Every email is automatically a blog post on your domain, boosting your site’s authority.

Cons:

• Basic Features: Lacks advanced “marketing” tools like A/B testing or complex growth loops.
• WordPress Only: You can’t use this as a standalone tool; you must have a WordPress site.

5. Substack

Pros:

• Built-in Audience: The “Recommendations” engine and Substack Notes can drive thousands of signups without you doing any marketing.
• No design or tech setup required; you just signup, customize your site to a small degree, write and hit send.

Cons:

• They take a 10% cut of your revenue forever. This is much more expensive than a flat fee as you grow.
• To unlock a custom domain costs a one time fee of $50.

6. Brevo

Email a massive list for cheap. If you’re wanting to send out a monthly newsletter you’ll LOVR Brevo.

Pros:

• You can have a huge list for cheap.
• Multi-Channel marketing: Great if you want to eventually add SMS or WhatsApp marketing to your newsletter.

Cons:

• The free plan limits you to 300 emails per day, fine if you’re just gettin gstarted.
• It’s built for traditional businesses, so it lacks creator-specific features like “Boosts” or “Tip Jars.”

7. MailerLite

Nice combination of low prices, dedicated website, landing pages and the ability to sell products.

Pros:

• Get your own dedicated website for your newsletter.
• Strong Landing Pages: Includes a great website builder and a landing page builder.
• Sell one product or coaching offer on the free plan.
• Can set a custom domain for sending purposes.
• Very affordable compared to a Kit paid plan.

Cons:

• They are known for having a manual and strict account approval process. But this is good thing as it protects the deliverability for all Mailer Lite users.
• The 500-subscriber limit is low compared to other plans, but fair given what Mailer Lite provides.
• Can not set a custom domain for your website and landing pages on the free plan.

TLDR?

If you are a “Creator” (blog, YouTube etc)

Go with Kit.

Having a 10,000-subscriber ceiling for free is simply unbeatable.

Honestly, most people will never come anywhere close to having a list of this size. Yes, you don’t get any automations but for growing a list and selling products, the free newsletter plan is very competitive.

The catch?

You will have to manually hit “send” every time you want to talk to your list because they gate the “Welcome Sequence” (automation) behind the paid tier. This should be fine if you’re doing the weekly newsletter thing.

But if you want marketing workflows, automations and access to their excellent tagging system then you’ll need a paid plan.

If you are starting a “Newsletter” (Content is the product):

Then beehiiv is your platform.

They give you a custom website and the ability to scale to 2,500 subscribers with zero sending limits.

The catch?

It’s built for writing an email newsletter, think something like the Milk Road, a crypto newsletter that comes out once a week. If you want to set up complex “if this, then that” triggers for marketing funnels, then this platform is not for you.

Overall though the free plan with Beehiiv is enough to get you going understanding the platform and actually growing a profitable newsletter.

If you need “Automations” for free

Easy, sign up to Sender.

They are the only ones currently giving you 2,500 subscribers and the ability to create automated workflows (like an “Abandoned Cart” or “Welcome Series”) without a credit card.

The catch?

The interface is a bit more basic than the others, and their deliverability requires you to be very strict with your list quality. But Sender in my opinion has now dethroned Mailer Lite as the free plan king.

Marketing workflows/autoresponder automations are typically something only available to paid users with most email marketing providers.

If you have a massive list that you don’t email frequently

Brevo is your choice.

You can store 100,000+ contact list on their free plan.

The catch?

The free plan has a 300-per-day limit.

Brevo is still a good option because if you have a tiny list of up to 300 people, you can email them everyday.

Brevo however is what I like to call the “low frequency, high volume” king.

They charge a monthly subscription, but their focus is on emails sent and not list size like other platforms. That means you for a low price you can email a huge list once a month.

Have a WordPress site and want a free option?

Then it’s Jetpack to the rescue.

You can have unlimited subscribers and unlimited email sends. When you write a blog post you can also choose to email your list, publish to your blog or do both.

You can also offer paid subscriptions too. Last, if you upgrade to a paid plan then the transaction fee drops from 10% to 3%.

The catch?

No automations, not even a simple onboarding sequence when someone subscribes. All emails have WordPress branding as well.

Prefer a “done for you” writers first platform?

The sign up to Substack.

You get your own website, good deliverability, the ability to offer paid subscriptions and community of writers.

The catch?

Substack branding and no way to remove that, setting a custom domain for your site costs a one time fee of $50, 10% transaction fee on your paid subscription revenue and no automations.

What about Mail Chimp?

Oh how times have changed.

Mail Chimp used to be the most generous free plan at one time, but they have since scaled it back to only 250 subscribers and 500 email sends a month with support for only the first 30 dayas.

This is more of a “free trial” plan and not really a proper free plan to grow your list.

Wrap-up

Alright everyone, that’s it for my breakdown on the best free plans for email marketing. Make sure to bookmark and share this with someone it can help.

Till next time,

-David.

*P.S. – I personally use Kit for my email marketing.

Well you’re you’re going to need an email newsletter platform for that. An email newsletter is something you send out typically once a week and position the emails as the reason for signing up.

Join 175K+ readers of The Saturday Solopreneur for tips, strategies, and resources to monetize your expertise. – Justin Welsh “The Saturday Solopreneur” newsletter.

No lead magnet, no sales funnel, just a predictable, helpful, once a week email.

Branded email newsletter

Instead of doing the typical email marketing approach where you offer a lead magnet to get people to subscribe to your list and then send new subscribers down a marketing funnel for some product or service; a branded email newsletter is all about high impact value via a predicatable email.

Come up with a brand

The first step before doing anything else is to come up with a brand name that makes people want to subscribe because they understand the value they’re going to get.

• Clark Kegley writes the “Refusing to Settle” personal development newsletter.
• James Clear has his famous 1-2-3 habits newsletter.
• Mark Manson sends out the “Breakthrough.”
• Justin Welsch as previously mentioned publishes the “Saturday Solopreneur” newsletter.

High converting tagline

This is the why, WHY should people subscribe. You need to elegantly convert people though giving them a compelling reason.

“5 minutes that might change your life” is what Mark Manson uses. This grabs your attention and does not seem intimidating as 5 minutes is short and easy to digest.

“Join 175k people” is outstanding social proof that Justin uses.

Lead magnet?

While not required, you can incorporate a lead magnet into your copy to make it more compelling. James Clear offers a free chapter of his book and Clark has “10 questions” cheat sheet. But the primary selling point is to join the newsletter.

Top Newsletter Platforms for 2026

Ghost.org – My top choice for newsletters

I love and use the Ghost.org platform over at my expat travel blog.

It combines pro blogging, broadcast email marketing with paid subscriptions into a beautifully designed platform that can actually rank and get organic search traffic and traffic from AI.

You can get started with Ghost using a free trial and then it will set you back just $15 a month for 1000 email subscribers that you can email as many times as you like.

With Ghost, the way it works is that you compose blog posts and then you can choose to either:

• Email your subscribers.
• Email and post the email as a blog post to your website.
• Post to your website only.

Helpful editor cards (blocks)

Blocks in Ghost are called cards. You have a wide range of cards to help create dynamic content that makes your emails and blog posts more beautiful and high converting.

One of my favorite cards is the “email content” block. This allows you to have hidden content only readable in an email client. This gives another compelling reason for people to subscribe and stay subscribed.

You also get product boxes to help you promote both your own products as well as affiliate offers.

Paid subscriptions

Paid subscriptions are built into the Ghost platform so there is no technical setup. Simply create a Stripe account and link it to your Ghost.org website. You can also offer trial offers and coupon codes to convert subscribers.

Beautiful, professional branded design

Finally, Ghost comes with a wide range of beautiful, high converting, professional looking themes that you can use. This is in stark contrast to other platforms that have more of a cookie-cutter, templated design.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Rank organically and get traffic from both search engines and AI.
• Setup basic on-boarding automations with a “thank you” email.
• Card editor blocks for dynamic content.
• Beautifully designed, minimalistic emails your audience will love.
• NO transaction fees on paid subscriptions!
• A true combination of blogging, email marketing and paid subscriptions.

Cons:

• Only a free trial is available, no free plan.
• Paid subscriptions are under the “publisher” plan.
• No advanced automations, just a simple welcome sequence is available.

Ghost

Ghost is a hosted blogging platform with strong focus on paid subscriptions, blogging and email marketing.

You get access to a bunch of well designed themes, a superior content creation experience, and the ability to offer a direct response email newsletter, tips & donation and paid subscriptions without any tech setup.

I use this platform for my personal development/travel/expat blog found at edgeofdavid.com

Start Your FREE Trial

➪ Checkout my free Ghost website tutorial.

Beehiiv – Email newsletter with growth and monetization built in

One of my more popular tutorials on my YouTube channel is breaking down how to build and launch a newsletter website using Beehiiv.

Beehiiv was made popular by the smashing success of both the Milk Road Newsletter and Morning Brew. It’s a platform that allows you create your website for free and have up to 2500 subscribers. You can email those subscribers as many times as you like.

You get a complete website with a homepage and your emails are displayed as blog posts (though they can be hidden if you like). The design is overall a bit cookie cutter, but behind the scenes Beehiiv has a lot going on.

The Ad Network:

They have a native marketplace where you can see sponsors and apply to include them in your monthly send with one click. You get paid based on opens or clicks.

Yes you can run your own sponsorships with any email newsletter platform, but the Beehiiv ad network makes monetizing your list very easy at the click of a button. No going back and forth with advertisers.

Automations:

While automations are not available on the free plan, they open up to you once you become a paying subscriber and is one of the most compelling reasons to upgrade your account.

Take advantage of powerful “if/then” engine that handles everything from multi-step welcome sequences to behavioral triggers, ensuring your list stays engaged and monetized between your monthly sends.

The Referral Program:

Similar to the famous Morning Brew milestone system. You can offer rewards (like free access to paid tiers) to readers who refer their friends and audience, all tracked automatically.

Recommendation Network:

When someone signs up for your newsletter, you can show them a popup of 2–3 other newsletters you recommend. If they sign up for those, the other creators might do the same for you, creating a “growth loop.”

Boosts:

You can actually get paid (usually $1–$3 per subscriber) just for recommending other newsletters to your new signups. If your subscribers convert and subscribe to other newsletters you get paid.

Boosts can be used in combination with the recommendation network.

Pros and cons:

Pros:

• Create a complete website for your newsletter.
• Easy monetization options with the ad network and boosts.
• Useful automations to leverage.
• Free plan to get started with.

Cons:

• Templated design, Beehiiv sites all kind of look the same.
• Automations are behind a paywall. Worth upgrading to unlock.
• Can not set a custom domain until you’re on a paid plan.
• Poor on-page SEO, your content is not going to rank organically.
• A bit of a learning curve overall.

BEEHIIV

Build a beautiful, high converting newsletter website today with Beehiiv.

Free plan to get you started, Scale plan unlocks all the features you need to grow and monetize your audience.

CLICK HERE FOR BEEHIIV

➪ See my in-depth Beehiiv review here.

➪ My breakdown of Beehiiv vs Ghost.

Kit – Generous free plan for growth

Kit has become one of the best all-a-round email marketing platforms and makes my list because they have a dedicated FREE newsletter plan.

That’s right, totally free up to 10k subscribers. No limits on email sends too, which make it a compelling offer. On top of that you do get a dedicated website with Kit that includes an offer section (so people can sign-up) and your email archive.

Though not as beautifully designed as Ghost, and no your Kit site is not going to rank, you get it included for free.

The 10k Free Limit

This is Kit’s “headline” feature for 2026. It is currently the most generous free tier on the market, allowing you to host up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited email sends at zero monthly cost.

The Creator Network

This is Kit’s version of a growth loop. It allows you to partner with other writers to recommend each other’s newsletters. According to Kit, creators using this network grow 2x faster than those who don’t.

Essential Automation

While the free plan is limited to one visual automation and one sequence, it’s perfect for a monthly newsletter. You can set up a single, high-quality “Welcome” series that introduces new readers to your best work automatically.

Creator Profile

Instead of needing a full website, Kit gives you a “link-in-bio” style landing page that acts as your newsletter’s home.

It automatically archives your past monthly sends into a clean, searchable blogroll. So even if you don’t have a website yet, you can build one with Kit and set a custom domain too.

I suggest Namecheap for everything domain name related.

Digital Product Ready

Even on the free plan, you can sell digital products (like a PDF guide or a paid newsletter tier) directly through Kit.

They handle the delivery and payments, taking a small 3.5% + $0.30 transaction fee. The landing pages for your products are a bit mediocre, so if you do want to use Kit to deliver your products, I suggest building a landing page with a different platform.

Carrd.co is one of my favorite cost effective landing page platforms.

So what’s the catch?

No advanced email marketing automations or funnels. To email your list you need to manually do so each and every time. If you’re looking to create complicated sales funnels you can do so via a paid plan.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Kit has become the gold standard for email marketing for creators.
• Landing page website that you can customize as well as set a domain name.
• Great deliverability.
• Sell digital downloads.
• Totally free to start, up to 10k subscribers.

Cons:

• No marketing funnels or automations on the free plan.
• Your “Kit creator profile” is not going to rank organically for search engines.
• Not ideal for selling online courses or anything with video content.

Kit

My preferred email service provider of choice. Advanced funnels, clean user interface, great looking landing pages and an incredibly helpful tagging feature.

Grow your email list today. Email is how you turn a blog or YouTube channel into a business.

Start Your Free Trial

Substack – The simple, done for you choice

Substack is the “low friction” option.

It’s perfect for writers who want to focus 100% on content and let the platform handle the growth via its built-in network.

You get your own dedicated website that you can customize to a small degree, offer paid subscriptions options, have a chat function built in and create “members only” content.

The Network Effect

This is Substack’s unique selling point. Features like Recommendations and Substack Notes (their X-like feed) mean your newsletter is shown to readers of similar publications. For many writers, 40% or more of their new signups come directly from the Substack network rather than their own marketing.

Simple, Straight Forward Monetization

There are no monthly fees to use the platform. Instead, Substack takes a flat 10% cut of your paid subscription revenue. If you don’t charge your readers, the platform is entirely free with unlimited subscribers and sends.

Custom Domain

You can set your own custom domain name for branding purposes instead of using a Substack subdomain (publication.substack.com).

However, Substack does charges a one-time $50 fee to link a custom domain, but once you pay this feature is unlocked. You also obviously need to purchase your own domain as well (again, I suggest Namecheap.com).

Community Features:

Substack is built for interaction. It has the best native Comments and Discussion Threads in the industry, making it feel more like a community hub than a one-way email.

Minimalist Editor:

The writing experience is intentionally restricted. You can’t change much about the layout or fonts, which ensures your newsletter looks great and remains readable on every device without you having to “design” anything.

Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• Dedicated website with your own custom domain.
• Built in recommendation network for growth.
• Paid subscriptions built in without the techy setup.
• Actually useful community features to engage with your audience.

Cons:

• Templated design, all Substack sites look the same.
• $50 paywall to unlock the custom domain feature.
• Your content will not rank in search or AI.
• 10% transaction fee (fair enough given everything else).

Buttondown.com – The Indie Publisher Choice

Buttondown is the “minimalist choice” for indie publishing. It’s designed for writers who want a clean, fast experience without the heavy marketing bloat found in bigger platforms.

Buttondown’s biggest selling point is that it uses a clean Markdown interface (with a simple “What You See Is What You Get” option) so you can write quickly and efficiently without fighting a clunky visual builder.

By default, Buttondown is GDPR-compliant and doesn’t track your subscribers unless you explicitly turn it on. This is a huge “pro” for a tech-savvy audience that values data privacy. You can also set up paid subscriptions through Stripe.

Unlike Substack, Buttondown takes a 0% cut of your revenue. You only pay the standard Stripe processing fees.

Affordable Pricing:

While Buttondown has a free tier for your first 100 subscribers, the Basic plan ($9/mo) is where it shines. This is one of the most affordable ways to send your newsletter from a custom domain and remove all platform branding.

You can also scale your newsletter and the cost is still much less than competitors. I also like how they have select “add-ons” that you can choose to pay for or not.

Like “white labeling” which removes all branding if you’re under 5000 subscribers.

Automations

Buttondown allows you to build automated welcome sequences and “drip” campaigns. You can trigger specific emails to go out based on when a user signs up or when they are assigned a specific “tag,” making it perfect for onboarding new readers into your monthly cycle.

Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• Free for the first 100 subscribers to get you going.
• Designed for those who want to write in markdown.
• No transaction fees on paid subscriptions.
• Useful email marketing automations built in.
• Excellent support.

Cons:

• Learning curve, Buttondown.com does not have the most polished of dashboards like other platforms.
• No discovery system built in like Beehiiv or Substack.
• The free plan at 100 subscribers is a tight cap.
• No templates for the emails you send out.

Jetpack – The Totally Free WordPress Option

Jetpack allows you to have unlimited subscribers and unlimited email sends.

Jetpack is a WordPress plugin so you’ll need to be using a self hosted installation of WordPress.

I have complete guides on how to create a WordPress website as well as how to start a blog that will get you going if you you’re new to WordPress.

With Jetpack installed, all you have to do is enable the newsletter feature at the click of a button.

Once Jetpack is turned on, you can click a button to enable a “subscribe to your website” block at the end of every post automatically as well as enable a pop-up to trigger as readers scroll through your content.

The catch?

First, you need to be using a self hosted installation of WordPress.

Emails are blog posts too

Next, the emails are blog posts you publish on your site. They have WordPress branding and can’t be customized in any way to match your brand.

You don’t get any sort of automations or autoresponders. No “welcome series” of emails, no lead magnet to entice people to sign up.

Can choose to email or not

The ability to choose to email or not email is an option with Jetpack.

When you hit publish, you can email subscribers only, paid subscribers or everyone. If you revert a post to draft and then “republish” it, you’ll be able to email the update again.

This is one reason why I like publishing with Ghost, if I don’t want to email my list but I created a keyword target post that I want to publish on my site, I can do exactly that. Just publish it on my site without email my audience.

Limited form design

The forms that Jetpack puts on your website are painfully basic looking and the copy can’t even be customized easily.

But you could work-a-round this using AI to customize a form for your website.

Offer Paid Subscriptions

One very unique offering from Jetpack is the ability to content lock your site and newsletter.

That means people can become a paying subscriber and get access to “members only” content on your site and via the newsletter.

For paid newsletters

You can set up paid subscription tiers, gate content behind paywalls, and process payments via Stripe. This enables recurring paid subscriptions for exclusive newsletter content, one-time offerings, or gated posts.

Transaction fees

Transaction fees (on top of Stripe’s fees) depend on your Jetpack plan:

• The Free plan is 10% fee on revenue from paid subscriptions.
• For the Growth plan it becomes 2% fee (recommended for better monetization).
• Complete plan: Also at 2%. Only get this plan if you’re using their suite of tools.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Unlimited email subscribers, unlimited email sends.
• Can setup paid subscriptions, even with a free Jetpack plan.
• Since your emails are blog posts, with good SEO you can rank in search and get recommended by AI.
• Creating a website with WordPress is easy, now you can turn it into a newsletter if you like.

Cons:

• Limited customization of the emails your audience receives. Heavy on the WordPress branding overall.
• Jetpack forms are quite basic, but you can fix this using generative AI to code you up something better.
• No automations or workflows with Jetpack. Just hit publish and your audience gets emailed.
• More of a blog post notification service, but you can position it as a newsletter.

Executive Summary

Email newsletters are a unique way to reach your audience. Email is still that private, personal space online which is why when you grow a list, it’s so, so valuable.

Direct contact to people who want to hear from you.

So if this was TLDR, here is the breakdown:

• Ghost: The pro blogging (get organic search traffic) and email marketing platform for professional with paid subscriptions and 0% transaction fees.
• Beehiiv: Built-in ad network, referral systems, and a marketplace designed to help you scale and monetize.
• Kit: Offering a massive 10,000-subscriber free tier a a powerful network for creators to grow via recommendations and the ability to sell digital downloads.
• Substack: The done for you options that prioritizes simplicity and discovery, giving you instant access to a massive network in exchange for a 10% cut of your revenue you make
• Buttondown: For more tech-savvy writers who want a fast, markdown-based experience and privacy-first analytics at an affordable price.
• Jetpack: WordPress plugin that lets you send unlimited emails to unlimited subscribers in the form of blog posts completely for free.

Any questions or comments then drop me a message via the contact page.

Thanks for being here,

-David

From sending out a simple weekly or monthly newsletter to your followers, to building out advanced full featured user journeys to convert subscribers into buyers, in this detailed software review I’m going to break down your best options for different and specific use cases.

Essential email marketing features to look for:

1. Deliverability of your emails

You want your emails hitting the inbox, not the spam folder or the promotions tab in Gmail. Deliverability of your emails comes down to a few things. Images, what words you use in your copy (“make money online” is a sure fire way to land in the promotions tab or spam folder!) and your overall domain reputation.

2. Email autoresponder

An autoresponder, often called a “workflow” on many platforms is simply automated emails someone gets when they sign up to your list or trigger an action.

3. Email marketing funnel

With email marketing you can create an email funnel for your list. A funnel is a series of emails someone gets with the end goal to convert them to buy. More advanced software provides detailed funnel construction, if/or functions and user behavior.

4. List separation

List separation means you can create different funnels for different types of content. Maybe you have subscribers signing up on a video where you talk about how to start a YouTube channel and another video where you talk about personal finance for solo creators.

5. Affiliate Marketing Friendly

Affiliate marketing is promoting products and services for a commission. It’s one of the most effective ways to monetize your email list yet a few email service providers frown on affiliate marketing. Instead, some providers want you to only promote your website, videos and offers where the email is providing value.

Convert Kit – Best for content marketers (bloggers, Youtubers etc)

Convert Kit was made for bloggers and YouTubers who engage in affiliate marketing and who also sell their own digital products like courses and ebooks. They are my top choice for both YouTubers and bloggers because they have the right mix of deliverability and features content marketers need.

Specifically, Convert Kit is designed for you to create a product funnel. They have a unique built in tagging system so you can separate your list into various segments and behaviors. Those who bought, those who did not, those who opened the email those who did not.

Sales funnels

You can also create different funnels with one account with ease. For example, I could set up a free “how to start a blog” email course and put opt-in forms on relevant pages here. I could also create an “affiliate marketing for beginners” course and put different opt-in forms on different pages and posts.

Those are two similar audiences so broadly speaking, they would both be interested in my content but I could create a higher value offer for both groups. It’s this funnel centric nature that makes Convert Kit so popular.

Products

Kit allows you to create simple sales pages and your host digital products on their platform like checklist, cheat sheets, ebooks and so forth. So if you’re looking for a simple way to have both an email list and sell low ticket items Kit is not a bad choice for that.

Newsletter

Finally, Kit is an excellent choice if you want to start a simple weekly email newsletter website. With high converting templates and solid deliverability, Kit makes it incredibly easy to send out a quality newsletter.

Their “newsletter” tier allows for 10,000 subscribers for free. No limits on email sends. Sure, you don’t get automations but if you want to grow a newsletter to 10k subscribers then Kit allows you to do so completely for free.

Pros and Cons

Pros: 

• Designed for bloggers and YouTubers who have their own products to sell and want to make next level money.
• Helpful tagging system to allow you to create automatic sales funnels that convert.
• Affiliate marketing friendly and very easy to implement and use on a YouTube channel.
• Comes with high converting landing pages if you don’t yet have a website.
• Great if you want to launch a weekly newsletter as well.

Cons: 

• List centric, it’s not ideal for multiple websites. If you have two wildly different audiences you’ll need two Convert Kit accounts.
• Expensive for small lists, their price points are reasonable once you have a few thousand subscribers.
• Not ideal for seasonal audiences. If want to send the same content at the same time every year automatically you can’t do that with Convert Kit.

Active Campaign – The powerful professional choice

If email marketing is the life blood of your business, if it’s what’s driving your sales more than anything else then you need to seriously look at moving over to Active Campaign (sorry don’t mean to be too hyperbolic, but that’s why you’re here because you trust me).

Active Campaign email marketing software is a very robust solution for professional content marketers and small businesses. The system features many different templates and optimization tools that allow you to segment and track your audiences behavior easily.

You can send highly personalized emails based on customer preferences and behavior as well as manage all phases of the user experience from the welcome email to the funnel process. Active Campaign also lets you send emails that based on local time, SMS messages as well the ability to cycle subscribers through the same email series.

True “Pro-Level” Features

This is the email marketing tool for those who want to create a self-running revenue engine that connects their website, email, and sales pipeline.

Behavioral Site Tracking

This is its “secret sauce.” You can trigger an email based on exactly what a subscriber does on your WordPress site.

Predictive Sending (AI)

It doesn’t just send at a “scheduled time.” It analyzes when each individual person on your list typically opens their mail and holds the message until that exact window.

The CRM Integration

It has a built-in sales pipeline. You can move “Deals” through stages (e.g., Lead → Review Sent → Follow-up → Closed) and have the email marketing adapt automatically based on the deal stage.

Split Automations

Most tools let you A/B test a subject line. ActiveCampaign lets you A/B test an entire workflow. You can send 50% of your leads down “Path A” and 50% down “Path B” to see which sequence generates more revenue.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Can have multiple lists for different YouTube channels and websites with one account.
• Can loop subscribers through your email sequence. Essential if you have a seasonal topic.
• Excellent deliverability and advanced backend analytics.
• Superior automations based on user behavior. Create complex, advanced funnels.
• Extreme customizations through their visual automations builder.

Cons:

• Active Campaign is powerful and expensive.
• It’s advanced and has a lot of pro level features most YouTubers won’t use.
• Steep Learning Curve: Because it does so much, it can be overwhelming for a total beginner. You will likely need to spend a week in “ActiveCampaign University” (their training portal) to full understand what their platform is capable of.

Sender – Best free plan with automations

A free plan with automations? Yep. Sender is now the free plan king if you’re looking for email marketing and not just a weekly newsletter.

Incredibly generous free plan

Their free plan allows you to store up to 2,500 subscribers and send 15,000 emails per month. This is roughly five times the capacity of Mailer Lite’s free plan (they used to be the best free plan), giving a new business much more “runway” to grow before needing to pay for a subscription.

Unlike many other “budget” tools that lock their best features behind a paywall, Sender includes unlimited automation workflows, 24/7 live support, and access to their full library of 1,600+ responsive templates on the free plan.

Pro features for free?!

You can easily set up automated Welcome Sequences, Abandoned Cart reminders, and Re-engagement flows using a visual builder. It also acts as a basic CRM, allowing you to segment your audience based on their behavior (like what links they click) or custom tags.

It even includes transactional email capabilities (API/SMTP), meaning you can use it to send system-critical messages like order receipts and password resets alongside your marketing newsletters.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• The best free-to-paid value ratio. 24/7 human support for all users; high deliverability infrastructure; includes SMS and push notification options.

Cons:

• The free plan also includes a “Sent with Sender” logo in the footer. A fair compromise given everything else.

Brevo – Low frequency, high volume

Most platforms, as your list grows, your monthly bill goes up, even if you don’t email them. Brevo flips this on it’s head. You pay a low cost subscription fee and get an allowance of emails to send out each month.

100,000 emails for only $60 a month – What?!

That’s right, you can store up to 100,000 on the “starter” plan and pay only $60 or so to email your entire list. Brevo is the best choice for the ‘Low-Frequency, High-Volume’ email marketer.

If you have a huge list but you only send a monthly update or a few big launch sequences a year, why pay a subscription every month? Use Brevo to store a massive list that you intend on contacting once or twice a month.

Starter vs standard plan

Go with STARTER if:

• You are just starting out and don’t care about a “Sent with Brevo” logo in the footer.
• You only need to send simple, manual newsletters once a week, once a month etc.
• You don’t need complicated automations

Go with STANDARD if:

• You want a professional brand. (Cheapest way to remove the logo).
• You want to use the “Behavioral Tracking” we talked about (sending emails based on what they click on your site).
• You want to A/B test your subject lines to increase your revenue-per-email.
• You need a Landing Page to collect emails before your main site is ready.

The Starter plan is for those who just want to email a big list periodically.

The Standard plan is for those who want more traditional email marketing features with Brevo workflows (their terminology for automations) along with AI send time optimizations.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Can build a massive contact list, even on the free plan. Yes, you can only send out 300 emails a month but if you want you can build a list of 100K+ if you like.
• Brevo is incredibly cost effective if you’re looking to send out a periodic email. $60 to email 100K contacts is ridiculous and would cost you $1000+ a month or more on other platforms.
• They also have traditional email marketing automations and built in AI send time optimizations.

Cons:

• While the starter plan is very cost effective, you do need to upgrade to the standard plan to remove all Brevo branding.

Beehiiv – The newsletter platform

I have a very popular Beehiiv tutorial you can checkout. I’ve used Beehiiv extensively and it’s a powerful email newsletter platform focused on growth and monetization.

The platform’s core strength lies in its native growth loops, specifically the recommendation network and Boosts. When a new reader joins your list, Beehiiv can immediately show them a “Top 4” list of other newsletters you recommend, and those creators can return the favor, often leading to a viral growth effect that is hard to replicate on traditional ESPs.

Boosting with Beehiiv

For those with a budget, the Boosts marketplace allows you to pay for new, verified subscribers on a CPA (cost-per-acquisition) basis, or conversely, earn money by recommending other newsletters to your own growing audience.

Built in ad network

Monetization on Beehiiv is aggressive and built-in, featuring a native Ad Network that connects you with sponsors once you reach a certain scale. Unlike Substack, which takes a 10% cut of your earnings, beehiiv maintains a 0% platform fee on paid subscriptions, meaning you keep all your revenue aside from standard Stripe processing fees.

While you can run your own sponsorships like Justin Welsh does, it’s a bit time consuming and manual. Having to go back and forth with potential advertisers, negotiate a price point, have a timeline of when what ad is going to be published when.

With Beehiiv, it’s a simple, easy to use network that’s built in. You get a notification that a company want’s to run a display ad in your email and you simply approve or deny it.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Strong monetization options and growth tools built in.
• Excellent deliverability.
• Can customize your Beehiiv website.
• Basic (but useful) automations. Create a re-engagement campaign, onboarding series or setup a done for you 6 month email sequence.

Cons:

• The automations are basic and nowhere near as advanced as say a Kit or Active Campaign.
• Cooke cutter website design. Like Substack, all Beehiiv sites have a distinct look to them.

Klaviyo – The “Industry Standard” for e-commerce.

Klaviyo is the gold standard if you’re running a profitable e-commerce website. It is incredibly powerful, but also complex and expensive. For a beginner, Klaviyo is like being handed the keys to a Ferrari when you’ve only just learned to drive; it’s fast and impressive, but it’s very easy to feel overwhelmed.

The “Shopify Specialist”

Klaviyo’s biggest claim to fame is its “creepy good” integration with Shopify. It doesn’t just see your customers; it tracks every move they make. It knows exactly when a customer looks at a specific blue shirt, adds it to their cart, and then leaves.

Because of this, its “Abandoned Cart” and “Browse Abandonment” flows are the most effective in the business, often paying for the software’s high cost through recovered sales alone.

Advanced Intelligence & Data

Klaviyo (like most companies) has leaned heavily into AI and Predictive Analytics. It can actually predict a customer’s “Next Purchase Date” or their “Churn Risk” (the likelihood they’ll never buy again) based on years of data patterns.

It also combines Email and SMS into one single timeline, so you can see exactly how a customer interacts with your brand across every channel without having to jump between different apps.

Pros & Cons

Pros:

• It offers the deepest data tracking available and the most robust library of pre-built “Flows” (automations) that are proven to generate revenue. If you are on Shopify, the setup takes literally two minutes.
• Free plan to get started, thought he pricing scales quickly once you outgrow the free plan.

Cons:

• The pricing is aggressive. It charges based on “Active Profiles,” and your bill can jump from $20 to $150+ very quickly as your list grows. Additionally, the interface is dense with technical jargon and data points that can be exhausting to learn for a first-time email marketer.

Flodesk – The “Aesthetics First” option

While tools like Klaviyo focus on data and Brevo focuses on cost-efficiency, Flodesk is built for creators where the look of the email is the most important part of the brand.

It is the best choice for designers, photographers, or lifestyle influencers who want their emails to look like high-end digital magazines without touching a single line of CSS.

Flodesk’s main differentiator is its proprietary layout engine. Unlike standard editors that can be clunky, Flodesk allows you to overlap images, use custom fonts that actually show up in the inbox, and create pixel-perfect spacing.

It is essentially “Canva for Email,” making it almost impossible to send a basic looking email.

Workflows that work

For a beginner, the power of Flodesk workflows lies in “Link Actions” and “Behavioral Conditions.” You can set up a system where, if a subscriber clicks a specific link in your email (like a “Video Review” link), Flodesk automatically tags them or moves them into a new “Hot Lead” workflow without you lifting a finger.

It also handles the “logic of time” exceptionally well, letting you schedule delays down to the specific minute, day of the week, or even a specific time of day, ensuring your “Welcome Sequence” always hits their inbox exactly when they are most likely to be active.

Basic but useful ecommerce features

Flodesk does have a native Abandoned Cart and Post-Purchase workflows. If you connect your shop (Shopify, WooCommerce, or even Flodesk’s own “Checkouts”), you can trigger automated nudges the moment someone leaves an item in their cart or send a specific guide or upsell immediately after they buy.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• You can design and schedule a professional-grade email in 20 minutes.
• Simply beautiful emails that can match your brand.

Cons:

• Flodesk lacks advanced features. This platform still offers basic automation logic, limited A/B testing, and fewer third-party integrations than competitors like Kit or MailerLite.

Executive Summary for the BEST Email Marketing tools/software:

TLDR? Well here is my executive summary of the best email marketing software options (for specific use cases too)

1. Convert Kit – Perfect for solo creators and small teams looking to sell digital products of their own or as an affiliate.
2. Active Campaign – Full featured email marketing provider that really has no limits.
3. Sender – A very generous free plan to help you begin email marketing.
4. Brevo -The cost effective choice. Excellent for sending out a monthly newsletter.
5. Beehiiv – A newsletter platform focused on growth and monetization.
6. Klayvio – The gold standard for ecommerce sites, particularly Shopify.
7. FloDesk – Beautiful emails, the digital magazine option.

Any questions? Drop me an email. Till next time.

Your man,

-David

From the desk of David Utke

Subj: Best platform for building a profitable weekly email newsletter

When it comes to building a newsletter website and email marketing platform, two names consistently rise to the top: Beehiiv and Ghost.org. Both platforms offer compelling features for content creators, but they serve slightly different purposes and excel in different areas.

I’ve worked extensively with both platforms, creating tutorials and building websites on each. After diving deep into their capabilities, I’m here to break down exactly how these two platforms stack up against each other across every dimension that matters.

Primary Focus: Newsletter vs. Publishing Platform

The fundamental difference between these platforms lies in their core mission and design philosophy.

Beehiiv exists for one primary purpose

That purpose is to help you create a branded email newsletter website and a branded email newsletter. That’s it. Their focus isn’t really on blogging or anything else, it’s primarily on the newsletter experience.

When you build with Beehiiv, the newsletter is the core offer. You’re going to Beehiiv because you’re wanting to create something like “The Saturday Entrepreneur Newsletter” where you invite people to “join 7,000 other subscribers.”

The goal with Beehiiv is to get people onto your email newsletter and then contact your audience directly via direct response email marketing. People aren’t necessarily going to be navigating directly to your Beehiiv website per se, the website exists to support the newsletter, not the other way around.

Ghost.org’s Approach

Ghost.org takes a different approach. It’s more of a combination blogging platform with email marketing and paid subscriptions all built in.

The end result with a Ghost.org website is that you’re going to have some type of independent publishing site – think something like “The David Report” where people navigate directly to your website to log in, access private content, and subscribe to your email newsletter through the platform.

With Ghost, you’re building a destination website with private members-only content, paid subscription tiers, and a full-featured blog that happens to have email marketing capabilities.

The Bottom Line Both platforms give you a website and email marketing capabilities, but the overall intent is different. Beehiiv is newsletter-first with a supporting website, while Ghost is website-first with integrated email marketing.

Content Creation: Basic vs. Feature-Rich

This is where the platforms really start to diverge, and Ghost.org takes a clear lead.

Beehiiv’s Content Creation With Beehiiv, the content creation process is pretty straightforward. You go to your post section and write a post with H1, H2, H3 title tags, text, images, videos, and buttons. Nothing too fancy. You do have customization over how the email looks, but it’s pretty basic overall.

Since Beehiiv is still relatively new and focused primarily on email marketing, their content creation tools reflect that simplicity. It gets the job done, but don’t expect advanced features.

Ghost’s Content Creation Powerhouse Ghost is much more feature-rich. You get all the basic stuff like H2, H3 title tags, text paragraphs, images, and videos, but Ghost also includes a lot of additional blocks that make content creation significantly more powerful:

• Free Preview Block: If you have private content, you can make the top part publicly available and close off the bottom part for paying members only
• Email Only Block: When writing a blog post that you’ll send to your audience, content in this block is only readable in an email client – perfect for adding personal touches to your newsletter version
• Call-to-Action Blocks: Professional-looking CTAs that convert better than basic text links
• Product Blocks: Showcase products or services directly in your content

Ghost is very powerful and feature-rich, with useful blogging features designed to make your content more engaging and high-converting.

Publishing Options Both platforms work functionally the same way when it comes to publishing. You create a blog post, and when you’re ready to publish, you can choose what to do with it:

• Publish to your website and send to your email list
• Only send to your email list
• Only publish on your website
• Send to specific subscriber tiers (like paying subscribers only)

Both Beehiiv and Ghost.org allow you to have paying subscribers and send private members-only content.

Winner: Ghost.org – The content creation process is simply more robust with a wider range of features to increase engagement and create high-converting blog posts.

SEO: Clear Winner

Not much to say here – Ghost is better for SEO, hands down.

Ghost has significantly better SEO capabilities than Beehiiv websites. I don’t really see Beehiiv websites ranking particularly well in search engines, whereas with a Ghost.org website, you can absolutely rank and get organic search traffic.

I rank with my Ghost.org blog and get organic search traffic every day that converts meaningfully:

Again, this goes back to Beehiiv being focused as an email newsletter solution. You can publish content that’s publicly available, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to get ranked and indexed by search engines effectively.

Technical SEO Details Both platforms allow you to have basic control over on-page SEO – creating title tags, metadata, and so forth.

However, there’s one small detail I don’t like about Beehiiv: their blog posts have URLs like website.com/p/post-title, whereas Ghost.org websites use the cleaner website.com/post-title format. It’s a tiny thing, but I prefer the cleaner URL structure.

The Verdict If creating blog posts and ranking them in search engines is important to your strategy, you’re probably going to prefer Ghost.org over Beehiiv.

Email Marketing and Automations: Beehiiv Dominates

This is where there’s really no comparison – Beehiiv absolutely crushes Ghost.org in this department.

Beehiiv’s Automation Power

With Beehiiv, you can set up sophisticated email automations. Since it’s designed as a branded email newsletter platform, you get access to powerful automation features on the back end. If you’re trying to sell a product or course, you can create a year-long automation sequence if you want. It’s incredibly powerful.

You can set up automations for a wide range of purposes beyond just selling:

• Re-engagement sequences: If people aren’t opening your emails, send them through a recovery email sequence to get them re-engaged
• Subscription management: Send emails asking if people still want to stay subscribed, and if they don’t respond, tag and remove them appropriately
• Onboarding sequences: Create welcome series for new subscribers
• Product sales funnels: Build sophisticated sequences to sell products and services

Ghost.org’s Limitations

With Ghost.org, you can’t set up automations. It’s really just direct response email marketing. You can send out a weekly email newsletter but you don’t have access to any sophisticated automations on the back end.

Ghost does have very basic automations like directing new subscribers to a thank you page and sending a welcome email, but that’s as far as it goes.

You can manually filter your email list to see people who have unsubscribed or haven’t been opening emails, then manually remove them, but there’s no built-in automation for list management.

When Automations Matter If automations are very important to you, if you need to create:

• Email onboarding sequences
• Re-engagement emails
• Product sales funnels
• Even a year-long autoresponder sequences

Then you’re going to love Beehiiv.

Ghost.org is just direct response email marketing without the automation sophistication.

Monetization: Beehiiv’s Multiple Revenue Streams

Beehiiv really stands out in the monetization department, offering more built-in revenue opportunities than Ghost.org.

Make money with Beehiiv

Beehiiv’s Monetization Arsenal Beehiiv offers several monetization options:

1. Paid Subscriptions: Standard paid subscription functionality with monthly or yearly options
2. Private Members-Only Content: Restrict content to paying subscribers
3. Built-in Ad Network: When you publish and send emails, you can include display ads within the email once you qualify
4. Boost Feature: Accept cross-promotion from other newsletters. When people subscribe to your website, a lightbox appears suggesting other newsletters. You get paid when people subscribe to these other newsletters – this can become quite lucrative
5. Automation-Powered Sales: Use the automation features to create sophisticated sales processes for products or services

Make money with Ghost.org

Ghost.org’s Monetization Options Ghost.org offers solid but more limited monetization:

1. Paid Subscriptions: Same as Beehiiv – monthly or yearly options connected through Stripe
2. Three Content Tiers: Public content, members-only content (free subscribers), and paid subscriber content
3. Manual Ad Management: You can run ads in your newsletter, but you have to handle advertiser relationships manually

Content Display Quality I give Ghost.org the edge on how private members-only content actually looks. When someone clicks into a private blog post on Ghost, they can read a bit of it, then hit a content-locked block that prompts them to subscribe. It looks professional and converts well.

Winner: Beehiiv – The native ad network and Boost feature give Beehiiv more passive income opportunities, plus the automation capabilities enable more sophisticated sales processes.

Customization: Ghost’s Flexibility vs. Beehiiv’s Simplicity

If website customization is important to you, you’re probably going to prefer Ghost.org over Beehiiv.

Beehiiv’s Limitations

Beehiiv is honestly kind of cookie-cutter. Beehiiv websites all tend to look the same, sort of like Substack websites. You have very limited control over how your website looks – just basic customization like colors, logos, homepage format, and subscribe page layout.

Beehiiv is rolling out some type of website builder that’s still in beta at the time I’m writing this, so more customization options may be coming. But right now, if you just want an email newsletter website and basic customization is fine, Beehiiv works. However, if having a cool, branded, unique-looking website is important to you, you’ll find Beehiiv limiting.

Ghost.org’s Customization Power

Ghost.org, like WordPress, is fully customizable. On their cheapest plan, you are limited in what themes you can use, but once you upgrade your account, you unlock everything. You can add custom themes and design any type of theme exactly how you like.

Email Design Quality Regarding the actual emails your audience receives, I give the edge to Ghost.org. The emails from Ghost just look great out of the box.

Beehiiv emails look okay, but Ghost gives you more control and flexibility over the look and feel of your emails. Beehiiv’s email customization can be a little confusing and overwhelming for complete beginners.

Bottom Line If your primary focus is building an email newsletter and basic customization is fine, Beehiiv works even with its cookie-cutter appearance.

If having a branded, unique-looking website is very important to you, you’ll be much happier with Ghost.org.

Ease of Use: Ghost Takes the Lead

Ghost.org is by far way more simple and easy to use than Beehiiv. This is actually why I created that detailed Beehiiv tutorial video – because I find Beehiiv a little bit confusing for complete beginners.

Beehiiv’s Learning Curve When you’re trying to set up everything with Beehiiv, you have to deal with:

• Complex DNS setup using their entry feature
• Multiple different name servers for the website and email marketing aspects
• Setting up different domain names or subdomains for emails (different from your primary website domain)
• Various technical details on the back end that can confuse average users

Ghost.org’s Simplicity Ghost.org is refreshingly simple:

1. Sign up and pay for your account
2. Set a custom domain name by pointing name servers to your domain registrar
3. Set up a Stripe account to accept payments for paid subscriptions
4. You’re done

It’s really that simple. Ghost.org is very intuitive, particularly if you’re coming from WordPress.

Long-term Usability Once you get over the initial learning curve with Beehiiv, it becomes pretty simple to use on a day-to-day basis. But that initial setup can be a barrier for many users who just want to get started quickly.

Pricing: Free vs. Affordable

Beehiiv’s Pricing Advantage Beehiiv shines with their completely free plan that you can use to grow your email list. Yes, it’s going to be a subdomain (like mywebsite.beehiiv.com), and you don’t get access to automations, but you can grow your email list without paying anything upfront.

When you’re ready to upgrade and access automations (which I highly recommend since automations are powerful for selling products and creating onboarding sequences), the paid plan runs about $30+ per month.

Ghost.org’s Pricing Ghost doesn’t offer a free plan, but they do have a $9 per month plan (about $100 per year). This gets you 500 email subscribers, and you can email them as many times as you like – daily if you want.

Value Comparison

• Beehiiv: Free to start, ~$30/month for full features
• Ghost.org: $9/month minimum, no free option

If you want a completely free way to start building your email list, Beehiiv wins. If you don’t mind paying a small monthly fee for a more polished, easier-to-use platform, Ghost.org offers good value.

Final Verdict: Which Platform Should You Choose?

Both platforms are solid choices, but they serve different needs:

Choose Beehiiv if:

• Your primary focus is building an email newsletter
• You want powerful automation capabilities
• You need multiple monetization options (ads, boost, subscriptions)
• You want to start completely free
• You don’t mind a learning curve and cookie-cutter design

Choose Ghost.org if:

• You want to build a professional publishing website
• SEO and organic traffic are important to your strategy
• You prefer ease of use and polished design
• You want more content creation features and customization
• You don’t mind paying from day one

My Personal Take

If you’re serious about email marketing and want the most powerful automation and monetization features, Beehiiv is the way to go despite its limitations.

The automation capabilities and built-in revenue streams like the ad network and Boost feature make it incredibly powerful for creators who want to maximize their newsletter income.

However, if you want to build a professional online presence that attracts both direct visitors and email subscribers, with better SEO capabilities and a more polished user experience, Ghost.org is the smarter choice.

The decision ultimately comes down to your primary goal.

Are you building a newsletter business (Beehiiv) or a content publishing business (Ghost.org)? Both can be successful, but they represent different approaches to online content creation and audience building.

Consider your technical comfort level, budget, long-term goals, and whether automation features are critical to your success. Both platforms will serve you well, it’s just a matter of which aligns better with your specific vision and needs.

This platform is excellent if you’re looking to start a branded, email newsletter that you send out once a week to your audience.

It’s not perfect (not platform is), but where it really shines is that you get a high converting website, the ability to custom design the emails, automations for sales, the ability to segment your audience and a lot of creative ways to monetize your list.

Let’s get started.

High converting websites (though a bit cookie cutter)

Beehiiv websites all have the same sort of “cookie cutter” layout, but it works (similar to Substack).

First you get a big offer section inviting visitors to subscribe to your website.

You can end your site design here, or you can add in different sections at the click of a button. The most common sections to add in are an “archive” section, another call to action to subscribe to the email list, or specific blog posts you want displayed.

Simple and no code

Beehiiv’s website design tools use a simple, no-code approach that focuses on conversion and simplicity over creative control. It makes it easy to build sites quickly but this approach does end up creating websites that all look very similar to each other.

The platform offers basic options like uploading logos, changing fonts and colors, and choosing from preset layouts like Default or Headliner.

These limited choices force most newsletters into the same basic structure with nearly identical home pages and subscribe sections.

While users can adjust spacing and text styles, the underlying framework stays the same across all sites. Most people end up with slight variations of the exact same visual template because there aren’t enough customization options to create something truly unique.

On top of that, free plan users are stuck with a Beehiiv subdomains that make their sites look obviously platform-hosted. But it is free and you can build your list and upgrade later if you like.

Pros:

• Quick and easy setup with no coding required
• Perfect for beginners without design experience
• Fast publishing and launching capabilities
• Simple interface that’s not overwhelming
• Built-in newsletter integration that converts

Cons:

• Limited customization options
• Cookie-cutter appearance across all sites
• Restricted to basic themes and layouts
• Free plans use Beehiiv subdomains

Beehiiv website builder rolling out

Beehiiv is working on a proper website builder so you can have more control over the layout and design of your newsletter website.

Here’s what the website builder (still in beta) can do:

• Drag-and-Drop: You can move stuff like text, pictures, or buttons around with your mouse, like playing with blocks. It’s super easy to make pages look how you want.
• High converting templates: It comes with new designs to start with, so you don’t build from scratch. You pick a template, add your colors, and change fonts in a few clicks.
• Marketing features: You can add animations, custom signup forms, or special pages that change based on what your readers like. It also works great on phones and computers.
• Design control: You can tweak the menu bar, footer, or even add your own code if you’re on a high plan. This makes your site feel more “you.”

Beehiiv’s Website Builder v2, still in beta but it will become fully available at some point.

Email delivery and customization (important!)

The most important aspect of any email service is deliverability. That means, do your emails hit the inbox? Not the spam folder. Not the promotions tab in Gmail. The primary inbox.

Beehiiv focuses on making sure your emails reach your subscribers’ inboxes instead of getting stuck in spam folders.

For most users on Launch and Scale plans, the platform follows a standard delivery process that starts when you hit send. The system automatically checks your subscriber list to remove bad email addresses that don’t exist, which helps avoid delivery problems.

It then records how many people will receive your email and runs additional checks to catch issues like full inboxes or fake addresses.

When problems are found, Beehiiv handles them differently depending on the type. Soft bounces happen when someone’s inbox is temporarily full, and the system will keep trying to deliver these emails for 72 hours.

Hard bounces occur when an email address is completely fake or no longer exists, and these are immediately removed from future sends.

The platform uses Twilio SendGrid as its email delivery service, which they say has improved their deliverability by 52% compared to the previous year. However, getting delivered doesn’t always mean reaching the inbox.

Emails can still end up in spam folders if your sender reputation is poor or your content triggers spam filters.

Several features help improve your email delivery rates.

List cleaning allows you to filter out inactive subscribers who haven’t opened emails in a set time period, like 90 days, which keeps your list healthy and improves open rates.

The analytics dashboard shows important metrics like open rates, click rates, and bounce rates so you can identify delivery problems early.

You can also create segments to target your most engaged readers, which helps with overall delivery. Beehiiv automatically sets up authentication protocols called SPF and DKIM, and provides a DMARC wizard to prevent others from sending fake emails using your domain name.

Smart warming

For users on Max and Enterprise plans, Beehiiv offers beta features that provide more advanced delivery tools like “smart warming.”

Smart warming automatically builds your sender reputation by gradually increasing your sending volume, which helps new newsletters avoid being flagged as spam.

Re-engagement campaigns can automatically send emails to win back inactive subscribers or remove them from your list entirely.

Perhaps most importantly than anything else is that these higher-tier plans include dedicated IP addresses, giving you complete control over your sender reputation instead of sharing an IP address with other users whose poor practices could hurt your delivery rates.

Email marketing automations with Beehiiv

With Beehiiv, you can setup an email autoresponder for new subscribers and various triggers of your choosing. Perfect if you want to create an email welcome series, sell a product or service, create a 6 month autoresponder sequence or a re-engagement sequence.

Email automations work like a chain of messages that send automatically when something specific happens, such as when a new person signs up for your newsletter.

Beehiiv offers different automation features depending on your plan level.

Automations for the Launch, and Scale Plans

For basic automation needs, all beehiiv plans include at least one welcome email feature:

• Launch Plan (name of the free plan): You can set up one welcome email that goes out when someone subscribes. Find this option in your dashboard under “Settings” where you can use a simple editor to write your message.
• Scale Plan Features: This plan gives you access to more powerful automation tools. Go to the “Automations” tab and click “New Automation” to get started. You can choose different triggers like “Signed Up” for new subscribers, then add steps such as sending emails or adding delays between messages. For example, you could create a welcome series with three emails that go out over one week.

How Triggers and Actions Work

The system uses triggers and actions to control when and what happens:

• Triggers include events like someone signing up or upgrading to a paid subscription
• Actions are mostly about sending emails, but you can also add time delays or basic conditions (like sending a different email if someone clicks a specific link)

Tracking Your Results

beehiiv provides analytics to help you understand how your automations perform. You can track open rates, click rates, and see how many people complete your entire automation sequence. This data helps you figure out what works well, like whether your welcome email gets opened frequently.

Current Limitations

The automation features have some restrictions depending on your plan:

• Free and Launch plans only allow the single welcome email
• Scale plan automations are fairly basic, offering only a few trigger options and no advanced logic
• There’s currently no way to automatically stop an automation if someone replies to your emails

While Beehiiv’s email automations handle basic needs like welcome series effectively, they remain simple for most users.

Grow and monetize your audience with Beehiiv

With email marketing and unique monetization features build into Beehiiv, there are quite a few ways to grow and monetize your audience.

1. Beehiiv Boosts (Get Paid to Recommend)

Boosts is like a marketplace where you promote other newsletters and get paid for each new subscriber you send them. After someone joins your newsletter, they see suggestions for other newsletters. If they subscribe, you earn $1-$4 per person (average $1.63).

Who can use it: Scale, Max, or Enterprise plans

Tip: Pick newsletters that make sense, if you’re publishing a personal finance newsletter, a real estate newsletter is a good related topic. You can also check the marketplace and sort by highest payouts.

2. Built in ad Network

Beehiiv has it’s own built out network that you can leverage once you’re on the Scale plan and have a subscribe base as you’re paid based on impressions and clicks of any ads you display.

This ad network connects you with brands that want to advertise in your newsletter. You get paid when people click the ads or just see them. In your Beehiiv dashboard you’ll have an advertising section when creating a new email.

Here you can reject ads that don’t fit your audience.

3. Paid Subscriptions

Charge readers for exclusive content they can’t get anywhere else. Set monthly or yearly prices (like $5/month or $50/year). Create special posts only paying subscribers can read.

4. Affiliate Marketing

Promote products with special links and earn money when people buy through your link. Beehiiv’s also offers a Partner Program that pays you 50% of what new users spend for 12 months. You can also promote other companies’ products.

5. Sponsored content

Companies pay you to write about their products in your newsletter (or they will write the content for you to publish). You can charge $100-$1,000+ based on how many subscribers you have. Write in your own voice while talking about their product.

On top of that, they may also give your audience an exclusive coupon code and an affiliate link. So you get paid to publish the content and make ant commission on conversions.

6. Sell Digital Products / memberships / communities

Create and sell e-books, courses, templates, guides or private communities to your subscribers. Take advantage of the automation feature built in to warm up your audience and convert them into buyers.

Yes, you’ll need a way to host your products (like with an online course platform)

7. Donations and Tips

Ask readers to support your work with one-time or monthly donations. Add “Support Me” buttons linking to a “Buy Me a Coffee” page.

8. Run your own referral programs

Reward subscribers for bringing in new readers, the bigger your audience the better your monetization options become. Give prizes like free content or merchandise for successful referrals. More subscribers means more opportunities to make money from all the other methods.

Final thoughts

Overall Beehiiv is growing in rapid popularity because it’s simple excellent and what it’s designed for; and that’s to publish a weekly email newsletter.

With great monetization features built in a various ways to grow your audience as well as reliable email delivery it’s no surprise that popular brand like The Milk Road and The Neuron use Beehiiv to power their respective publishing businesses.

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Build a beautiful, high converting newsletter website today with Beehiiv.

Free plan to get you started, Scale plan unlocks all the features you need to grow and monetize your audience.

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