beehiiv Review: 0% of Your Subscriptions, Priced by Your List

beehiiv is a newsletter platform built for people who want the newsletter to earn money, and almost every decision in its pricing follows from that. It takes nothing from paid subscriptions, it runs an ad network and a paid recommendation marketplace, and it bundles a website, a podcast host and a community into the same account. What it charges for is the plan, priced by how many active subscribers you have across the whole workspace.

That makes beehiiv the cheapest serious option in our email category for a writer with paying readers, and one of the most expensive for a sender who never charges anyone. This review measures both sides. Our composite score is 3.61, fourth of the seven email platforms we have scored, behind Klaviyo (3.88), MailerLite (3.71) and Constant Contact (3.63), ahead of Brevo (3.58), Mailchimp (3.46) and ActiveCampaign (3.44).

Every figure below comes from pages the vendor published, read on 9 October 2026, from the vendor's own machine-readable pricing file, or from our own arithmetic on those figures, which we label as ours.

What beehiiv is, in one paragraph

The vendor describes itself as the newsletter platform built for growth, and claims more than 130,000 publishers who have sent over 50 billion emails ^[31]. In practice it is five products on one login: an email editor and sender, a website builder, a podcast host, a community with channels and direct messages, and a store for paid subscriptions and digital products. The monetisation layer sits on top: an ad network that pays per open or per click, paid recommendations between newsletters, and a sponsorship storefront on Pro. It was built for writers, journalists and media teams, and it shows. It is not built for online stores, and that shows too.

beehiiv sells four plans: Free, Lite, Pro and Enterprise ^[4]. The prices below are for a list of up to 1,000 subscribers, from the vendor's pricing file ^[3]:

The pricing page opens on the annual view, so the headline figures are $49 and $95 ^[2]. The pricing page marks Pro "Most Popular", which is the vendor's emphasis, not our recommendation.

The plan names are new. Until early October 2026 the plans were called Launch, Scale and Max. A reviewer on Trustpilot describes the change: "In early October beehiiv renamed and restructured its tiers" ^[19]. The vendor's own full-site dump still uses the old names in places, for instance "No, email automations are only available on the Scale plan and above." ^[31]. Scale was the first paid plan, so a search for the Scale plan today means Lite, not Pro.

How the price is set

The price is two choices multiplied together. The plan type decides the features; the subscriber tier decides what you pay for those features. The vendor is explicit that the count is per workspace: "Subscriber limits and plan tiers apply to your whole account, not to each publication." ^[4]. Two newsletters of 3,000 and 2,000 subscribers are billed as one list of 5,000.

Only active subscribers count, but active is wider than it sounds. The help centre states that "Suppressed subscribers may still appear as Active in your subscriber count because they are filtered at send time, not by status." ^[10]. Addresses that can no longer receive your email can still push you into the next tier until you delete them.

Eleven tiers are published, from "Up to 1,000" to "250,000+". Lite is sold to 100,000 and Pro to 250,000: "Lite is sold through 100,000 subscribers. Pro is sold through 250,000." ^[3].

This is the mechanism that most separates beehiiv from MailerLite or Brevo. At beehiiv, moving up a tier is a setting you choose. In Billing you can turn on auto-upgrade my plan tier when I reach my subscriber limit; the vendor explains that "When you go over your current subscriber limit, you're charged a prorated amount for the next tier of your current plan." ^[5].

If you leave it off, the vendor's warning is short: "If you don't turn this on, sends to your subscribers may be delayed when you go over your plan limits." ^[5]. That is a real trade. With the toggle off, you are never charged for growth you did not approve, but a newsletter that grows on a Tuesday may not go out on a Wednesday. Imports behave the same way. An import that would take you over the limit is held, and "beehiiv doesn't import part of a list to fill your remaining space." ^[9]. You trim the file and import again.

Worked example. A Lite account on the 10,000 tier, billed monthly at $139, reaches 10,400 active subscribers in the middle of the month. With auto-upgrade on, it is charged the prorated difference to the 25,000 tier, which is $199 a month, so about $30 for half a month. With auto-upgrade off, nothing is charged and sending may wait until the list is trimmed or the plan changed.

The free plan

The free plan is a real one: up to 2,500 subscribers, unlimited email sends, a website, a podcast feed and the recommendation network, with no time limit. In the vendor's words, "Yes. beehiiv's Free plan is free, forever, with no credit card required." ^[3].

What it leaves out is the reason most people choose beehiiv. There are no paid subscriptions, no ad network, no automations beyond the welcome email, beehiiv branding stays on, and you cannot attach a new custom domain. Support is the Buzz chatbot: "Customers on the Free plan outside of a trial should use Buzz as their primary support path." ^[14].

Against the rest of the category, 2,500 subscribers is generous. MailerLite's free plan now stops at 250 subscribers, and Mailchimp's at 250 contacts and 500 sends a month. Kit's free plan goes much further, to 10,000 subscribers, and it lets you sell subscriptions, which beehiiv's free plan does not ^[20].

One caution from the terms: "If you have a free account, we may cancel your account and reclaim the subdomain after a period of inactivity." ^[15]. The same clause promises at least thirty days' notice by email.

New accounts get fourteen days of Pro features with no card required ^[4]. The trial is narrower than "Pro for two weeks" suggests. Paid subscriptions, paid recommendations, custom domains and multiple publications are held back until you pay, posts are limited to one a day, and the Ad Network is not available during the trial ^[7]. Features you build during the trial switch off at its end unless you upgrade: automations turn off, custom pages unpublish, the Send API stops. "If you choose not to upgrade to a paid plan when your trial ends, your account stays on the Free plan." ^[7].

The practical advice is to use the trial to test the editor, the website and the automations you expect to run, and not to launch anything readers depend on until you have chosen a plan.

The money: what beehiiv takes and what it pays

Paid subscriptions. beehiiv takes nothing. The feature page says "beehiiv takes zero revenue share, so you keep 100% of your subscription earnings" ^[17]. Stripe's processing fee of 2.9% plus $0.30 per charge still applies, as it would on most platforms.

Paid recommendations. These are what the vendor used to call Boosts: one newsletter pays another for each verified subscriber it sends. Here beehiiv does take a cut: "A 20% fee applies to all paid recommendations to cover operational and Stripe transaction costs" ^[13]. The fee is built into the marketplace price, so an offer of $2.50 per subscriber shows $2.00 to the newsletter that recommends it.

Ad Network. Advertisers pay per thousand opens or per click, and beehiiv pays the publisher monthly: "Payouts are sent on the 20th of each month for the prior month's ad units." ^[11]. Clicks are paid on what the vendor calls payable clicks, a quality-weighted count, and the weighting is not disclosed: "We don't publish the exact weighting, which is standard across the industry." ^[11]. Payouts run only through Stripe Express: "beehiiv does not support alternative payment processors (such as PayPal, Wise, or PriyoPay) for Ad Network or Paid recommendations earnings." ^[11]. If Stripe Express is not available in your country, you cannot take part.

The pricing page advertises ad monetization, avg. $39/mo on Lite and Pro ^[2]. It does not say what that average covers: which plans, which list sizes, or which period. We would not plan a budget around it.

beehiiv's comparison with Substack is the most searched comparison for this product, at 590 searches a month in the United States, four times any other. The core claim is accurate: Substack takes a share and beehiiv does not. Substack's own page says "Writers keep 90% of their revenue minus credit card fees." ^[18].

The vendor's calculator, however, leaves something out. Its worked example, 2,000 paid subscribers at $5 a month, concludes "You earn $11,652 / year more with beehiiv" ^[16]. That figure does not subtract the beehiiv plan, and Substack has no plan fee. The fair comparison is the 10% Substack keeps against what beehiiv charges for Lite:

Our arithmetic. Ten per cent of a $5 monthly subscription is $6 a year, so the break-even is the annual plan price divided by $6. Stripe fees are left out because both platforms pass them on. On monthly billing, the break-even at 1,000 subscribers is 118 paying readers.

Below those numbers, Substack is cheaper. Above them, beehiiv is, and the gap widens with every paid subscriber. On the vendor's own example, with Lite annual at the 2,500 tier subtracted, beehiiv still comes out about $10,824 a year ahead. That is a strong result, and it needs no exaggeration.

Policies that cost money

• No refunds. The refund article starts from "All sales are final upon subscription" and lists the cases it will not refund, including non-use and purchases made in error ^[6]. It adds that "Please note that submitting a ticket does not guarantee an exception or a refund." ^[6].
• Cancelling. You keep the plan to the end of the term, but the terms say "you will not be eligible for a prorated refund of any portion of the subscription fee paid for the then-current subscription period" ^[15].
• Pausing. Monthly plans can pause for up to 30 days. Annual plans cannot: "You can't pause a plan that's billed annually." ^[4].
• Price changes. The terms allow beehiiv to change fees with notice: "we may change the subscription terms or subscription fees at any time on a going forward basis by providing not less than thirty (30) days advance notice" ^[15].
• Payment methods. "Prepaid credit cards aren't accepted." ^[4].

Like every bulk sender, beehiiv reviews accounts for spam complaints, bounces and abuse. Two details matter. First, review can stop sending at once: "Automated checks may pause sending immediately while your workspace is reviewed." ^[8]. Second, part of the logic is not disclosed: "beehiiv's systems weigh a range of risk indicators. The specifics aren't shared publicly." ^[8]. Listed triggers include high complaint or bounce rates, suspicious links, chargebacks, and sign-up or sending activity inconsistent with your stated location. A block can be final: "If a block has been ruled non-contestable, the decision is final." ^[8].

In our Trustpilot corpus, five reviews of 100 describe a blocked account, and all five are one- or two-star. That is a much smaller share than at Brevo, where one review in five described a suspension, but the experience is just as bad for the people it happens to. Importing an opted-in list and warming up gradually is the best protection.

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    <span class="text-sm font-semibold text-ink-100">Capability &amp; depth</span>
    <span class="text-sm font-bold text-white">3.9<span class="text-xs font-normal text-ink-300">/5</span></span>
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    <span class="text-sm font-semibold text-ink-100">Ease of use</span>
    <span class="text-sm font-bold text-white">3.9<span class="text-xs font-normal text-ink-300">/5</span></span>
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    <span class="text-sm font-semibold text-ink-100">Integrations</span>
    <span class="text-sm font-bold text-white">3.4<span class="text-xs font-normal text-ink-300">/5</span></span>
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    <span class="text-sm font-semibold text-ink-100">AI</span>
    <span class="text-sm font-bold text-white">3.6<span class="text-xs font-normal text-ink-300">/5</span></span>
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    <span class="text-sm font-semibold text-ink-100">Support &amp; reliability</span>
    <span class="text-sm font-bold text-white">3.1<span class="text-xs font-normal text-ink-300">/5</span></span>
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    <span class="text-sm font-bold text-white">3.9<span class="text-xs font-normal text-ink-300">/5</span></span>
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    <span class="text-sm font-semibold text-ink-100">Docs &amp; learning resources</span>
    <span class="text-sm font-bold text-white">3.7<span class="text-xs font-normal text-ink-300">/5</span></span>
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<p class="mt-3 text-xs text-ink-300">Weighted across the axes above (weights reflect what actually drives the decision in this category). <a href="/how-we-test" style="color:var(--color-accent)">How we score →</a></p>

Support depends on the plan, and none of it is by phone. The vendor says "Buzz is not a live agent, and no phone or email contact is currently available" ^[14]. Free accounts use the chatbot; paid plans and trials can open tickets from the Help page; Pro gets priority. Response times are said to vary by plan but are not published.

Reviewers are more positive about support than at most email vendors we have measured: in our corpus, support comes up in 19 reviews, 12 positive and 7 negative.

Trustpilot shows 4.0 from 406 reviews. Our sample of the 100 most recent averages 3.87, with 61 five-star, 11 four-star, 3 three-star, 4 two-star and 21 one-star ^[19]. Unlike Brevo or Klaviyo, where the badge and the recent reviews tell different stories, beehiiv's badge describes its present. Product Hunt shows 4.62 from 26 reviews and GetApp 4.4 from 16, both small samples.

The positive reviews praise the editor, the generous free plan and the growth tools. The negative ones are about access and change: blocked accounts, plan restructuring, and limits that differ between pages. Price comes up as too high in only one review.

Integrations and the API

The API is open on every plan, with read access on Free, and the MCP server connects the account to AI tools such as Claude, Cursor and Codex, read-only on Free and with write access from Lite ^[26]. Webhooks are three on Lite and unlimited on Pro. The Send API, for sending email programmatically, is Pro only ^[3]. Zapier and Make connect the rest ^[27].

Two gaps. The WordPress integration and S3 data sync are Enterprise only. And there is no native mobile app: the community app is a Progressive Web App, and the vendor is clear that "you will not find this app by searching the App Store or Google Play" ^[24].

AI

The in-editor AI writes drafts, changes tone, translates and generates images, from Lite ^[25]. AI usage is expressed in the pricing table as "Limited" on Free, "Elevated" on Lite and "5x Lite" on Pro, units the vendor does not define ^[3]. The models behind the tools are not named, and no-training and zero-retention commitments appear only on Enterprise.

Where the vendor disagrees with itself

We found four places where beehiiv's own pages give different answers:

1. The plan list in its pricing file places custom domains under Free, while the feature table in the same file marks them not included, and the downgrade article says "You can't add a new custom domain on the Free plan." ^[5].
2. The Pro card lists webhooks as a Pro addition, while the feature table gives Lite three ^[3].
3. The FAQ says paid plans start at $59 a month; the page's default view shows $49 ^[2].
4. The full-site dump still answers with the retired Launch and Scale names ^[31].

None of these changes what you pay, but together they explain a complaint that recurs in reviews: it can take time to confirm what a plan includes.

Who should choose beehiiv

• Writers and publishers who charge readers or sell sponsorships. Above roughly a hundred paying readers, the 0% take rate beats Substack, and the ad network and recommendations are built in.
• Media teams running several newsletters. Ten publications on Pro, one bill, one subscriber count.
• Creators who want a website, podcast and community without four subscriptions.

Who should look elsewhere

• Online stores. Klaviyo scores 3.88 with us and holds 4.7 from 3,362 ratings on the Shopify App Store; beehiiv's Shopify connection is described only as "content ingestion, ecommerce workflows" ^[27].
• Senders who will never charge. MailerLite's Comfort plan is $10.80 a month billed annually at 500 subscribers, a fraction of Lite.
• A first newsletter under 10,000 subscribers that may sell later. Kit's free plan covers four times beehiiv's free list and already allows selling subscriptions.

beehiiv is the best-built platform in our email category for a newsletter that is a business. Its pricing is fully published, its monetisation is real, and its central claim against Substack holds once the plan fee is put back in, as long as you have about a hundred paying readers. What holds the score at 3.61 is everything around the money: no refunds at all, annual plans that cannot pause, a review system that can stop sending without notice, support with no human channel on Free, and documentation that has not caught up with the October 2026 restructure.