Beehiiv vs ConvertKit is a fierce clash of two newsletter software companies. I'll go over differences on pricing, features and lots more. Lets see which is best for your newsletter business!
A quick note - ConvertKit has now rebranded to Kit so for the rest of this article we'll refer to the company as Kit to avoid confusion.
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Company history
Kit
Kit was created by Nathan Barry in 2013. It took a while to grow until a friend told him he should either quit or go all-in. Nathan rose to the challenge and put $50,000 that he had earned from course sales into the company. Growth quickly improved and today Kit is one of the biggest earning bootstrapped companies with $42.6m in revenue in 2024, according to Baremetrics.
Beehiiv
Beehiiv is led by Tyler Denk, the first developer at Morning Brew. Tyler realised that he had helped to create an amazing software system for growth and monetization at Morning Brew and decided to recreate this in his own software. His co-founders are also two ex-Morning Brew employees.
Interestingly, the actual Morning Brew founders didn't think Beehiiv would work but Tyler has made it happen. Beehiiv raised $12.5m from investors in a Series A round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and in 2024 raised $33m in a Series B.
Who uses Beehiiv
Beehiiv has a lot of high profile users including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Shaan Puri, and Miss Excel.
Who uses Kit
Lot of people use Kit including Ryan Holiday, Tim Ferriss, James Clear and Codie Sanchez.
Prices
The two email platforms have been in a bit of a price war! Beehiiv originally undercut Kit by offering 2,500 free subscribers instead of Kit's 1,000. Kit responded boldly in late 2024, during its re-brand, by offering a new 10,000 free 'Newsletter' plan. That's exceptionally good value! So being able to gather 10,000 subscribers for free is a very good deal!
The prices below are for the cheapest monthly plan on offer and are correct as of January 2025. As you can see, Kit starts off with being the cheapest but if you are lucky enough to get to 75,000 subscribers, Beehiiv is half the price.
| 0-2500 subs | 2500 subs | 10,000 subs | 25,000 subs | 75,000 subs | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beehiiv | Free | $59 | $99 | $149 | $249 |
| Kit | Free | Free | Free | $199 | $499 |
One caveat with that plan is that you must 'recommend' other newsletters. This means that if someone signs up to your newsletter with a Kit form, they will also be showed a list of 3 other newsletters that you can recommend to your readers. Some people won't like this trade-off because it means you are distracting your signups with other newsletters right when you want their attention. For others, it's a sacrifice worth making to get 10,000 free subscribers.
Overall, I'd say Kit is the winner for newsletters smaller than 10,000 subscribers and Beehiiv is the winner beyond that number of subs.
Prices winner - tie! ⚖️
Features
Beehiiv and Kit both have the usual features you'd expect from a top email software:
• nice editors for writing newsletters
• custom domains
• A/B test subject lines
• unlimited sends
• paywalling content
• referrals
• polls*
*Kit recently added a feature which used to be exclusive to Beehiiv: polls.
These are great for polling your newsletter audience e.g. asking them if they liked your newsletter edition
Beehiiv features
Beehiiv lets you have 3 publications on the same plan. This is really cool if you want to build several newsletters at the same time. Perhaps, you want a newsletter for one business and another for personal thoughts.
Or maybe you want to throw lots of the spaghetti at the wall and launch 3 newsletters and see which works best! On the Max plan you can have 10 newsletters. This starts at $99 per month. That could be a great option if you are running an agency.
Beehiiv offers what feels like a "full website" which lets users search through your posts.
I also like the fact that you get a Navbar which you can add pages to. In this case, the newsletter has an "Advertise with us" page which links out to an external website where companies can buy sponsorship slots.
In January 2025 Beehiiv also announced a Beta feature where you can drag and drop elements onto the page like you can in Webflow. So it looks like they are expanding their website features a lot.
Kit features
A big part of the rebranding from ConvertKit to Kit was the fact the company is moving into a new phase with an app store. There are only a handful of apps so far but some examples include being able to add podcast information to newsletters, a CRM and the ability to take calendar bookings with SavvyCal.
Kit offers landing page website templates for your newsletter. But they seem quite limited. They are basically one-page sites.
Features winner - Beehiiv! 🎉
Monetization
Beehiiv
Beehiiv has an advert program but there are some important things to note:
• you need to have a Stripe account to get paid. If your country isn't supported by Stripe then you won't be able to use this feature.
• you need a "Scale" plan from Beehiiv. This is the second cheapest pricing plan on Beehiiv and starts at $39 a month for up to 1,000 subscribers.
Beehiiv offers a very smooth process for adding an advert to your newsletter. Companies can send offers to you, typically $1 per click on their advert. Once you find a date which works and choose which advert to use, it's very easy to add the advert to your newsletter when you are writing it.
Sadly, Beehiiv doesn't pay out right away. The company pays out newsletter writers every month on the 20th for sponsorship money from the previous month. So if you make $100 in March, you won't get paid until the 20th of April.
Kit
A major advantage of Kit is the ability to sell digital products straight from your website or newsletter. These can be anything from ebooks to digital files to coaching sessions. It can also handle paid newsletter subscriptions but Beehiiv does that too.
Kit can also calculate VAT for EU sales but crucially it does not remit the tax. So it calculates what you owe but you will still need to register for VAT and pay it yourself.
Unfortunately, with Kit you have to apply to be part of their sponsorship program. You also need to have at least 10,000 subscriber and to publish weekly. They promise "premium sponsors", so it may be that if you have a huge newsletter that you can work with better brands. As of January 2025, this is only open to 10 creators which is disappointing.
Kit charges 20% of sponsorship revenue, plus another 3.5% for payment processing.
Monetization winner - tie! ⚖️
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Design
This is a very subjective opinion but I find the Kit design more pleasing to the eye. It also feels more natural to go to the top of the screen to get to the nav bar rather than the left hand side, as with Beehiiv.
Design winner - Kit!
Conclusion
Whether you choose Kit or Beehiiv will depend on your email list size, your priorities and your personal taste. Luckily, both platforms allow you to start for free so I suggest you try them both and see which you prefer.
Here's a summary of reasons you might choose one or the other:
Want a free list of 10,000 subs if you recommend other newsletters? Kit
Want to support a bootstrapped company? Kit
Want to sell digital products besides subscriptions? Kit
Want to write emails with AI? Beehiiv
Want to monetize with ads without doing sales? Beehiiv
Want more of a website than just a newsletter? Beehiiv
