If you want the newsletter itself to make money — paid subscriptions, sponsorships, referrals — Beehiiv is the better tool and usually the cheaper one. If the newsletter is a channel for selling something else — courses, coaching, digital downloads, a product — Kit (the platform formerly called ConvertKit) has the deeper automation and commerce plumbing to run that business.
That single distinction settles most of the decision. Both tools can send a beautiful newsletter to 10,000 people. They diverge on what happens when you try to turn that list into revenue, and on what you pay to get there.
The honest bottom line
- Pick Beehiiv if the newsletter is the product: you plan to sell paid subscriptions, run sponsorships, or grow fast through referrals and cross-promotion. Its free tier and monetization stack are purpose-built for this.
- Pick Kit if you're a creator selling your own products — courses, ebooks, memberships — and you want a list of 10,000 or fewer to stay free while you set up sophisticated tag-based automations.
- On raw cost above a few thousand subscribers, Beehiiv wins. Kit's paid plans got materially more expensive after a September 2025 price increase.
- On free-tier generosity for a small list, Kit wins — 10,000 free subscribers versus Beehiiv's 2,500.
Side-by-side
| Beehiiv | Kit (ConvertKit) | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Up to 2,500 subscribers, unlimited sends | Up to 10,000 subscribers, unlimited sends |
| What the free tier gates | No automations, no monetization | 1 automation, 1 landing page, no integrations, Kit branding |
| Entry paid price | Scale from ~$43/mo (annual) | Creator from $39/mo (1,000 subs) |
| Price at 10,000 subs | Scale tier (scales with list) | $139/mo on Creator |
| Native paid subscriptions | Yes (Stripe) | Yes (paid newsletters) |
| Ad network / sponsorships | Yes — built-in Ad Network + Boosts | No |
| Sell own products | Digital products (paid plans) | Creator Commerce (all plans) |
| Automation depth | Good, gated to paid | Excellent, tag-based, unlimited on Creator |
| Email design | Modern, flexible editor | Simpler, fewer templates, limited editing |
| Best for | Newsletter-as-a-business, media brands | Creators selling courses/products |
Prices are entry points; both platforms charge more as your list grows. Always confirm the current number on the pricing page before committing.
Beehiiv: built for the newsletter economy
Beehiiv was created by early Morning Brew operators, and it shows. Every feature assumes the newsletter is the business, not a side channel.
The free Launch plan covers up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends, subscriber and campaign analytics, and audience-growth tools like the recommendation network. That's a real free tier you can run a serious newsletter on — with two important catches: automations are locked, and you can't monetize.
Monetization is where Beehiiv separates itself. On the Scale plan (from about $43/month billed annually) you unlock three revenue streams most email tools simply don't have:
- Paid subscriptions — gate premium content and collect recurring revenue through Stripe, the way Substack works, but without Substack taking 10% of your revenue.
- The Ad Network — Beehiiv matches your newsletter with sponsors and handles the deals, so you can earn from sponsorships without a sales team.
- Boosts — get paid when you recommend other newsletters, or pay to grow your own.
The Max plan (from about $96/month annually) adds removal of Beehiiv branding, priority support, and more advanced features for larger operations. Enterprise is custom-priced above 100,000 subscribers.
The honest weaknesses. The free plan is genuinely limited — no automations at all means you can't even build a welcome sequence until you pay, which is a real gap for a tool that's otherwise beginner-friendly. The Ad Network and Boosts aren't switches you flip; they depend on eligibility and network demand, and some creators have reported losing access without a clear explanation. And if you're a course seller who lives in automations and integrations, Beehiiv's tooling there is thinner than Kit's. It's a publishing-and-monetization platform first, a marketing-automation platform second.
Kit (ConvertKit): built for creators who sell
Kit has spent a decade serving bloggers, authors, course creators, and coaches, and its strengths reflect that audience. It treats your list as a set of tagged, segmented humans you nurture toward a purchase — not just an audience you broadcast to.
The free Newsletter plan is unusually generous: up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited emails, unlimited forms, and unlimited landing pages. For a creator building an audience before there's revenue, that's four times the headroom Beehiiv gives you for free.
Where Kit earns its keep is automation. Its visual automation builder and tag-based logic are among the best in the category — trigger sequences off link clicks, purchases, form submissions, or tags, and branch subscribers down different paths. On the paid Creator plan these become unlimited, Kit branding disappears, you get live chat support, and free migration from another platform is included. Creator Commerce (available even on free) lets you sell digital products and take payments without a separate checkout tool.
Kit also supports paid newsletters, so it can run a subscription publication — but that's a feature bolted onto a creator-marketing platform, not the center of gravity it is at Beehiiv. There's no ad network or sponsorship marketplace.
The honest weaknesses. First, price. Kit raised prices significantly in September 2025 — the Creator plan jumped from $29 to $39/month at 1,000 subscribers, roughly a 34% increase, with larger jumps at higher tiers. At 10,000 subscribers you're paying $139/month on Creator, and advanced reporting, subscriber scoring, and the referral system live behind Creator Pro (from $79/month at 1,000 subs). Even subject-line A/B testing is gated to Creator Pro — the first paid tier doesn't include it.
Second, email design. Kit's editor is functional but plain: fewer templates than competitors, limited customization, and no true drag-and-drop layout builder. If you want visually rich, image-heavy emails, you'll feel constrained. Kit's philosophy is that plain-text-style emails convert better — which is often true — but it removes the choice.
How they compare to the obvious alternatives
Neither tool exists in a vacuum, and honesty demands naming the rest of the field:
- Substack is the frictionless way to launch a paid newsletter, but it takes 10% of your subscription revenue and owns the relationship with your readers. Beehiiv gives you the same paid-subscription model without the revenue cut and with real list ownership — which is exactly why serious publishers migrate off Substack.
- Ghost is the open-source favorite for paid publications; powerful, but you either self-host (technical) or pay for Ghost Pro. Great if you want a full website plus newsletter and don't mind the setup.
- Mailchimp is the incumbent for general small-business email, but it's expensive at scale and not designed around the newsletter-as-a-business model either of these tools targets.
If your real need is broad marketing automation for an SMB rather than a newsletter specifically, it's worth a look at MailerLite (cheapest for a small list with a proper editor), GetResponse (webinars and automation in one), or ActiveCampaign (the deepest automation of the group). But for a newsletter, the Beehiiv-vs-Kit decision is the right frame.
The verdict
Pick [Beehiiv](https://www.beehiiv.com) if:
- The newsletter itself is the revenue engine — paid subscriptions, sponsorships, or both.
- You want a genuine growth machine: the recommendation network, Boosts, and Ad Network are unmatched.
- You'll cross 3,000–10,000 subscribers and want monetization to scale with you at a lower cost than Kit.
- You're leaving Substack and refuse to keep paying a 10% revenue tax.
Pick [Kit](https://kit.com) if:
- You sell your own products — courses, coaching, ebooks — and the list is the funnel.
- You want up to 10,000 subscribers free while you build, with room to grow before paying.
- Sophisticated, tag-based automation is central to how you sell.
- You value a decade of creator-focused polish and don't need rich visual email design.
The clean test: if you could imagine charging readers to receive the newsletter, start with Beehiiv. If you could imagine the newsletter selling something else you make, start with Kit. Both offer free tiers with no card required — the fastest way to decide is to build your welcome email in each and see which one gets out of your way.