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beehiiv

Best if the course sits beside a newsletter

2,500 free subscribers with unlimited sends, a custom domain and a website included at no cost.

4.5G240 reviews4.0Trustpilot386 reviews

Is beehiiv right for you?

Where you sellNone of the four course platforms appears in their integrations directory, so connecting one means routing it through Zapier, a separate subscription.

Use beehiiv if

  • You already have a list of up to 2,500 people and do not want to pay to email them.
  • You run, or plan to run, a paid membership as well as a one-off course.
  • You write to your people regularly, not just when you have something to sell.
  • You want to be able to change your mind later without losing anything.

Don't use beehiiv if

  • You want new subscribers to get a welcome email automatically, and you are not ready to pay. MailerLite does that for free.
  • You sell through Teachable, Kajabi, Podia or Thinkific and want the two joined up without paying for Zapier as well. None of those four appear in their integrations directory. Kit lists all four directly.

Start free on beehiivHow we test. Figures checked 9 September 2026.

The details that decide it

The things that bite six months in, read off beehiiv's own pages. Where we could not read a page reliably, the row is left out rather than guessed at.

Works with where you sellintegrations
No course platform appears in their integrations directory. They point to Zapier for anything not listed. Source
Getting your people inmigration
Self-serve, with a published walkthrough for moving from Substack. We found no done-for-you migration offer. Source
Do the emails actually arrive?deliverability
No self-reported inbox-placement percentage on beehiiv's own site. A Twilio SendGrid customer case study credits beehiiv with a 52% year-over-year increase in deliverability after adopting SendGrid's Engagement Quality Score, which is a reported outcome from a vendor migration story rather than an independent inbox-placement benchmark. Source
What else it costs
The Scale plan advertises a 0% take rate on paid subscriptions. Whether that 0% also applies on the free Launch plan is not stated on their pricing page. Source
Getting your list back outEasy to leave
Cancelling a paid plan alone does not delete anything: downgrading to the free Launch plan "keeps your account and all your content intact," per their own help centre. Data is destroyed only if you take the separate, explicit step of deleting the publication or workspace, which their docs call irreversible and warn will delete any subscribers and segments tied to it. Their terms also disclaim any general duty to preserve data after cancellation, so exporting your list is worth doing as routine practice either way. Source

What other people scored beehiiv

Not our scores. These are the public ratings on two review sites that have no connection to us, read on 6 September 2026. Each one links to the page it came from, so you can check it and read the reviews there.

  • The G2 score rests on 40 reviews, which is a small enough number that a handful of unhappy or delighted people can move it.

Both sites land within 0.5 of a point of each other, so the two sets of reviewers broadly agree.

We do not average these into one number. A blend would be our figure wearing someone else's authority, and it would hide it when two sets of customers disagree. Scores move, so treat the date above as the age of the reading, not a promise about today.

beehiiv, answered

Does beehiiv have a free plan?
Yes. beehiiv's free plan covers 2,500 subscribers and unlimited sends. We read this off their pricing page on 9 September 2026.
Can beehiiv send an automated welcome sequence on the free plan?
No. Automations need the Scale plan. If an automated welcome sequence is the thing you need on day one, MailerLite allows it free.
What does beehiiv cost once the free plan runs out?
The entry paid plan is Scale at $43/mo, at 1,000 subscribers. Prices on every platform here move with list size, so treat that as the floor rather than the bill.
What is the catch with beehiiv?
You cannot sell anything from the free plan: paid subscriptions and digital products both need a paid plan.

beehiiv against one other

Already down to two? These go straight to the head-to-head.

Moving to or from beehiiv

A page for each move we have the research to answer: what does not come with you, and what to do first.

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