Beehiiv vs. Substack: The Ultimate Newsletter Showdown for Creators
Demystifying two prominent newsletter platforms for the uninitiated offering a comprehensive guide based on years of content marketing strategy experience
Here’s a friend link for non-members of Medium hoping they share this important story for many to benefit from it for free.
While I am a fan of Substack, my business partner advocates for Beehiiv and has achieved notable success with it. She is a digital marketing expert, and I specialize in content marketing strategy as a consultant in her 7-figure business. Our skills complement each other. I am grateful for the free training she has provided as I help her with strategic initiatives. In return, I decided to share my insights to guide, help, and inspire beginners to find new income-earning opportunities.
I’d like to introduce Beehiiv and compare it to my preferred platform, Substack. Established in 2017, Substack has a more extensive user base and a mature set of features for monetization and community engagement compared to Beehiiv, which launched in 2021.
Beehiiv emphasizes ease of use, flexibility, and affiliate marketing. Substack has established tools, including social media like Notes (better than Facebook or even X Premium) and podcast integration, providing a competitive advantage in content marketing. I make this claim based on my three years of observations for both platforms as a content marketing strategist for over four decades.
Welcome to Beehiiv: A Comprehensive Overview for Beginners
In my partner’s vernacular, Beehiiv offers a ton of design and customization options for your newsletter. You can play around with custom fonts, colors, and layouts to really make your brand pop. Plus, they have lots of templates that can help your newsletter look both unique and professional.
Beehiiv has several great features for monetization. You can set up paid subscriptions with different tiers and pricing, tap into their ad network for targeted advertisements, and even use affiliate marketing to earn commissions by promoting products.
For those looking to grow their audience, Beehiiv offers robust growth tools, including referral programs that can help you expand your subscriber base. Their analytics provide detailed insights into subscriber behavior and engagement, which is perfect for refining your content strategy.
Community building is also a breeze with Beehiiv. They include features for reader comments and discussions right within the newsletter and offer integrations with social media platforms to help you engage with your audience.
The platform is known for its user-friendly interface, which makes it easy to create and manage newsletters. It even provides tools to help you migrate from other platforms, like Substack, which is a nice touch if you’re looking to make a switch.
Here are the plans. You have an option of $0, also known as No commitment or free plan.
Here’s how you can join and access their free plan:
Go to Beehiiv’s website: Navigate to
https://www.beehiiv.com/
Click “Get Started”: You shall find this button on their homepage.
Create an account: Fill out the registration form with your information.
Choose a plan: Select the free plan to get started as it will give you up to 2500 subscribers to begin with. My partner uses enterprise as she has over 3 million subscribers which cannot be covered by other plans.
When joining Beehiiv, they’ll ask you some friendly questions like the ones shown in the screen capture. Interestingly, they don’t mention Medium, likely because it doesn’t compare to dedicated newsletter platforms.
Medium’s newsletter feature is quite outdated; I even stopped using it because it embarrassed me a few times by sending incorrect information due to bugs. Meanwhile, my experiences with Substack, WordPress, and ConvertKit have been smooth and reliable.
The free plan offers basic features for building and sending newsletters. If you want more advanced features like custom domains, email automation, or the ability to remove Beehiiv branding, you can upgrade to a paid plan later on.
Then you can join the Beehiive Partner Program, similar to the Medium Partner Program but with more flexibility and more earning opportunities if you are a business-minded person like my partner.
She earns at least $100K monthly, and I don’t know anyone who can make that much money on Medium, but I know some smart friends who can earn 100K in Substack and $50K in NewsBreak. I am deeply grateful for their mentorship in helping me establish a philanthropic organization with a commercial arm. Their support as founding members and sponsors of my upcoming initiatives has been invaluable.
Unlike Medium, whenever I join, Behiiv greets me and informs me how my work is going.
Beehiiv offers user-friendly templates that help you get started within a day. It took me six months to learn Medium, and new writers often struggle with its interface, accidentally publishing stories instead of sending drafts due to the lack of proper tutorials or templates.
Here’s the dashboard neatly displaying all the features. When you hover over an item, a pop-up appears with options, all presented with an excellent user interface. My funny partner says even dummies can do it — no training is needed.
For example, when you click on the Monetize option, which is the most important for beginners, you will see three options.
Beehiiv features a user-friendly automation tool, as illustrated in the screen capture. It operates similarly to IFTTT, in which I use social media automation from my Medium publications and website, offering seamless automation for your tasks.
The Help feature offers a comprehensive suite that includes a knowledge base, tutorials, a chatbot, and a ticketing system (an option not provided by Substack) that relies solely on AI assistance. While AI is useful, having human support can be crucial for resolving more complex issues.
The beehiiv Ad Network allows you to monetize your newsletter with their premium sponsors. You need to click on the Start a Scale trial to join it as shown in the following screen capture.
This is called inboud opportunity. Beehiiv will routinely send you ad opportunities from premium brands that align with your newsletter.
They offer a seamless process for paid newsletter. All you need is to review, accept, schedule, and send. All within a single integrated platform. You need to click on Start a Scale trial, as shown in the screenshot. They also offer a free training video.
Introduction to Beehiive’s Boost Program
Let’s explore the Boost Program. Unlike Medium’s boost program, which can be quite subjective and often frustrating for writers, editors, and boost nominators like me or our lovely Aiden whose contract was terminated for unknown reasons, Beehiiv’s approach is much more straightforward and objective, similar to Substack’s.
The Boost Program on Beehiiv lets you monetize your newsletter by promoting other publications within the Beehiiv network. You can search for offers based on different categories and even by country.
Beehiiv supports many countries, including Australia, where my business partner has made a truckload of money with much less effort compared to what I put into Medium. She jokes that I must be an idiot for not switching sooner!
Let me show you some fantastic examples of Beehiiv’s Boost initiatives. I have made them more prominent so you can easily read the details and feel inspired to step out of the comfort zone you’ve created on Medium, where you might be earning $25 a month like most of my proteges by writing 30 masterpieces and waiting for subjective curators to boost your stories exceeding the boost guidelines and impressing the boost nominators like me.
Here is a screenshot of the opportunities when you join the Beehiiv network. You can access them via this panel and check your earnings in the Wallet, which is similar to Vocal Media.
Here is a sample newsletter story on Beehiiv by Orianne Gambino, a great contributor to my publications on Medium.com, to give you an idea. A tool to boost self-confidence: why celebration is important
Now, let me give you an overview of Substack for beginners. I have written several stories about Substack, but this one focuses on comparing it with Beehiiv to help beginners understand the differences.
Overview of Substack for Beginners: A Comparison with Beehiiv
Substack is also all about simplicity and ease of use, offering straightforward, clean newsletter layouts. While it has basic customization options, it doesn’t offer the same level of flexibility as Beehiiv.
Substack allows writers to set up paid subscriptions with free and paid tiers. They take a 10% cut of the subscription revenue, leaving writers with 90%. Unlike Beehiiv, Substack does not have an ad network and focuses entirely on subscription-based monetization.
Substack provides basic analytics, covering subscriber growth, open rates, and engagement. While it does include some growth tools like referral programs and basic sharing features, Beehiiv offers more robust options in this area.
Substack and Beehiiv support reader comments and discussions, fostering a community around newsletters. However, Substack’s integrations are more limited than Beehiiv's, though it works well with email and social media for promotion.
Substack's user-friendly interface is accessible to writers of all technical skill levels. It also provides migration tools to help writers migrate their existing audience and content to the platform.
In a nutshell, Beehiiv offers more design flexibility, while Substack focuses on simplicity. Both platforms support paid subscriptions, but Beehiiv includes an ad network and affiliate marketing options.
Beehiiv provides more detailed analytics and growth tools than Substack’s basic offerings. Both platforms support community features like comments and discussions, but Beehiiv offers more integrations. Both platforms are user-friendly, with Beehiiv providing more design flexibility and Substack focusing on simplicity.
In summary, Beehiiv excels for writers seeking extensive customization, diverse monetization options, and advanced growth tools. On the other hand, Substack is perfect for those who prioritize a straightforward, clean design and focus mainly on subscription-based revenue, much like me and many writers in my network. However, my partner, a digital marketing expert, holds a different view.
If you are an absolute beginner with Substack, you may check out this story.
How to Start Substack Instantly & Own Your Content/Audience Effectively
Expanding Horizons for Writers by Leveraging the Power of Both Medium and Substack with a Diversification Strategy
If you have already started but failed Substack due to the comfort zone you created on Medium.com, where words matter a lot, here is some guidance for you with a checklist based on my experience.
Why Your Substack Isn’t Taking Off & How Medium Might Be Holding You Back Unintentionally
Success Requires Open Mind, Strategy, Plan, and Effort: Why a New Mindset and Meaningful Engagement Matter on Substack…
Whether it is Substack, Beehiiv, Converkit, WordPress, or Ghost, every writer needs a newsletter, as I explained in the following story. I have several of them and never feel dependent on any platform. As my Aussie friend Tim Denning wisely says, if these platforms close one day, we will still continue our business with joy.
Every Writer Needs a Newsletter
Why we created a new Substack publication on Medium and how we will support writers through extended collaborationmedium.com
Here is why I will spend 80% of my time on Substack but only 5% on Medium, as advised by my wise mentors.
Why My Wise Mentors Advised Me 80% Substack, 15% NewsBreak, 5% Medium for My Writing Effort
Conclusions
This story is not an endorsement to leave Medium, far from it. It is an invitation to explore the vibrant community and try complementary platforms while hoping the platform improves its usability and fairness for genuine writers, free from scammers and spammers.
I personally continue to value Medium but also create connections with other platforms like Substack, Beehiiv, NewsBreak, Quora, and X Premium, which complement, rather than compete with, Medium.
Unfortunately, Medium has consistently censored content related to these platforms, possibly labeling them low-impact content without understanding the nuances. I hope they reconsider this approach, as it risks discouraging valuable creators like myself and many others thriving on platforms like Substack.
The supportive and collaborative environment on Substack and its social media platform Notes has been incredibly encouraging. I wish Medium would offer similar opportunities and nurture a more positive experience for its contributors.
My goal is to build a bridge between Medium and Substack to create a synergistic effect for both writers and platforms. To achieve this, my volunteer editors and I have launched a new publication titled Substack on ILLUMINATION. Every authentic writer is welcome to join.
This initiative aims to empower writers on both Medium and Substack. I hope Medium will support this valuable publication, as it has the potential to enhance content quality on the platform and reduce the prevalence of AI-generated and plagiarized content.
If you want to join my network and understand the value of interviews, you can contact me via my website. I will happily support you in growing your audience on both platforms with collaboration and joy.
The Importance and Remarkable Benefits of Interviews in My Professional and Personal Life
Why I have interviewed hundreds of professionals and still interview writers on multiple platforms, amplifying their…medium.com
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
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I publish my health and wellness stories on EUPHORIA and share distilled versions on SUBSTACK. My posts do not include professional or health advice. I only document my reviews, observations, experiences, and perspectives to provide information and create awareness.
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This is a very helpful story for me Dr Yildiz. I do affiliate marketing and transfer my skills to Beehiiv. Thank you for writing it. I am glad it is easy to use. Like you I also enjoy Substack, and even more than Medium now as my stories get no views and I cannot gain any followers. They put me in distribution jail like many writers. It is so disheartening. I hope they don't censor you content there and hope this piece finds many readers who can benefit from it.
I am slightly familiar with Beehiiv because some of my clients use it, and I have had to be a recipient of files from their Beehiiv. Reading this article, I can see there is a lot to it, and it would be worth the effort to plow deep. I'll wait, for now, though, because I've got a full plate. Thanks for the helpful overview.