beehiiv Review 2026: New Plans, Real Costs and Monetization Limits

Good fit:

• Writers and media businesses whose newsletter is the product, and who want a hosted website and archive alongside it
• Publishers planning to earn from paid subscriptions, sponsorships or ads, and who want those tools in the same account
• Anyone moving off Substack who wants to keep paid subscribers. beehiiv documents a Stripe-based migration tool, covered below.

Look elsewhere if:

• You're a store that needs abandoned-cart, browse and post-purchase flows. Compare Klaviyo or Omnisend.
• You sell courses or digital products and live in automation sequences and tags. Compare Kit and read beehiiv vs Kit.
• You're a small business sending occasional promotions. A general platform such as MailerLite will cost less at most list sizes.
• You need a dedicated IP. beehiiv offers one only on Enterprise.

beehiiv bills by active subscribers: unique addresses you're sending to that haven't unsubscribed or been marked inactive. Unsubscribed, paused and pending subscribers don't count. The count is across every publication in your account. Every plan includes unlimited email sends. Prices are USD from beehiiv's pricing page on Oct 7, 2026.

Notes:

• Annual billing: beehiiv's FAQ says annual billing saves "up to 20%". By our calculation from the published tiers, the actual saving is about 13% to 17% depending on plan and tier.
• Free trial: Lite and Pro come with a 14-day trial that needs no card, but some features are excluded during it, including the Ad Network, recommendations, the 0% take rate, extra team seats, branding removal and the Send API.
• Hitting your tier limit: beehiiv doesn't move you up a tier automatically unless you turn on the "Auto-upgrade my plan tier" setting under Billing. Without it, you'll need to upgrade, and imports that would push you over the limit are held until you do.
• Pausing: monthly plans can be paused for up to 30 days and run on Free-plan limits while paused. Annual plans can't be paused.

What a weekly newsletter costs at four list sizes

Example only, calculated from the prices above. Assumptions: one publication, all subscribers active, annual billing, no Enterprise features. Sending frequency doesn't change the price because every plan has unlimited sends. Stripe fees on paid subscriptions are separate.

When to move up:

• Free → Lite: when you want to earn (paid subscriptions, ads, paid recommendations), run a referral program, automate a welcome series, or use your own domain.
• Lite → Pro: when you need to remove beehiiv branding, run more than one paid tier, build more than 10 automations, add teammates beyond two, or use dynamic content.

Having these features doesn't mean they'll earn. Revenue depends on your audience, niche, engagement and offer.

• Paid subscriptions (Lite and up): beehiiv takes 0% of subscription and digital-product revenue. Stripe's standard 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction applies. Payments run through a Stripe account you own, created or connected through beehiiv's setup. Lite allows one paid tier; Pro allows unlimited tiers.
• Ad Network (Lite and up): beehiiv matches your newsletter with advertisers. Ads pay per 1,000 unique opens (CPM) or per payable click (CPC), depending on the advertiser. Earnings are paid on the 20th of each month for the previous month into your beehiiv Wallet, and you withdraw to your bank through Stripe Express with no withdrawal fee. You need to be on a paid plan and actively sending; the Ad Network isn't available during a trial or in every region. beehiiv doesn't publish its share of ad revenue. Its pricing page shows an "Avg. $39/mo" ad-monetization figure. That's beehiiv's own average, not a projection for your newsletter.
• Paid recommendations (Lite and up): formerly Boosts. Publishers pay per acquired subscriber to be recommended by others, and beehiiv takes 20% of each paid recommendation. Advertisers must deposit at least $20.
• Sponsorship storefront and group subscriptions: Pro and up.

• Referral program (Lite and up): reward readers for referrals at milestones you set. Lite allows 3 milestones; Pro is unlimited.
• Recommendation network: recommending and being recommended by other beehiiv newsletters is free on every plan. Paid recommendations are covered above.
• Website and SEO: every plan includes a hosted website with your newsletter archive. Page limits depend on the plan.
• Polls and surveys (Lite and up): use responses to segment readers.

Segments are available on all plans (up to 20 conditions each), but publishing to a segment needs Lite or above. Automations start on Lite (up to 10 live automations), and Pro adds unlimited automations, click-triggered automations and A/B splits inside flows. A/B testing covers subject lines (up to four variants) and send times; beehiiv lists content testing as on its roadmap. beehiiv's automation suits newsletter flows: welcome, re-engagement, referral milestones. It isn't built for ecommerce flows or complex CRM-driven journeys.

BestSends hasn't run a documented inbox-placement test on beehiiv, so we don't score it on measured placement. According to beehiiv's documentation:

• When you send from your own domain, beehiiv gives you DNS records to set up SPF and DKIM, and DMARC has been required for custom sending domains since February 2024. beehiiv provides a DMARC setup wizard.
• Imports automatically filter duplicate, invalid, inactive and disposable-domain addresses.
• A re-engagement automation template can mark subscribers inactive after 90 days without opens or clicks. Automations need a paid plan.
• Dedicated IPs are Enterprise-only and need a custom domain. beehiiv says warm-up typically takes 6 to 8 weeks.

See DMARC and list hygiene.

Migration help: beehiiv's help articles point to paid specialists in its Experts Directory, and hands-on concierge migration is listed as an Enterprise feature. Export links expire after 24 hours.

Guides: Substack to beehiiv, Mailchimp to beehiiv, Kit to beehiiv, beehiiv to Kit.