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Comparison

The best beehiiv alternatives

beehiiv gives you 2,500 subscribers free with unlimited sending and takes 0% of your paid subscription revenue, which is a hard offer to argue with. People leave when the newsletter turns into a product, or when $43/mo at 1,000 subscribers stops making sense for something that isn't monetising.

Nineteen alternatives below, with what each costs, what its free tier really gets you, and what it is bad at. We make one of them. It's marked, and its gaps are listed like everyone else's.

19 options Prices checked 2 August 2026 No affiliate links
The short answer

Pick by the reason you're leaving

Nobody replaces a platform in the abstract. Something specific stopped working. Start from that, not from a feature matrix.

Closest like-for-likeKit

Creator-focused, 10,000 free subscribers, and commerce built in.

Zero fixed costSubstack

Free to publish at any size — but a 10% cut of paid subscriptions forever.

Cheapest at scaleEmailOctopus

$9/mo billed yearly if you only need to send the newsletter.

Best automationActiveCampaign

When the newsletter becomes a funnel with branching logic.

Best when the newsletter has a product behind itEmail Bump

Behavioural segments, flows and a transactional API on the same plan. That's us.

Context

What actually goes wrong with beehiiv

beehiiv's free tier and 0% take rate are genuinely excellent. The friction shows up when your needs stop being publishing.

$43/mo at 1,000 subscribers is a lot if you aren't monetising. Scale is priced for a newsletter that makes money — the ad network and paid subscriptions are what you're buying. For a company newsletter with no revenue attached, MailerLite is $12 and EmailOctopus is $9 for the same sending job.

Removing branding costs $96/mo. beehiiv's branding stays on your emails through Launch and Scale. Removing it means Max at $96/mo, which is a steep price for a footer.

It's a publisher, not an automation platform. No behavioural segmentation from product events, no multi-step lifecycle flows branching on what someone did in an app. Excellent at sending an issue to a list; not built to run onboarding for a SaaS.

The free plan holds back the good parts. Launch excludes the ad network, paid subscriptions and the Send API. So the 2,500 free subscribers are for publishing only — the moment you want to earn from it, you're on Scale.

The baseline

What beehiiv costs, from their own pricing page

Everything below is compared against these numbers, read on 2 August 2026.

At 1,000 subscribers

The plans

$0
Up to 2,500 subscribersLaunch — Unlimited sends, custom domains, API excluding the Send API
$43/mo
$517/yearScale — Ad network, paid subscriptions at a 0% take rate
$96/mo
$1,151/yearMax — Removes beehiiv branding, priority support
Custom
CustomEnterprise
Worth knowing

The fine print

  • Unlimited email sends on every plan, including the free one.
  • beehiiv takes 0% of paid subscription revenue — you pay only Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30.
  • Removing beehiiv branding requires Max at $96/mo.
  • Launch excludes the ad network, paid subscriptions and the Send API.
  • Custom domains and API access are on the free plan, which is unusual.
Side by side

All 19, on the things that decide it

ProviderStarts atFree tierWhat it coversLicenceData region
Email BumpHosted$19/mo at 10,000 contacts5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a monthThe whole product — campaigns, live segments, multi-step flows and behavioural triggersProprietaryUnited States (Amazon SES, us-east-1)
Kit (formerly ConvertKit)HostedCreator $33/mo at 1,000 subscribers ($390/year)Up to 10,000 subscribers with one basic visual automationBroadcasts, sequences, visual automations, landing pages, forms and digital product salesProprietaryUnited States
SubstackHostedFree to publish; 10% of paid subscription revenuePublishing is free at any list sizeNewsletter publishing, paid subscriptions, a reader app and a discovery networkProprietaryUnited States
MailerLiteHostedComfort from $12/mo; Power from $25/mo250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, 2 seats, 3 automationsCampaigns, automations, landing pages, forms and websitesProprietaryEuropean Union (Lithuania)
EmailOctopusHostedPro from $9/mo billed yearly2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, with EmailOctopus brandingCampaigns, simple automations, landing pages and formsProprietaryUnited Kingdom
BrevoHostedPaid plans start at 5,000 emails a month; the price scales with send volume300 emails a day, forever, with contact storage into the tens of thousandsCampaigns, automation, plus SMS, WhatsApp, a CRM and landing pagesProprietaryEuropean Union (France)
MailchimpHostedEssentials $13/mo at 500 contacts250 contacts and 500 sends a month, capped at 250 a day, 1 seatCampaigns, journeys, landing pages, forms, ads and a light CRMProprietaryUnited States
ActiveCampaignHostedPriced per tier and contact count; no static price table is publishedNone — a 14-day trialThe whole product, plus a sales CRM on the higher tiersProprietaryUnited States (Chicago-headquartered)
GetResponseHostedStarter $19/mo at 1,000 contacts ($15.58/mo billed annually)None — a 14-day trial with feature limitsCampaigns, automation, funnels, landing pages, webinars and coursesProprietaryEuropean Union (Poland)
AWeberHostedLite $15/mo at 500 subscribers; $35/mo at 2,500None — a 14-day trial with no subscriber limitCampaigns, automations, landing pages and sales trackingProprietaryUnited States
Campaign MonitorHostedLite and Essentials are priced by contact count on a slider500 contacts and 500 emails a monthCampaigns, automated journeys, segments and a website builder on PremierProprietaryUnited States, with Australian origins
MoosendHostedPro is priced by subscriber count on a calculatorNone — a 30-day trial with no credit cardCampaigns, automation, landing pages, forms, plus SMTP and transactional emailProprietaryEuropean Union (Greece)
LoopsHostedPriced by subscribed contacts via a slider, not published as a fixed table1,000 contacts and 4,000 sends a month, with a Loops footer on your emailCampaigns and loops (their term for automations), plus transactionalProprietaryUnited States
KlaviyoHostedPriced by active profiles on a slider; no static price table is published250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month, plus $5 of mobile messagesCampaigns, flows, ecommerce segmentation, SMS and pushProprietaryUnited States
OmnisendHostedStandard $11.20/mo for 500 contacts; Pro $41.30/mo for 2,500250 contacts, 500 emails a month and 500 web push notificationsEcommerce campaigns and automations, SMS and web pushProprietaryEuropean Union (Lithuania)
HubSpot Marketing HubHostedStarter $7/mo per seat with 1,000 marketing contactsFree Marketing Hub for up to 2 users, with basic email, forms and live chatCampaigns, omni-channel workflows, landing pages, ads and a full CRMProprietaryUnited States, with EU hosting available
FluentCRMSelf-hostable$90/year for one site; $174/year for fiveA free version of the pluginCampaigns, sequences, automations, segmentation and forms, inside WordPressCommercial plugin, with a free editionWherever your WordPress site is hosted
MauticSelf-hostableFree to run; you pay for hosting and a sending providerSelf-hosted — the software is freeFull campaign builder, segmentation, landing pages, forms and lead scoringOpen sourceWherever you deploy it
listmonkSelf-hostableFree to run; you pay your SMTP provider for the sendingSelf-hosted — the software is freeLists, subscribers, campaigns and templatesAGPL-3.0Wherever you deploy it

Read off each vendor's own pricing or documentation page on 2 August 2026. Where a vendor renders prices from a slider and publishes no static table, the cell says so instead of repeating a number from someone's affiliate post.

In detail

Every option, and what it's bad at

01Hosted service

Email Bump

Best for: Teams tired of send multipliers, seat limits and paid add-ons

Contact-priced marketing automation with the transactional API included rather than sold as an add-on. Sending isn't a multiple of your list size, seats aren't rationed, and unsubscribed contacts stop counting toward the bill.

Starts at
$19/mo at 10,000 contacts
Free tier
5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a month
Marketing
The whole product — campaigns, live segments, multi-step flows and behavioural triggers
Data region
United States (Amazon SES, us-east-1)
What it does well
  • No send multiplier. Most of this list caps you at 10–15× your contact count; sending here is uncapped under fair use.
  • Unlimited team seats on every plan, including free — seats are the quiet upsell everywhere else.
  • Unlimited sending domains, also on every plan.
  • Unsubscribed and bounced contacts stop being billable, so the number you pay for is your real audience.
  • The transactional API, SMTP and inbound email are included, not add-ons.
  • A CLI, an MCP server and agent skills cover the same surface as the API, including creating the account itself.
What to watch for
  • No sales CRM — no pipelines, deals or lead scoring. If you're replacing ActiveCampaign's sales side, this isn't it.
  • No SMS or WhatsApp. Email and inbound email only.
  • No landing page or form builder.
  • US-only sending; no EU data region.
  • A much smaller integration catalogue than the incumbents' hundreds of connectors.
  • The free plan puts a 'Powered by Email Bump' badge on marketing footers.
02Hosted service

Kit (formerly ConvertKit)

Best for: Creators, newsletters and anyone selling their own digital products

Built for individual creators rather than marketing departments, and it shows in the best way: unlimited sending, a free tier that goes to 10,000 subscribers, and commerce built in.

Starts at
Creator $33/mo at 1,000 subscribers ($390/year)
Free tier
Up to 10,000 subscribers with one basic visual automation
Marketing
Broadcasts, sequences, visual automations, landing pages, forms and digital product sales
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • The most generous free tier here by subscriber count — 10,000, not 250.
  • Unlimited email broadcasts on every paid plan; no send multiplier.
  • Sells digital products and subscriptions natively.
  • Pro includes unlimited users, which most competitors reserve for their top tier.
What to watch for
  • The free tier allows one basic automation — the sequences are the paid product.
  • Creator is $33/mo at 1,000 subscribers, well above MailerLite or Mailchimp at that size.
  • Commerce takes a transaction fee on product sales.
  • Built around a creator's mental model; a B2B lifecycle team may find it thin.
03Hosted service

Substack

Best for: Writers who want zero setup and don't mind paying a share of revenue

Free to publish, and Substack takes 10% of every paid subscription plus Stripe's fee. There's nothing to configure and nothing to own — the network and the discovery are the product, and the 10% is the price.

Starts at
Free to publish; 10% of paid subscription revenue
Free tier
Publishing is free at any list size
Marketing
Newsletter publishing, paid subscriptions, a reader app and a discovery network
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • No monthly fee at any subscriber count — you pay only when you earn.
  • Discovery and recommendations that genuinely grow lists.
  • The reader app and network effect have no equivalent elsewhere.
  • Zero setup: no DNS, no deliverability, no templates.
What to watch for
  • 10% of paid subscription revenue, plus Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30, forever.
  • At $10,000/month in subscriptions that's $1,000/month — far above any flat-fee platform.
  • No automation, no segmentation, no transactional email.
  • Your audience lives on their platform, under their discovery rules.
04Hosted service

MailerLite

Best for: Small teams who want a clean builder and a cheap entry price

The most consistently recommended ActiveCampaign alternative for people who found ActiveCampaign too much. Well-designed, inexpensive, and the Power plan drops the send multiplier entirely.

Starts at
Comfort from $12/mo; Power from $25/mo
Free tier
250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, 2 seats, 3 automations
Marketing
Campaigns, automations, landing pages, forms and websites
Data region
European Union (Lithuania)
What it does well
  • Power removes the send cap entirely — unlimited monthly emails and unlimited seats.
  • $12/mo entry is among the cheapest real plans in this category.
  • The editor and templates are genuinely pleasant to use.
  • 24/7 support even on the cheaper paid tier.
What to watch for
  • Free is 250 subscribers and 3 active automations — small.
  • Comfort caps you at 50 active automations and a 10× send multiple.
  • Automation logic is shallower than ActiveCampaign's; complex branching gets awkward.
  • No sales CRM.
05Hosted service

EmailOctopus

Best for: The cheapest way to email a list of a few thousand people

Deliberately minimal and priced accordingly. No CRM, no funnels, no ecommerce data model — a list, a campaign, a simple automation, and a bill that stays small.

Starts at
Pro from $9/mo billed yearly
Free tier
2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, with EmailOctopus branding
Marketing
Campaigns, simple automations, landing pages and forms
Data region
United Kingdom
What it does well
  • 2,500 free subscribers and 10,000 free emails a month — ten times most free tiers.
  • Pro adds unlimited users, which is rare at $9/mo.
  • Reports kept forever on Pro, against 30 days on free.
  • Nothing to learn. It does one thing.
What to watch for
  • Free puts EmailOctopus branding on your email and limits you to 1 landing page and 1 form.
  • Automation is basic — no branching journeys.
  • No CRM, no SMS, no ecommerce data.
  • Not the tool you grow into.
06Hosted service

Brevo

Best for: Large lists you email infrequently, and teams that want EU-based billing

Formerly Sendinblue. The structural difference from almost everything else here is that Brevo meters emails sent rather than contacts stored — so a big dormant list costs nothing to keep.

Starts at
Paid plans start at 5,000 emails a month; the price scales with send volume
Free tier
300 emails a day, forever, with contact storage into the tens of thousands
Marketing
Campaigns, automation, plus SMS, WhatsApp, a CRM and landing pages
Data region
European Union (France)
What it does well
  • Priced on emails sent, not contacts stored — the cheapest way to hold a large, rarely-mailed list.
  • French company with EU data handling, which settles a lot of procurement reviews.
  • SMS, WhatsApp, CRM and landing pages included in the platform rather than bolted on.
  • The free plan is genuinely usable for a small list.
What to watch for
  • The free plan's 300-a-day ceiling is a hard daily wall, not a monthly allowance.
  • Breadth over depth — the automation builder is less capable than ActiveCampaign's.
  • Deliverability on shared infrastructure gets mixed reports; warm up carefully.
  • The interface carries the scars of a product that has absorbed a lot of modules.
07Hosted service

Mailchimp

Best for: Teams who need the name procurement already recognises

The default answer for a decade, now part of Intuit. Enormous integration catalogue, and a pricing model built around send multipliers and seat counts that gets expensive at the top.

Starts at
Essentials $13/mo at 500 contacts
Free tier
250 contacts and 500 sends a month, capped at 250 a day, 1 seat
Marketing
Campaigns, journeys, landing pages, forms, ads and a light CRM
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • The largest integration catalogue in the category.
  • Template and content tooling that non-marketers can use without training.
  • Predictive segmentation and reporting on Standard and above.
  • Every agency and freelancer already knows it.
What to watch for
  • Free is 250 contacts and 500 sends — a demo, not a plan.
  • Send multipliers apply: 10× on Essentials, 12× on Standard, 15× on Premium.
  • Seats are rationed at 1 / 3 / 5 until Premium, which is $350/mo at 500 contacts.
  • You pay for unsubscribed contacts unless you archive them yourself.
08Hosted service

ActiveCampaign

Best for: Teams that need marketing and sales automation in one system

The deepest automation builder in the mid-market, with a CRM alongside it. Four tiers, priced on contacts, with sending capped at a multiple of your list and most of the interesting parts sold as add-ons.

Starts at
Priced per tier and contact count; no static price table is published
Free tier
None — a 14-day trial
Marketing
The whole product, plus a sales CRM on the higher tiers
Data region
United States (Chicago-headquartered)
What it does well
  • Automation depth that most of this list doesn't match.
  • Marketing and sales in one system, with custom objects on Enterprise.
  • Over 1,000 integrations.
  • Free migration and onboarding, and no setup fees.
What to watch for
  • Sending is capped at a multiple of your contacts: 10× on Starter and Plus, 12× on Pro, 15× on Enterprise.
  • Seats are rationed — 1 user on Starter and Plus, 3 on Pro, 5 on Enterprise.
  • Starter limits automations to 5 actions each.
  • CRM, transactional email and SMS are paid add-ons on top of the plan.
  • No free plan, and the price scales with contacts whether or not you email them.
09Hosted service

GetResponse

Best for: Course creators and anyone who needs webinars in the same tool

An all-in-one that includes things nobody else bundles — webinars, course hosting, a website builder — with unlimited sending on every plan.

Starts at
Starter $19/mo at 1,000 contacts ($15.58/mo billed annually)
Free tier
None — a 14-day trial with feature limits
Marketing
Campaigns, automation, funnels, landing pages, webinars and courses
Data region
European Union (Poland)
What it does well
  • Unlimited monthly email sends on every plan, including the $19 entry tier.
  • Webinars, courses and a website builder in the same subscription.
  • Polish company, so EU data handling comes as standard.
  • Abandoned-cart recovery and sales funnels on Marketer.
What to watch for
  • Starter allows exactly 1 automation workflow — the automation is really on Marketer at $59/mo.
  • No free plan.
  • Users are capped at 3 on Starter and 5 on Marketer and Creator.
  • Breadth means some modules feel less finished than the email core.
10Hosted service

AWeber

Best for: Small businesses who want unlimited users at a low tier

One of the oldest email tools still standing, and it has aged better than most. The Plus plan gives unlimited users at $30/mo — a seat policy the newer platforms reserve for their top tiers — and there's a done-for-you setup service if you'd rather someone else built it.

Starts at
Lite $15/mo at 500 subscribers; $35/mo at 2,500
Free tier
None — a 14-day trial with no subscriber limit
Marketing
Campaigns, automations, landing pages and sales tracking
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Plus gives unlimited users at $30/mo — most competitors charge far more for that.
  • Unlimited landing pages and automations on Plus.
  • A Done For You tier that includes a 1:1 setup call and weekly newsletter drafts.
  • Decades of deliverability experience behind it.
What to watch for
  • Sending is capped at 10× subscribers on Lite and 12× on Plus.
  • Lite allows only 3 automations and 3 landing pages.
  • No free plan — a 14-day trial.
  • Sales tracking carries a 0.6% transaction fee.
11Hosted service

Campaign Monitor

Best for: Design-led teams and agencies sending on behalf of clients

The prettiest templates in the category, and a long history with agencies managing multiple client accounts. Now part of Marigold, with a free tier and unlimited sends from the Essentials plan up.

Starts at
Lite and Essentials are priced by contact count on a slider
Free tier
500 contacts and 500 emails a month
Marketing
Campaigns, automated journeys, segments and a website builder on Premier
Data region
United States, with Australian origins
What it does well
  • Unlimited email sends from Essentials up — no multiplier.
  • Template and design quality that agencies keep coming back for.
  • Send-time optimisation and engagement segments on Premier.
  • 10% off annual plans and 15% off for non-profits.
What to watch for
  • Lite caps sending at 5× subscribers a month.
  • The free plan is 500 contacts and 500 emails — an evaluation allowance.
  • Dollar amounts aren't published as a static table; the page prices by contact band.
  • Automation is shallower than ActiveCampaign's.
12Hosted service

Moosend

Best for: Unlimited sending on a budget, with a long trial to prove it

A Sitecore-owned platform that leads on unlimited sending and a 30-day no-card trial. There's also a credits model — buy 350,000 sends for $350 — which suits anyone whose volume is lumpy.

Starts at
Pro is priced by subscriber count on a calculator
Free tier
None — a 30-day trial with no credit card
Marketing
Campaigns, automation, landing pages, forms, plus SMTP and transactional email
Data region
European Union (Greece)
What it does well
  • Unlimited email campaigns and sends on every paid plan.
  • A 30-day trial with no card, which is unusually long.
  • A credits option — $350 for 350,000 sends — for irregular volume.
  • SMTP and transactional email included rather than a separate product.
What to watch for
  • No permanent free plan.
  • Pro pricing is a calculator rather than a published table.
  • Smaller integration catalogue than the big names.
  • Brand recognition is low, which matters if you need internal buy-in.
13Hosted service

Loops

Best for: SaaS teams who want lifecycle email without assembling it

Contact-priced, opinionated, and quick to set up, with transactional sending folded in at no extra charge. Less configurable than ActiveCampaign by design.

Starts at
Priced by subscribed contacts via a slider, not published as a fixed table
Free tier
1,000 contacts and 4,000 sends a month, with a Loops footer on your email
Marketing
Campaigns and loops (their term for automations), plus transactional
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Transactional sending included rather than billed as a second product.
  • Genuinely fast to set up — hours, not a fortnight.
  • The free plan runs a small product.
  • Clean, modern interface with no legacy modules.
What to watch for
  • Free adds Loops branding and caps you at 10 emails/second.
  • Paid pricing sits behind a slider, so budgeting means signing up.
  • Automation is deliberately simpler than ActiveCampaign's.
  • No CRM, SMS or landing pages.
14Hosted service

Klaviyo

Best for: Ecommerce, where revenue attribution per email is the point

The ecommerce standard. Deep Shopify and store-data integration, segmentation built on purchase behaviour, and reporting that ties sends to revenue better than anything else here.

Starts at
Priced by active profiles on a slider; no static price table is published
Free tier
250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month, plus $5 of mobile messages
Marketing
Campaigns, flows, ecommerce segmentation, SMS and push
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Best-in-class ecommerce data model — orders, products and browsing drive segments directly.
  • Revenue attribution per flow and per campaign, out of the box.
  • SMS and push in the same platform as email.
  • Predictive analytics on customer lifetime value.
What to watch for
  • Free is 250 profiles and 500 sends a month.
  • Priced on active profiles, and the definition of active is broader than 'subscribed'.
  • It gets expensive fast as the list grows; that's the standard complaint.
  • Overkill, and overpriced, if you aren't an ecommerce store.
15Hosted service

Omnisend

Best for: Small ecommerce stores that want Klaviyo's shape at a lower price

Ecommerce-focused automation with email, SMS and web push in one plan, priced well below Klaviyo at the sizes most stores actually operate at.

Starts at
Standard $11.20/mo for 500 contacts; Pro $41.30/mo for 2,500
Free tier
250 contacts, 500 emails a month and 500 web push notifications
Marketing
Ecommerce campaigns and automations, SMS and web push
Data region
European Union (Lithuania)
What it does well
  • Pro gives unlimited monthly emails at $41.30/mo.
  • Web push is unlimited from the Standard plan.
  • SMS from $0.007 with no separate platform fee.
  • Free migration and 24/7 support even on the entry plan.
What to watch for
  • Free is 250 contacts and 500 emails.
  • Standard's 6,000-email allowance is small if you send weekly.
  • Built for stores; a B2B SaaS will find the data model a poor fit.
  • Reporting is thinner than Klaviyo's.
16Hosted service

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Best for: Companies buying a CRM and getting marketing with it

Not really an email tool — a CRM platform with marketing attached. The free tier is real and useful; the jump to the tier with the automation people actually want is one of the steepest in software.

Starts at
Starter $7/mo per seat with 1,000 marketing contacts
Free tier
Free Marketing Hub for up to 2 users, with basic email, forms and live chat
Marketing
Campaigns, omni-channel workflows, landing pages, ads and a full CRM
Data region
United States, with EU hosting available
What it does well
  • The free CRM is genuinely free and genuinely useful.
  • Starter at $7/mo per seat is the cheapest entry on this page.
  • One system for marketing, sales, service and content.
  • The reporting and attribution an executive team will ask for.
What to watch for
  • Professional is $800/mo with a $3,000 mandatory onboarding fee. Enterprise is $3,600/mo plus $7,000 onboarding.
  • Unlimited workflows — the actual automation — start at Professional.
  • Additional core seats are $45/mo each.
  • Marketing contacts are billed separately from CRM contacts, which surprises people.
17Commercial plugin, with a free edition

FluentCRM

Best for: WordPress sites that want the CRM inside WordPress

A WordPress plugin rather than a SaaS. Contacts, sequences and automations live in your own WordPress database, and you bring your own sending provider — so the licence is a flat annual fee no matter how big the list gets.

Starts at
$90/year for one site; $174/year for five
Free tier
A free version of the plugin
Marketing
Campaigns, sequences, automations, segmentation and forms, inside WordPress
Data region
Wherever your WordPress site is hosted
What it does well
  • Flat annual licence — unlimited contacts, no per-contact pricing at all.
  • Data stays in your own WordPress database.
  • Deep integration with WooCommerce, LearnDash, membership plugins and the rest of the ecosystem.
  • The genuine answer to 'ActiveCampaign alternative for WordPress'.
What to watch for
  • It doesn't send email. You still pay Amazon SES, Mailgun or similar underneath.
  • Sending at volume from WordPress cron is fragile; large lists need care.
  • Deliverability is entirely your problem.
  • If your site goes down, so does your marketing automation.
18Open source

Mautic

Best for: Owning your marketing automation stack outright

The largest open-source marketing automation project — campaigns, segmentation, landing pages, lead scoring — running on your own PHP and MySQL. Free as software, expensive in attention.

Starts at
Free to run; you pay for hosting and a sending provider
Free tier
Self-hosted — the software is free
Marketing
Full campaign builder, segmentation, landing pages, forms and lead scoring
Data region
Wherever you deploy it
What it does well
  • No per-contact pricing, ever. The list can be any size.
  • Feature coverage close to the commercial platforms, including lead scoring.
  • Your data stays on your infrastructure, which answers most privacy requirements.
  • Over 10,000 GitHub stars and years of production use.
What to watch for
  • PHP, MySQL and correctly configured cron — this is a system you administer.
  • Upgrades are known to be involved.
  • You bring your own sending provider and own the deliverability.
  • The interface feels its age next to the commercial tools.
19AGPL-3.0

listmonk

Best for: Newsletters at volume, on hardware you already pay for

A single Go binary and a Postgres database that will push millions of newsletters through whatever SMTP you point it at. Mature, fast, and list-first by design.

Starts at
Free to run; you pay your SMTP provider for the sending
Free tier
Self-hosted — the software is free
Marketing
Lists, subscribers, campaigns and templates
Data region
Wherever you deploy it
What it does well
  • Over 22,000 GitHub stars and years of production use.
  • One binary plus Postgres — no queue broker, no Redis.
  • Handles very large lists on modest hardware.
  • No per-contact cost at any size.
What to watch for
  • No automation builder. It sends campaigns to lists.
  • Bring your own SMTP and your own deliverability.
  • No CRM, no ecommerce data, no landing pages.
  • The admin UI is functional rather than beautiful.
FAQ

beehiiv alternatives, asked and answered

What is the best beehiiv alternative?

For the same creator job, Kit — 10,000 free subscribers and native commerce. For zero fixed cost, Substack, though its 10% cut of paid subscriptions costs far more than beehiiv at any real revenue. For pure cheap sending, EmailOctopus at $9/mo.

If the newsletter sits alongside a product and you want behavioural segments and lifecycle flows, that's a different category — Email Bump, Loops or ActiveCampaign.

Is beehiiv or Substack cheaper?

Depends entirely on revenue. Substack costs nothing until you monetise, then takes 10% of every paid subscription forever. beehiiv costs $43/mo at 1,000 subscribers and takes 0%.

At $10,000/month in subscriptions, Substack's cut is $1,000/month and beehiiv's Scale plan is $43. The crossover comes early — do the division before choosing.

Can I remove beehiiv branding on the free plan?

No. Branding stays through Launch and Scale, and removing it requires Max at $96/mo.

By comparison, MailerLite and Kit remove branding on their entry paid tiers, and Email Bump's badge goes on the first paid plan at $19/mo.

When the newsletter has a product behind it

Segments and flows, not just issues

Track what readers do, build live segments from it, and run multi-step flows — with a transactional API on the same plan and key. 5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails free.

Start free Read the API docs

Keep reading

Email Bump vs beehiivThe head-to-head, including where beehiiv is the better buy.Every comparisonAll the platforms we've priced and compared, in one index.Email Bump pricingWhat contact-based pricing costs at every list size.