Beehiiv vs ConvertKit in 2025: Which Should Newsletter Creators Choose?

ConvertKit has been the recommended email platform for creators for several years, and for good reason. But Beehiiv has emerged as a serious competitor specifically in the newsletter space, and the comparison is now genuinely close. If you are starting or growing a newsletter in 2025, here is how to think about the choice.

The fundamental difference

ConvertKit is a creator email platform. It is excellent for bloggers, course creators, and anyone building an audience across multiple formats. Beehiiv is a newsletter platform. It is designed specifically for people whose primary product is the newsletter itself — not just a list they also happen to email.

Newsletter-specific features

Beehiiv has built features that ConvertKit simply does not have because they are only relevant to serious newsletter operators: a built-in referral programme that rewards subscribers who refer friends, a native paid subscription tier, an ad network where you can monetise directly through Beehiiv-brokered advertisers, and boosts — a system where you pay to appear as a recommended newsletter to new subscribers of similar newsletters.

These are monetisation tools that ConvertKit does not offer natively. If you want to build a business around the newsletter itself rather than using the newsletter to sell something else, Beehiiv has the infrastructure ConvertKit lacks.

Automations and sequences

ConvertKit wins here. Its visual automation builder is more mature and more flexible. If you want to build complex sequences — different email paths based on what links subscribers click, course drip sequences, behavioural triggers — ConvertKit handles this better than Beehiiv currently does.

Content editor

Beehiiv has a better writing experience. The editor is clean, focused, and designed for long-form newsletter content. ConvertKit has a decent editor but it feels more utilitarian. If you spend significant time writing in the editor itself, Beehiiv is more pleasant to use.

Free tier comparison

Both platforms offer free tiers up to 2,500 subscribers. Beehiiv free includes their web presence and basic analytics. ConvertKit free includes landing pages, forms, and basic broadcasts but no automations. For a newsletter specifically, the free tiers are comparable.

Our recommendation

Choose Beehiiv if: your newsletter is the product, you want built-in monetisation tools, you plan to use the ad network or referral programme, or you want the best pure newsletter writing experience.

Choose ConvertKit if: the newsletter is part of a broader creator business that includes courses, products, or coaching, you need sophisticated automation sequences, or you are already embedded in the ConvertKit ecosystem.

For most people starting a newsletter from scratch in 2025, Beehiiv is our recommendation — the built-in growth and monetisation tools provide infrastructure that would otherwise take significant time to build separately.