Beehiiv

Beehiiv is what you pick when you want to treat a newsletter like a real business instead of a hobby. The editor is clean, deliverability has a strong reputation, and the native tooling for referrals, paid subscriptions, and the ad network means you can monetize without bolting on three separate services. Coming from Substack or Mailchimp, the first thing you notice is that growth features are built into the product rather than sold back to you as upgrades.

Analytics are the honest standout. You get 3D view counts, per-post click data, cohort retention, and referral attribution that make it clear which posts actually drive subscribers and which just get polite opens. The referral program builder is the cleanest on the market, no Zapier duct tape required. If you publish at any real cadence, that visibility compounds quickly.

The tradeoffs are real. The free tier is useful but caps at a modest subscriber count and lacks the premium analytics, so once you cross a few thousand subs you are effectively forced into paid. Design flexibility is improving but still more template-bound than something like Ghost if you want pixel-level control. Transactional support, custom domains, and the ad network all sit behind higher tiers, so map your price point to the features you actually need before committing.