Substack vs Beehiiv vs Kit (2025): Best Newsletter Platform for Creators

Substack might be the number one newsletter management service for creatives. One major reason for that is the price - you can’t beat free! But, it also has a ton of great features that integrate Podcasts, Live video streaming, and messaging. Technically, in its current form, I could argue it’s more of a social media platform than a newsletter but I digress. It’s great for what it is, but is a great newsletter service? What we’ll do here is see how Substack measures up where it concerns newsletter tools by comparing it to two of the top newsletter service providers: Kit and Beehiiv. 

Subscribers Caps 

Kit - up to 10K on the free tier

Paid tiers start at 1,000 Subscribers with you needing to pay about $10 per 1,000 subscribers added.

Beehiiv - up to 2,500 Subscribers on the free tier

Paid tiers start at 1,000 Subscribers with you needing to pay about $13 per 1,000 subscribers added.

Substack - doesn’t limit the number of Subscribers your newsletter can have.

Automation 

Email automation allows you to send preset messages triggered by actions. For example, someone joins your mailing list, they get a welcome email, if that gets opened, it triggers a second email that invites them to follow you on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Spotify. Someone who clicks the link to follow you on Spotify would get a third email directing them to save your latest release to their library. All of this would happen automatically without you needing to manually craft messages, set up, and send email blasts. It’s a system that’s popular with artists who sell direct-to-fan through email funnels where they’ll offer a free download in exchange for an email. Anyone that takes the offer gets added to a funnel where they’ll get a series of emails aimed at driving them toward making a purchase.

Kit considers this a visualization and each step is a sequence. The entire flow I described would count as two sequences. The free tier limits you to one.

Beehiiv restricts automation to their Scale plan and doesn’t make it available to users on the free plan.

Substack doesn’t offer automation.

Subscriber tagging

Categorize subscribers by where they joined, actions they’ve taken, interest, and more. For example, if you did a poll asking subscribers if they preferred to stream or download you could tag those who picked stream as Rent and those who clicked download as Own. Rather than sending a blast out to get download sales to your entire list, you’d send it exclusively to the subscribers tagged with “Own”. This would improve your open and engagement rates which helps your email delivery by keeping your messages out spam boxes.

This feature is provided by Beehiiv and Kit, but not Substack.

Segmentation

A segment is like a container for subscribers with tags. All users with tags like: Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and Amazon music could be grouped into a Segment called “Streamers” and all subscribers with tags like: iTunes and Bandcamp could be grouped into a segment called “Buyers” this would make it easier to target members with multiple tags by keeping you from having to add every tag they’ve been assigned.

This feature is provided by Beehiiv and Kit, but not Substack.

Landing Pages

A Landing page is a webpage dedicated to pitching a product or service. A Landing page for a song might have quotes from the lyrics, press clippings, and a promo video with a link to buy vs something like a Release link which would just have the cover artwork and buttons directing visitors to platforms and stores.

This feature is provided by Beehiiv and Kit, but not Substack.

Email opt-ins

Email opt-ins are forms you can embed into a webpage to collect emails and them added directly to your network.

Kit  offers the most flexibility here with the option to embed as a Pop up, Sticky bar, or inline. Beehiiv offers a simple static inline form. Substack offers the same as Beehiiv but with its branding - color scheme and logo. You cannot remove Substack’s branding.

Deliver Opt-in incentives

Offering a free download in exchange for emails requires delivering the free content people signed up for. If you don’t want to manually send an email with an attached audio or PDF file every time someone takes the offer, you’re going to need a way to automate it. You’re also going to want subscribers added to your network where your automations can be triggered to deliver a welcome email to drive up your retention. Release links platforms, Linktree, etc. all allow for the collecting emails by gating access to links and downloads but they don’t all patch into an email management service. This leaves you needing to export and import emails into one every time you get a new sign up which is insane. Kit simplifies the process by being a one-stop shop where you can gate, deliver, and have emails added to the list all in one shot.

This feature is not provided by Beehiiv or Substack.

Recommendations

This is like similar artist on Spotify or the Featured channels section on YouTube. It can be a cross promotional tool if there’s reciprocity between your newsletter and the one you’re recommending, but it doesn’t do anything for you if you’re the only recommending others.

Kit, Beehiiv, and Substack all have this feature.

Kit’s Smart Recommendations  handles this automatically by selecting newsletters its system considers a match. Free users cannot turn this feature off. Some of the recommendations may be paid and Kit will keep 100% of the revenue they generate. For paying users, the revenue is split with Kit.

Kit also guarantees your newsletter will be promoted across relevant creator sign up forms through Smart Recommendations if you’re a paid users, where free users may or may not be recommended.

Facebook custom audiences

Automatically create Facebook target groups from your email list. It might seem redundant to pay to advertise to the same people you can reach for free, but it’s bad practice to email people about the same thing more than once, but you can show them multiple ads with different messaging for the same product on the same day. 

With any of these options you can export your mailing list to import into an ad management service, what’s different about Kit is it does it automatically. This feature is exclusive to Kit users on paid plans.

Templates 

Select custom designs for different messages. For example, the Pop Star Olivia Rodrigo released a concept album with all design properties styled like a Year book. Her email blasts fit the concept as they were also designed to mimic a year book. Templates allow you to inject personality and branding into your email blasts.

Kit and Beehiiv allow custom designs and templates, Substack does not.

A/B testing

Test different messaging. Create two subject lines for the same email blast and have delivery split to identify which version performs best.

This feature is provided by Beehiiv and Kit, but not Substack.

Conditional Content

Automatically alter emails based on tags, segments, and more. A blast notifying subscribers of a new release could have a call to action that drivers members to own that have music store tags and those with streaming platform tags to Listen now.

Far as I know, this is a feature exclusive to Kit

Deliverability Report

Historical performance data detailing subscriber engagement - opens, clicks, etc.

Kit and Beehiiv get very granular here. You can see everything down to the exact links each subscriber clicked and know who responds to what. You also have the ability of crafting automations and assigning tags and segments around which links users click. Substack provides performance data but it’s not as comprehensive.

Fix link errors

Kit allows you to edit links in an email post send. If you made a mistake and posted the wrong link, no problem, you can go back and update it and all subscribers will get the new link.

Monetization

Subscriptions

Sell subscriptions to your newsletter. All of these service providers have this feature. Kit allows for it on the free tier, Beehiiv doesn’t. Substack’s business model is subscriptions as it takes 10% of revenue from each paying subscriber and doesn’t charge any upfront fee. The difference in models can have a profound impact on your revenue retention. Beehiiv’s Scale plan is $49/Month. Kit’s Creator plan is $39/Month. That means with both Beehiiv and Kit losses are capped. The most you’ll ever lose from your total revenue each month is $39 to $49. Substack’s 10% revenue share would have you losing $100 in revenue if you were to earn $1,000 monthly and that number grows with increases in revenue.

Ad Network 

Beehiiv has an Ad network with brands paying to place ads in newsletters. This allows newsletter creators to monetize in the same way they would on YouTube where they simply post and earn. This is a feature exclusive to Beehiiv.

Paid Recommendations

Get paid for every subscriber you drive to a third-party newsletter.

Kit and Beehiiv have inventories of newsletters offering to pay for placements. Each newsletter has a price set for what its willing to pay for each subscriber you bring. Kit has the easiest set up because the emails you see you’re already approved to run promotions for, all you have to do is click to activate the placement. Beehiiv has a more complicated process where you have to apply to each newsletter and wait to be approved. Some newsletters are unresponsive, others might reject you, it becomes work.

The Way it Works

Beehiiv Paid Recommendations are added to your email blasts. You can pick sections within your newsletter where you’d like to place recommendations.

Kit’s Paid Recommendations are flexible because you can place recommendations within your email, but that’s not all. Every time someone joins your mailing list, they’ll get a pop up showing a list of your recommended newsletters with a box to check to join them all. If they do, you earn a payment from each. You’re also provided with a link to your recommendations you can share across social media and your website.

Digital Products 

Kit can be used for e-commerce. You can’t use it as a full blown store because it’s only set up for the sale of individual products so a shopper couldn’t add multiple products to a cart and checkout, but it’s great if you’re not looking for anything that advanced.

Not offered by Beehiiv or Substack.

Recurring Subscriptions 

This is like how Apple TV Plus is a subscription service but has channels like MAX that you can subscribe to within its service. For example, an artist could have a website dedicated to an album and sell subscriptions to access it. Every album could have its own website all with separate subscriptions. Fans could have the option of subscribing to the artist and getting everything or subscribing to individual albums.

Only provided by Kit.

Comparison Table 

	Substack	Kit	Beehiiv
Subscribers	Unlimited	1K+	1K+
Landing pages	No	Yes	Yes
Opt-in forms ****	Yes *	Yes *****	Yes*
Blog/Mini website	Yes	Yes	Yes
CustomDomain	Yes	Yes	Yes
Opt-in incentive delivery	No	Yes	No
Recommendations	Yes	Yes	Yes
Smart Recommendations	No	Yes	No
FB Custom Audience	No	Yes	No
Referral System	No	Yes	Yes
Subscriber Tagging	No	Yes	Yes
Segmentation	No	Yes	Yes
Templates	No	Yes	Yes
A/B Testing	Yes	Yes	Yes
Conditional Content	No	Yes	Yes
Deliverability Reporting	Limited	Advanced	Advanced
Insight Dashboard	Limited	Advanced	Advanced
Automation	No	Yes	Yes
API	No	Yes	Yes
RSS Campaigns	No	Yes	Yes
Digital Products	No	Yes	No
Subscriptions	Yes	Yes	Yes
Recurring subscriptions	No	Yes	Yes
Tip Jar	Y	Yes	No
Paid Recommendations	No	Yes	Yes
Fix Link errors post send	No	Yes	No
Publications	N/A	3	10
Ad Network	No	No	Yes
Analytics