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Beehiiv on X

Beehiiv's talk is praise and a price backlash at once: 36 people credit it with real results and 25 defend what it costs, while 25 name price as their complaint and self-hosted clones, Marc Lou's loudest, carry the rest.

First written 27 Oct · what changed · from 235 posts by 198 people

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First written 27 Oct. When what people say changes, it shows here.

Tone· 91 posts from 85 people· written 27 Oct

How do people feel about Beehiiv?

Praise outweighs complaint but does not drown it out: 36 of the 85 people in this talk rate Beehiiv highly or credit it with real results, and another 25 argue it earns its price. 15 are disappointed enough to cancel or move their newsletter elsewhere.

Enthusiasts point to outcomes more than features: waitlists built on Beehiiv (a 1,004-person waitlist in one case; 2,000 signups and 41 paid users in another), a 51% open rate held for over three years, and the MCP, which one user calls "life-changing".

The second group defends the price on what the money buys: deliverability, support, data ownership and expertise. "You own your data and the Stripe account is always yours," one writes; another argues they would rather pay Beehiiv than become Beehiiv — with a self-built setup you are also the deliverability team and the on-call engineer. One newsletter paying $59 a month reports earning $6,432 through Beehiiv's built-in recommendations.

Among the 15 leaving, price is the reason named most often: a renewal that doubles, $50 a month for HTML, yearly prices rising until two newsletters shut down. Some move to Substack for its network, some rebuild their own setup, and a few cite the dashboard instead. A smaller group likes Beehiiv with a caveat — missing Substack's discovery, or finding the newsletter-to-blog option useless for SEO.

  • Loves it39
  • Defends the value26
  • Disappointed, leaving15
  • Fans with reservations6
  • Ads and recommendations bring results5
See 5 of 91 posts

the easiest, no-BS guide to building a waitlist in 2026 (that actually gets paying customers) +the exact @beehiiv setup behind our 2k signups and 41 paid users for link Steal all of it. Here's how it works: 1/ Your landing page has 1 job: get the email ↳ The cursor's already blinking in the box on load ↳ 1 button in the sticky navbar points back to the box ↳ The same box again at the bottom ↳ A live counter for social proof, right under the box ↳ The box posts directly to the beehiiv API (PS: full landing page structure + copywriting guide in the comments 👇 ours got 1,242 signups in the first 24 hours) 2/ Qualify every signup as they join ↳ Redirect all signups to a beehiiv survey ↳ Prefill their email so it's 1 less step ↳ Only ask questions that let you assess ICP fit ↳ Every answer saves to a custom field ↳ Aim for 70%+ completion rate 3/ Score them, and invite the best first ↳ 3+ hrs/day on messages? +3. Business owner? +2. ↳ Highest scores get the first invites ↳ Your first users shape the product ↳ So make sure they're who you're building for ↳ Our first batch of invites converted at ~37% 4/ Make the welcome email's primary CTA a reply ↳ "Reply with the word 'quicker'" ↳ Replies improve deliverability ↳ Gmail Outlook Yahoo put you in Inbox (not spam) ↳ Secondary CTA: share the page with a friend 5/ Keep signups engaged ↳ Email the waitlist at least 2x a week ↳ AB test subject lines (easy +5% open-rate) ↳ Anyone who joins late misses the story ↳ So link to an archive of past sends in welcome ↳ Archive populates automatically from beehiiv API 6/ Use broadcasts for customer research ↳ End every email with 1 question ↳ "Tell me about your most recent DM fumble" ↳ The replies are your discovery / validation ↳ And they improve deliverability 7/ Let agents assign users to batches ↳ Plug Claude/ChatGPT into beehiiv MCP ↳ Feed it new signups, survey answers, and replies ↳ Sweep all comments on social posts and DMs ↳ It hands you the next 50-100 people to invite What we're building next: → Every broadcast rewritten as an evergreen drip → A segment of active users with its own onboarding sequence → Survey answers mapped to who actually sticks Your waitlist isn't a list. It's an automated sorting + invite machine. (built the entire thing on beehiiv - surveys, custom fields, API + MCP) What would you add to this setup? (PS The beehiiv free plan is more than enough to get started, but once you want the more advanced features, use code “STRATEGY30” to get 30% off for 3 months → link

tbh sending emails has always been a commodity. Not sure beehiiv is about that. Otherwise we wouldn't have the biggest brands in the world using us (they can easily vibe code a tool that sends email too) I launched my newsletter (link 3 months ago. I pay beehiiv $59/m, I earned $6432 from beehiiv built-in recommendation (screenshot attached) I will happily pay 20% more when I have a full blown sales team working for me + an army of tools for growth and monetization And while I could be biased as a beehiiv employee, I'm saying this as a beehiiv user There is for sure a lesson for our team here though With 50k subs in your niche you'd should've made back the $300/m you paid us at least 10 times So maybe we're doing something wrong about letting our users understand the full power of beehiiv We'll fix that

.@denk_tweets might be the most unfiltered CEO in tech right now 😂 ICYMI, Tyler took to X to share his thoughts on @marclou's new newsletter platform. And while you might disagree with his delivery, I think he makes a good point. I understand wanting to save $100–$1,000/month on newsletter software. If you're running a small newsletter, experimenting with a cheaper, vibe-coded alternative might make sense. But a serious publisher running multiple newsletters with hundreds of thousands of subscribers? Almost zero chance. When email is critical to your business, you're paying for more than the software itself. Security, support, reliability, and infrastructure all matter. Vibes are not enough. That's what people notoriously underestimate when comparing a weekend project to a platform like @beehiiv. Meanwhile, beehiiv keeps reporting record months and growing ARR. I give Tyler a lot of credit for building the company he wants to build without worrying too much about corporate optics. You can disagree with his delivery, but I don’t think he’ll lose sleep over it and neither will the investors. P.S. I cover stories like this, share practical Meta ads tips, and break down winning newsletter ads every Saturday in my free newsletter, Growth Levers. If you're growing a newsletter, you can subscribe here: link

5 of the 91 posts behind this answer, one per person. The other 86, and every new one as it’s posted, come with tracking. Get early access

Pain points· 86 posts from 73 people· written 27 Oct

What do people complain about with Beehiiv?

Price is the complaint here by a clear margin — 25 of the 73 people who name a problem name cost, with renewed price rises the thing they describe most. Behind it sit 8 people who say boosts and ads brought subscribers who never open, and 7 unhappy with how the company behaves in public.

The price complaints are about repetition as much as level: rises on top of rises until the bill stops making sense. One writer pays $2,400 a year to email 3,600 subscribers; another says a renewal will double; a summary of the tier change puts Lite at $49 a month, up from $43, with team seats cut from three to two. Some note that basics moved up: custom HTML in the editor now needs a paid tier, and connecting a custom domain needs Pro.

The second cluster is subscriber quality — "all bad subs, which are not engaged", one publisher says after trying boosts, referrals and ads; an agency calls the resulting growth a rounding error against focused channels.

Then the company itself: a CEO trading posts with an indie competitor reads to some as petty and corporate. Support tickets sit open for weeks, and a handful report accounts locked mid-launch, with one asking for a refund after a first edition was terminated.

  • Too expensive26
  • Boosts bring dead subscribers10
  • Account locked or banned9
  • Going corporate, bad attitude7
  • Slow or missing support7
  • Clunky editor and dashboard6
See 5 of 86 posts

people misunderstood what my point was I don't think everyone will start vibecoding their own SaaS but when I saw Marc post I was thinking: damn, I pay 3k for beehiiv too, I wonder if there's someone building a cheaper alternative now I think it's a bigger factor for saas that people will start heavily undercutting in price offering a similari-ish product if marc would offer me 70% of beehiivs features at 80% off i'll most likely take it and that same thing will happen to a lot of companies SaaS had an insane business model for a long time, and these times (at least for incumbents) are over imo

is this the beehiiv complaint department? excellent I have a few grievances that require attention.. I pay beehiiv $2,400 a year to email 3,600 subscribers about 8 times a month. I was weighing if I was going to stay after the price hike. My time costs more that the additional money so it didn't really matter. I wasn't swayed by marc's press run on it either. but this? presenting this entire wall of bs as the entry fee for running a good newsletter or infra is bullshit. Not only is it genuinely not true, you come off like a snobby gatekeeping pos. so on principal - fuck you. Its also bullshit that you want to stick your branding on my newsletter if I downgrade so fuck you a second time. Raising prices 19%-20% doesn't make you creator friendly. I don't think you're a bad company or person for that because you've brought a ton of value into the product. But need I remind you of your tweet history to remind you of what you campaigned on. Do these values still hold? I would argue they don't. Transaction % or Raising of Price per month - not really still on the creator friendly/creator first kick. "beehiiv’s revenue would be way higher if we taxed 10-15% of your earnings and locked you in forever. but we don’t do that bc being creator-first is a principle this company will live and die by" link "last month @beehiiv launched Digital Products, an AI website builder, Podcasts, Dynamic Content, etc. and didn’t raise prices a dollar meanwhile, the most innovative thing Kit has done in years is change their name and increase prices beehiiv is the most creator-friendly platform and takes 0% of any user transactions‼️" link So here ya go folks. Vibe code your own beehiiv. link

12,025 subs with an 84.5% open rate on 3-5 sends per week. I have tried all @beehiiv boosts, referrals, ads and more. None of them have benefitted me in any way. All bad subs, which are not engaged. Don't even try them any more. I just do 100% organic from here and podcasts.

David vs. Goliath. Honestly, I don't really know what to think about this whole Marc Lou vs. beehiiv situation. On one hand, you have @marclou, an indie hacker vibe coding a cheaper alternative to beehiiv after its price increases. On the other, you have @denk_tweets, CEO of beehiiv, a major newsletter platform, who keeps posting to defend his company, contradict Marc, and seemingly try to discredit him. I really like Marc, so I'm obviously biased. But seeing the CEO of a company that size repeatedly go after an indie hacker building a competing product feels a bit strange. What do you think about all this?

@beehiiv @denk_tweets @JakeHurd_ Need urgent help. Losing sales! Locked out on campaign night. Been using BH for 3+ years now. Sent your support an email. My campaign launch for my client starts tonigt w/ deadline Tuesday! We're doing everything compliantly. We'll fix if not.

5 of the 86 posts behind this answer, one per person. The other 81, and every new one as it’s posted, come with tracking. Get early access

Alternatives· 64 posts from 59 people· written 27 Oct

What are the alternatives to Beehiiv?

Two options sit level at the top: building your own setup on Amazon SES, named by 20 people, and Substack, named by 18. Cheaper or bootstrapped senders come next — MailCheap at 9 people and Kit at 6 — and 4 weighed leaving and decided to stay on Beehiiv.

The self-hosting talk keeps returning to one story: Marc Lou left after a rise in Beehiiv's bill, built his own sender on Amazon SES, open-sourced it as MailCheap, and posted it — a post that travelled far, billing it as "92% cheaper than Beehiiv". Others report their own versions: a Cloudflare sender inside an ERP, a rebuild over a weekend, a setup abandoned after custom HTML moved to a paid tier. Several frame the point as control rather than cash.

Substack is weighed for the opposite quality: discovery. People move for Notes and the feed, saying growth stalled on Beehiiv without a network. Others move the other way, to Beehiiv for design control, integrations and analytics, and some name Substack's 10% cut as the reason they left.

Kit comes up on price and automation, one user citing a Claude connection that works; MailCheap prompts the question of who maintains it.

  • Self-hosted / vibe-coded21
  • Substack18
  • MailCheap (Marc Lou's)9
  • Kit7
  • Staying on Beehiiv4
  • Sequenzy2
See 5 of 64 posts

So many people asked me to make it open-source, so here you go: MailCheap — Self-hosted newsletters on Amazon SES: 💸 $0.10 per 1,000 emails ✍️ Editor with live preview 📰 Multiple newsletters 📝 Signup forms + API 🌐 Public archive 📊 Stats & growth charts 🧹 List cleanup 📬 Bounce + spam protection → link 92% cheaper than Beehiiv (for me). Have fun!

I don't think brand is a moat Actually, I think brand can become an anti-moat for SaaS People love luxury brands because owning them signals status But SaaS is just a tool and for a lot of founders, the status comes from spending less on it I think Nobody brags about having the biggest software bill (we did, for a little while, on token spend) Now people like @levelsio, @marclou and others brag about replacing expensive subscriptions with something they built themselves I think the brand becomes part of the story and the more recognizable the tool, the more expensive it is, the more interesting it is to say you've replaced it in a single prompt "I replaced some random newsletter tool" doesn't get the same attention as "I replaced Beehiiv" Beehiiv spends years building recognition, someone else can use that recognition to get attention for leaving And I think the same thing will happen to the products built by the indie hackers doing the replacing today (already thought twice about canceling datafast and just hosting it myself on Hetzner, it really is just a prompt away) So I'm skeptical of brand alone as a SaaS moat, churning is a triumph But probably not true for enterprise, "nobody gets fired for buying AWS/Salesforce/Workday" is probably still true

I'm moving SavvyMonk from Beehiiv to Substack. Growth stalled here. Substack Notes gives me a better shot at reaching new readers. Current subscribers, I'll move you over. Nothing to do on your end. link P.S. I will transfer my domain to Substack.

Why did Express Checkout move from @beehiiv to @Substack? @JMovsowitz still loves beehiiv, especially for B2B. But Express Checkout started getting organic traction from "curious consumers," people who are nerdy about the consumer space. And without a discovery network, they were capping their reach. On Substack, the feed gets them discovered. It's the same playbook that grew them on Instagram.

Marc Lou says his next Beehiiv bill would have been $4,000. So he built his own newsletter platform in a few prompts. Now he pays under $300 a year. He didn't need a better platform than Beehiiv. He needed one that works for Marc Lou. Issue #16 of Signal is live: Your Customer Can Build It Now. Link in the reply ↓

5 of the 64 posts behind this answer, one per person. The other 59, and every new one as it’s posted, come with tracking. Get early access

Questions· 19 posts· written 27 Oct

What do people ask about Beehiiv?

The largest group of questions, 7 people, asks whether Beehiiv's numbers can be trusted — whether opens are real and whether mail reaches the primary inbox. Next, 6 ask whether it is the right platform to start on, and 4 ask whether a specific capability or feature exists for them.

The measurement questions are pointed rather than hostile. One asks what share of a 99.3% delivery figure actually lands in primary inboxes; another calls open rates "bogus" and asks for the click rate instead; a third says opens are "directional, not exact" and would judge a list cleanup by clicks across several sends. Two ask whether a self-hosted setup keeps the open rate Beehiiv had, and whether the platform's scale helps domain reputation.

The starting questions are simple: is Beehiiv the best place to start a newsletter in 2026, why did someone choose it over the others, does it have a moat. Answers people give name it alongside Kit and Substack as a reasonable option with a workable free plan.

The capability questions are narrow: managing your own sponsor relationships rather than a marketplace, a feature unavailable in someone's region, and whether clients will deal with the MCP or an agent surface.

  • Are open rates and deliverability real?7
  • Is Beehiiv the best place to start?6
  • Does Beehiiv support this?4
  • Does the growth engine work?2
See 5 of 19 posts

What about domain reputation though? As far as I understand it, you usually benefit from your providers (beehiiv) scale in terms of deliverability, no? Genuinely curious!

5 of the 19 posts behind this answer, one per person. The other 14, and every new one as it’s posted, come with tracking. Get early access

Wishes· 13 posts from 12 people· written 27 Oct

What do people want from Beehiiv?

The largest wish, from 4 of the 12 people here, is for the MCP and automation to go further so agents can do the work instead of them. Three asks sit level behind it at 2 people each: a cheaper plan covering only sending, the ability to edit their own publication website, and post stats collected into one weekly summary.

The automation wishes come from people already using the MCP and wanting it to close the loop: drafting the latest newsletter through the MCP, importing as much as possible from an existing Beehiiv account, and replacing manual work — "Right now, I'm copying and pasting."

The pricing wish is about being sold a bundle: segment the features and offer a cheaper plan for people who only send newsletters, one asks, rather than charging for podcasting, product sales and community. Another puts it in seven words: "i love beehiiv but i just wanna send an email."

The website wish is blunt — "we just need website edit access, and it will solve all of my problems" — and a second person says they hit the same issue.

Two smaller asks: one wants a real person at Beehiiv to review their newsletter, site and podcast and hand back an optimization plan, saying a human would be worth more than "shitty leads from a recommendation engine"; another would move for mobile writing, which they say is where Substack wins.

  • Better MCP and automation4
  • Cheaper, segmented plans2
  • Website edit access2
  • Post stats in a weekly summary2
  • Human help, not more AI2
  • Write on mobile1
See 5 of 13 posts

I think @beehiiv should segment their features and offer a more affordable pricing plan for the vast majority of their users who just send newsletters. They don't need podcasting, product sales, community, etc., and shouldn't be forced to pay for features they don't use.

5 of the 13 posts behind this answer, one per person. The other 8, and every new one as it’s posted, come with tracking. Get early access

In their words

How do people talk about Beehiiv?

The phrases people use most, counted once per person.

  1. 1“vibe coded”6
  2. 2“open source”6
  3. 3“raising prices”4
  4. 4“open rates”4
  5. 5“few prompts”4
  6. 6“price increases”3
  7. 7“free plan”3
  8. 8“per subscriber”2
  9. 9“bad subs”2
  10. 10“recommendation engine”2
  11. 11“domain reputation”2
  12. 12“weekly summary”2

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