Newsletter Platforms Compared: Beehiiv, Substack, Ghost, and ConvertKit
Email newsletters have become a primary publishing medium — not supplementary to a website but often the core product itself. The platform you build on shapes how you write, how you grow, how you monetize, and critically, how much of your operation you own. Choosing between the leading options requires understanding what each one actually is and who it is built for.
Substack
Substack is a publishing platform built around the newsletter as a standalone product. Writers set up a publication, write in Substack’s editor, and Substack handles hosting, email delivery, and payment processing for paid subscriptions. Readers subscribe through Substack’s infrastructure.
The proposition is simplicity: no technical setup, no hosting to configure, and access to Substack’s network effects through its discovery features (the Notes feed, recommendations, the Substack app). New writers get up and running in minutes.
The tradeoffs are structural. Substack takes 10% of subscription revenue — ongoing, not a setup fee. Your subscriber list lives in Substack’s system. While Substack allows CSV export, the relationship between your readers and your publication is mediated by Substack’s platform. If you ever want to move, the export works but reader habits built around Substack’s app and email infrastructure do not transfer automatically.
For writers building a publication primarily around words and willing to trade platform ownership for discovery and simplicity, Substack is a legitimate choice. For publishers who think carefully about platform dependency, its tradeoffs are real.
Best for: Writers who want to start immediately, value network discovery, and are comfortable with revenue sharing.
Beehiiv
Beehiiv is a newsletter platform built by former Morning Brew team members, designed explicitly for growth-focused publishers. It operates on a SaaS subscription model rather than revenue share — you pay a monthly fee, keep all your subscription revenue.
The platform’s standout features are growth-oriented: a referral program, a recommendation network (cross-promotion with other Beehiiv newsletters), boosts (paid subscriber acquisition through other newsletters), and detailed subscriber analytics with acquisition source tracking. For publishers serious about audience growth, these tools are genuinely useful and more sophisticated than what Substack offers.
The editor is capable, the email deliverability is strong, and the subscriber management is clean. A website is generated from your newsletter content automatically.
Pricing starts at a free tier limited to 2,500 subscribers, then scales by subscriber count. The free tier is useful for getting started; serious operations will need a paid plan.
Best for: Growth-focused publishers who want to own their revenue, track acquisition carefully, and run systematic audience development programs.
Ghost
Ghost is an open-source publishing platform with memberships and newsletters built in. Unlike Substack and Beehiiv, which are newsletter-first, Ghost is publication-first — it produces a fully featured website with newsletter delivery layered on top.
Ghost(Pro), the hosted version, handles server management and email delivery. Self-hosted Ghost requires a Node.js server and a transactional email provider (Mailgun, Postmark, or similar), but gives you complete control over your infrastructure at lower cost.
Ghost’s membership model lets you offer free and paid tiers, gate content per tier, and manage subscribers from a unified interface. The editorial experience is clean — a minimal Markdown-adjacent editor focused on writing without friction.
The tradeoff is that Ghost is more complex to set up than Substack or Beehiiv, and its network effects are essentially zero. There is no discovery mechanism. Ghost publications stand on their own SEO, social presence, and word of mouth.
Best for: Publishers who want a complete website-plus-newsletter operation, prefer owned infrastructure (especially self-hosted), and are willing to do their own audience development.
ConvertKit (now Kit)
Kit (ConvertKit) approaches email differently. It is an email marketing and creator platform rather than a newsletter-first product. The distinction matters: Kit is designed around sequences, automations, tagging, and segmentation — tools for managing subscriber relationships over time rather than simply sending newsletters.
A Kit account can send broadcast newsletters, but its real strength is the CRM layer: tracking subscriber behavior, tagging by interest or acquisition source, delivering automated welcome sequences, and building conditional subscriber journeys. For publishers with complex subscriber relationships — segmented by product, by interest, by engagement level — Kit’s automation tooling is significantly more capable than the other platforms here.
Kit takes no revenue share and pricing is subscriber-count-based. A free tier covers up to 10,000 subscribers with limited features.
The weakness is the newsletter-as-product experience. Kit’s editor is functional but not excellent, its website features are limited, and it does not feel designed for writing-forward publications the way Ghost or Substack do.
Best for: Publishers who have or expect to have complex subscriber segmentation needs, sell digital products alongside newsletters, or need sophisticated automation workflows.
The Ownership Question
The platform comparison cannot be separated from the ownership question. Beehiiv, Kit, and Ghost (especially self-hosted) give you more control over your subscriber data and revenue than Substack. The practical implication: building a significant subscriber base on Substack means building on someone else’s infrastructure, with the switching costs that implies.
For a publication that is serious about the long term, the preference order from an ownership perspective is: self-hosted Ghost > Ghost(Pro) > Beehiiv or Kit > Substack.
That said, a publication that starts on Substack and grows is better positioned than a publication that optimizes for ownership and never ships. Platform is a real consideration but it is not more important than building the habit and the audience.
Quick Comparison
| Revenue share | Ownership | Discovery | Setup effort | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Substack | 10% | Low | High | Very low |
| Beehiiv | None | Medium | Medium | Low |
| Ghost | None | High | None | Medium–High |
| Kit | None | Medium | None | Low–Medium |