Beehiiv

Beehiiv wants to be your newsletter overlord so badly it's practically drooling on itself. "THE WORLD'S SMARTEST NEWSLETTER PLATFORM" screams from their homepage like a drunk venture capitalist at a pitch competition, which honestly tells you everything you need to know about their humility levels. But here's the thing - strip away the marketing masturbation and there's actually a decent product lurking underneath all that noise. Their editor is genuinely intuitive, the growth tools aren't complete bullshit, and unlike some platforms that shall remain nameless (*cough* Substack *cough*), they're not trying to become the next Twitter while your newsletter burns. The analytics dashboard actually shows you useful shit instead of vanity metrics designed to make you feel productive while accomplishing nothing.

The monetization angle is where things get interesting, and by interesting I mean "watch your wallet." Their built-in ad network promises to connect you with "high-quality advertisers" and handle the selling for you, which sounds great until you realize you're basically handing over control of your revenue stream to a platform that didn't exist five minutes ago. The revenue split isn't prominently displayed anywhere I could find, which in my experience means it's probably not something they're proud of. Their premium plans start getting pricey fast once you hit real subscriber numbers, though they do offer more flexibility than most platforms before they start gouging you. At least they're not charging you per email sent like some sadistic postal service from hell.

What genuinely impressed me is how they've thought through the actual workflow of newsletter creation. The no-code website builder integration isn't just marketing fluff - it actually works and doesn't look like it was designed by a colorblind intern having a seizure. You can spin up a decent landing page in minutes, which matters when you're trying to capture subscribers who have the attention span of goldfish on Red Bull. The email templates don't all look like they escaped from 2003, and the customization options hit that sweet spot between "enough flexibility to not look generic" and "not so many options that you spend three hours choosing fonts." Their automation tools are solid without being overwhelming, which is rarer than you'd think in this space.

The big red flag for me is this "forget all your other tools" messaging, because any platform telling you to put all your eggs in their basket is either delusional or planning an exit strategy. What happens when beehiiv gets acquired by some media conglomerate or decides to pivot to AI-powered blockchain newsletters or whatever the next shiny object is? Their export options exist but feel like an afterthought, and we all know how that story ends. The platform is genuinely good at what it does, but the founder worship and "we're changing everything" rhetoric makes me want to check my pockets for my wallet every time I visit their site. They're solving real problems, just with the subtle arrogance of a platform that thinks it invented email.

Look, beehiiv is competently built and solves actual creator problems without being completely predatory about it, which honestly puts it ahead of half the creator economy platforms out there. The tools work, the interface doesn't make you want to throw your laptop out the window, and they seem to understand that newsletters are a business, not just a hobby for lifestyle bloggers. But they're also clearly betting big on becoming the infrastructure that creators become dependent on, and that always makes me nervous. It's good enough to recommend if you need what they're offering, but not so revolutionary that you should mortgage your house to go all-in on their vision of newsletter domination. Sometimes decent execution beats revolutionary bullshit, and that's basically beehiiv's entire value proposition.