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Choosing between Kit and beehiiv
Why beehiiv Is the Better Choice for Email Marketers
Jacob Bear
February 18th, 2025
Changing an email platform can be hard.
This is why it's important to choose the right platform in the beginning, so you won’t have to switch later on.
Choosing between Kit and beehiiv depends on why you need an email marketing platform. Both of these services have their strengths, but it's important to know which one is right for you.
Key features of Kit and beehiiv include automation, landing pages, and no-code editors.
Both platforms give you access to various email monetization strategies. But comparing email marketing platforms isn’t as helpful as contrasting beehiiv vs. Kit. Knowing the differences is how you decide which platform is a better choice.
So, let’s look at what makes Kit and beehiiv different.
Table of Contents
Kit vs beehiiv: Overview
In a nutshell, Kit may be better for e-commerce and selling stuff online such as courses and digital products.
On the other hand, beehiiv offers more advantages for creators who want to write or operate a newsletter. The platform offers more email monetization strategies, making it one of the best email marketing tools for creators.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these platforms.
What Is Kit?
Kit has been around for a while under its old name, ConvertKit. It's a well-known email marketing platform for selling products to an audience via email marketing.
One of Kit’s strengths is that it gives you lots of options for creating funnels and email sequences. If you have multiple products or different sales funnels, then Kit is a good choice.
What Is beehiiv?
beehiiv was founded by some of the same people who brought you The Morning Brew.
From the beginning, they wanted to be the best email platform for creators, writers, and newsletter operators.
With that goal in mind, they designed beehiiv to be easy to use without tech skills. They also included multiple ways for creators to generate income directly from the platform.
It’s also easy to start a beehiiv newsletter with a low budget. Use their free Launch tier for a 30-day trial. When choosing between Kit and beehiiv, keep in mind that beehiiv’s cost per subscriber remains low as you grow your list.
Key Features Comparison: Kit vs beehiiv
This chart depicts the key features of Kit and beehiiv. We’ll discuss some of these details below.
Why Trust Me? I built my first digital product in 2013, and it’s still generating revenue. I’ve written newsletters and email campaigns for several software, real estate, and financial service businesses. I’ve been named a Top Copywriting Voice on LinkedIn twice. |
User Interface and Experience
When I started my free trial with Kit, I was asked several multiple-choice questions about what I wanted to do. This could be a useful experience if you already have a clear idea of what you want to do.
But as a serial entrepreneur/creator with many different goals, I felt like I was being pigeonholed.
Once I finished the questionnaire, the dashboard prompted me to create or upload a digital project on the spot.
Fortunately, I saw other choices in a menu across the top of the screen. This automatic shepherding can be confusing if you sign up for Kit without being 100% clear on what you want to do.
In contrast, beehiiv offers simplicity.
The dashboard provides useful data across the top. You can tell how many subscribers you have and a little bit about their behavior. You’ll see the results of your latest email campaigns before you create a new one.
Scrolling down reveals links to your homepage and main sign-up page. You can copy a link to either page with a click, making them easy to share.
Icons along the side represent additional functions.
Overall, beehiiv feels more fluid and intuitive than Kit.
Email Automation and Workflows
Email automation functions essentially the same way in both Kit and beehiiv.
You start with a trigger event and this causes the platform to automatically perform a task in response.
For example, as you'll see in this video, if your trigger is a new subscriber, then the automation could be a welcome sequence sent to the new reader.
Kit is known for its robust automation. It’s designed for e-commerce and other businesses with multiple products.
However, beehiiv has almost all the functionality of Kit with a simpler design. In many cases, you can simply drag and drop to create email automation.
Templates and Design Flexibility
If you want a variety of templates to choose from, Kit provides a wide selection.
beehiiv doesn't come with templates, but it gives you the option to design your own. beehiiv has a unique email and website design tool. It allows you to open up menus for every feature (header, background, text, headings, etc.)
You can customize every detail of these elements and save your favorite designs as templates.
This functionality lets you dive right into your branding. No need to waste time searching through templates.
Audience Growth and Subscriber Management
beehiiv allows you to manage your subscribers through segmentation and automation.
The platform also includes powerful audience growth tools.
For example, magic links allow you to quickly integrate with social media. Couple this with referrals, recommendations, and the option to boost your newsletter- voila! You have multiple routes to expand your subscriber base.
Pricing: Kit vs beehiiv
The founders of beehiiv were committed to providing value for creators.
Virtually all email marketing platforms have a pricing scheme that’s based on audience size. beehiiv is no different.
But as you grow, a large list is more expensive to maintain.
Let’s look at how each platform addresses this issue in their pricing.
Kit Pricing
Kit offers three tiers. The Newsletter tier gives you most of Kit’s basic features. It’s free with up to 1,000 subscribers. You’ll probably want to upgrade before you reach this limit.
The Creator tier removes the Kit branding. It lets you integrate with other apps and provides a few additional features. The cost starts at $25/month or $290/year with up to 1,000 subscribers. At 10,000 subs, the price is $100/month or $1,190/year.
If you have 100,000 subscribers (or more than 95,000) you’ll pay $566/month or $6790/year on the Creator plan.
The Creator Pro tier adds additional features, mostly related to analytics and reporting. The cost is $50/month or $590/year for 1,000 subscribers. At 10,000 subscribers it’s $140/month or $1670/year, and the cost rises to $733/month or $8790/year with more than 95,000 subscribers.
Both the Creator and Creator Pro come with a free 14-day trial (compared to beehiiv’s free 30-day trial).
beehiiv Pricing
beehiiv’s tiers are similar to those of Kit. The free version gives you most of the functionality with up to 2,500 subscribers.
Beehiiv’s Scale plan adds growth, monetization, and analytics tools. It also gives you access to the Slack community and several new email features.
Costs start at $39/month or $408 annually for 1,000 subscribers. At 10,000 subscribers, you’ll pay $99/month or $1044/year. This is more expensive than Kit, but the pricing becomes more advantageous as your list grows.
When you have 100,000 subscribers, the Scale plan is $299/month or $3144/year--less than half the cost of Kit.
The Max tier unlocks some interesting features. One of these is the option to create an audio newsletter. Subscribers can listen while they drive, work out, etc.
Max lets you have up to 10 publications with teams of unlimited size. You get 24/7 priority support and access to beehiiv’s exclusive Newsletter XP Course.
Max starts at $99/month or $1032/year for 1,000 subscribers. It’s $199/month or $2088/year for 10,000 readers, and $399/month or $4188/year at 100,000 subscribers.
All of beehiiv’s paid plans come with a free 30-day trial (compared to Kit’s 14-day trial).
Why beehiiv Is the Best Choice for Creators
The pricing difference at scale is nothing to shake your head at. Thanks to beehiiv’s many growth tools, newsletter operators consistently experience rapid growth. For example, The Pour Over hit its stride in 2020 and reached 1.7 million subscribers by the end of 2024.
Let’s look at what beehiiv can do for you.
beehive enables you to have paid subscribers and keep 100% of the revenue.
Better still, you can have multiple paid tiers. You can give subscribers the option of paying monthly or annually. They can even gift a subscription to someone else.
A key principle in financial success is diversification. The most successful beehive newsletters took advantage of multiple streams of income early on.
In addition to paid subscriptions, you can generate revenue through beehiiv’s extensive Ad Network. Sponsorships and beehiiv Boosts provide yet more ways to generate cash flow from your newsletter.
And of course, you still have the email marketing option. Link your newsletter to a landing page or catalog for any other products or services you sell.
Community and Support
The premium tiers give you access to beehiiv’s Slack community. Here you can communicate directly with other newsletter operators. This is a great way to share ideas and cross-promote your work for further growth and revenue.
You also get live support through multiple channels.
Not to mention a lot of informal beehiiv love going around on social media like X (formerly Twitter).
Future-Proofing Your Email Marketing
Instead of planning for the future, beehiiv is creating it.
beehiiv was one of the first platforms to offer generative AI for both text and images. The first to include audio newsletters. Beehiiv is also a leader in new growth and monetization schemes.
We continue to come up with cutting-edge features and updates. Most of these are based on the needs and requests of our users.
By joining a new and rapidly growing platform, you enter a community of bold, energetic thinkers. You future-proof your email marketing.
If you want to grow quickly and create multiple streams of revenue, start a free beehiiv 30-day trial today.
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