Email Marketing Showdown: Mailerlite vs. ClickFunnels vs. beehiiv

If you’re wondering which email platform will be the best fit for your business, you’ve come to the right place.

In this post, we’re going to compare MailerLite, ClickFunnels, and beehiiv side-by-side, with an overview of each service highlighting their unique features, benefits, and pricing.

Mailerlite vs Clickfunnels vs beehiiv at a Glance

beehiiv Overview

beehiiv is an email platform built for growth. It was created by the people who grew Morning Brew into a powerhouse newsletter and has built-in tools to help you scale your audience. 

beehiiv offers some of the most powerful editing and writing tools in the business to help you create beautiful and compelling emails. 

But where beehiiv really differentiates itself is in the areas of analytics, subscriber growth, and monetization.

beehiiv Features

Advanced Newsletter Analytics

beehiiv offers detailed analytics to track subscriber engagement and campaign performance at a glance, providing the insights you need to optimize newsletter content and strategy.

Subscriber Growth Tools

The platform includes features to grow your subscriber base, such as a referral program, a recommendation network, customizable sign-up forms, and audience segmentation for targeted outreach.

Monetization Capabilities

beehiiv supports the monetization of newsletters through features like paid subscriptions, ads, and sponsorships, allowing you to generate revenue directly from their audience. There’s even an ad network you can participate in to find your first advertisers.

MailerLite Overview

MailerLite is a platform that aims for simplicity. It offers user-friendly tools like a drag-and-drop email editor, a website builder, and an intuitive interface.

MailerLite Features

Email Campaigns

MailerLite offers tools for creating and managing email campaigns, including a drag-and-drop email builder, customizable templates, and options for personalization and segmentation.

Automation & Analytics

The platform provides automation capabilities for streamlined email marketing. It also includes detailed analytics to track campaign performance, subscriber engagement, and other key metrics

Landing Pages & Integration

MailerLite allows the creation of custom landing pages to complement email campaigns. It supports integrating various platforms and services to enhance its email marketing capabilities.

ClickFunnels Overview

ClickFunnels was designed to create websites and sales funnels, to help companies make direct sales online.

ClickFunnels Features

Sales Funnel Creation

ClickFunnels specializes in creating a variety of sales funnels to suit different business needs, with customizable templates and a user-friendly drag-and-drop editor.

Marketing Automation & Analytics

Offers automation tools for funnel steps and marketing campaigns, as well as detailed analytics to monitor funnel performance and customer behavior.

Webinar and Membership Features 

ClickFunnels allows for the creation of webinar funnels and membership sites, providing tools for hosting online courses or exclusive content.

Mailerlite vs ClickFunnels vs beehiiv: Email Marketing

The three platforms approach email marketing differently. MailerLite is built for simplicity, ClickFunnels treats email as part of a sales funnel process, and beehiiv is built to scale and monetize your audience.

Features Comparison

• All three apps offer a web-based interface, design templates, and analytics.

• MailerLite offers a simple range of email features for a low price.

• ClickFunnels’ features are geared primarily towards creating sales funnels and go beyond email into landing pages, creating online courses, and selling digital products.

• beehiiv has unique features aimed at growing your audience, like recommendations and referrals, as well as monetization features like an ad network and paid newsletter tiers. beehiiv also offers a built-in landing page and the option to create an SEO-optimized website with your content to help you build organic traffic.

Target Audience Suitability

• MailerLite is most suitable for beginners and very small businesses that don’t have much experience.

• ClickFunnel is best suited for businesses that want to sell online products, courses, or services.

• beehiiv is especially well suited for newsletter publishers who want to grow and monetize their audience. It’s also well-suited for small businesses that want to increase their email list continually.

Pricing and Plans

MailerLite

MailerLite offers a free plan that supports up to 1,000 subscribers with limited functions. The Growing Business and Advanced plans give you access to more features and team members. The rates for those plans are tiered based on the number of subscribers.

For example, if you have 1,000 subscribers, you’ll pay $15 a month for the Growing Business plan. If your list grows to 25,000 names, you’ll be paying $159 a month (or $200 if you want the advanced plan).

ClickFunnels

After a 14-day free trial, prices at ClickFunnels start at $147 monthly for a basic plan, which includes one website, three users, 10,000 contacts, and up to 20 funnels. For an unlimited funnel plan, you’d pay $297 per month. There’s a tier in between, called the Pro Plan, for $197 monthly, and there are discounts for annual payments.

beehiiv

You can take advantage of a free plan that supports up to 2,500 subscribers on beehiiv. The Grow plan supports an audience of up to 10,000 and is priced at $42 per month, billed annually. The Scale plan takes you up to 100,000 subscribers for $84 per month.

Why Trust Us? Lauren Haas has been managing emails for companies since email was a new technology. She currently handles newsletters, along with other marketing tasks, for her clients at Main Street Marketing Mix. 

Mailerlite vs Clickfunnels vs beehiiv: Newsletter Templates 

Template Variety and Customization

All three platforms offer a number of different templates for your emails. Each template offers a professional mix of colors, fonts, and spacing.

All three platforms let you customize templates for your brand or build your own templates from scratch if you prefer.

Ease of Use

MailerLite earns high marks among reviewers for being intuitive and easy to use. That makes sense since the platform is aimed at beginners.

beehiiv offers a more expansive feature set, so it takes a little longer to learn. Still, most users find it fairly easy to create attractive, effective emails using beehiiv because it is a dedicated email platform.

ClickFunnels has the steepest learning curve of all because it’s built to do such a wide variety of things. Many reviewers have expressed frustration with learning how to use the system. For example, one reviewer said, “…to successfully implement ClickFunnels 2.0, you likely need support staff, a seasoned ClickFunnels expert, and an ad budget.”

MailerLite vs. ClickFunnels vs. beehiiv: Automation

Automation Features

Automations are emails or series that can be automatically sent when a subscriber takes certain actions. For example, you can send an email or series when someone subscribes, opens an email, or clicks a link in an email. 

If you have an online store and your email integrates with your shopping cart software, you can send emails automatically when someone abandons a cart or makes a purchase.

All three platforms have robust automations that let you define triggers and waiting periods and send emails automatically.

Ease of Setting Up Automations

Automations on MailerLite are simple to use. You can define up to three triggers that cause a message to be sent.

ClickFunnels has a very robust automation engine, which can be a little harder to figure out. The automations are located under a “funnels” tab, and email automations are just one of the options available. It’s a powerful system for people who want to create sales funnels, but there’s a steep learning curve, and someone who just wants to create emails might get frustrated in the process.

beehiiv uses a simple process to set up automations. You choose a trigger (like “signed up”) from a dropdown menu, determine how long the system should wait to send the email (a minute? a week?), and then compose the email you’d like to send. It’s easy to set up a whole series this way.

Integration with Other Tools

You want to be sure you choose a platform that will work with the other software you use to run your business. Here are some of the top integrations each platform offers:

Some of MailerLite’s top integrations include:

• Canva

• Facebook Audiences

• Shopify

• Stripe

• WordPress

• WooCommerce

• BigCommerce

• AirTable

ClickFunnels’ most popular integrations are:

• MailChimp

• Shopify

• AWeber

• ConvertKit

• ConstantContact

• GetResponse

• HubSpot

• Zoom

beehiiv offers a full suite of integrations, including:

• WordPress

• Webflow

• Shopify

• Squarespace

• Wix

• Zapier

• Privy

Analytics and Reporting

All three platforms let you track important statistics and reports.

MailerLite has reports that include unsubscribe count, spam complaints, bounces, link activity, and other metrics.

ClickFunnels reports on a variety of data across its many functions, including things like course progress. The email analytics include the usual data, like open, unsubscribe, and clickthrough rates.

beehiiv’s 3D analytics dashboard is designed to help you deeply understand your performance metrics related to subscribers and content. It lets you track your open rate, unsubscribes, click-through rate, and other typical metrics.

But beehiiv’s dashboard also lets you look at your subscribers by the source and channel where you acquired them, so you can see where your most engaged subscribers are coming from. Plus, beehiiv lets you assemble subscriber demographics to help you tailor your content and persuade advertisers to work with you.

Final Thoughts

MailerLite, ClickFunnels, and beehiiv all offer the basic email features you need to create, send, automate, personalize, and track email campaigns.

If you’re a beginner who wants the simplest possible interface and don’t expect to grow a large list, you might be interested in getting started with MailerLite.

If you’re looking for one platform to manage your sales funnels, sell digital content, and create online courses, and you have a generous budget, the email tools in ClickFunnels might suit your needs.

If you’re looking for an email platform that helps you grow your list and monetize your audience, beehiiv is the perfect choice for you. While it’s built with newsletter features in mind, it has a wide enough range of tools to work well for a variety of businesses that want to grow and stay in touch with a list of readers or sales prospects.

Build your Own Website with beehiiv

With beehiiv, you have the power to create a stunning and user-friendly website to host your email content that will also help you sign up new subscribers and attract organic search traffic.

When you start publishing on beehiiv, you can design a homepage where your posts will appear, like a blog. You can also add custom pages to your site, so your beehiiv location can serve as your primary website if you want.

Having a website gives you an online hub to connect your social media and other platforms you have an online presence. Your site will also host the signup form for your email list. All the email newsletter content you create can be stored on your website, where it will be indexed by Google if you choose.

That means people searching for answers in your field will find your content, which establishes you as a thought leader in your industry. From there, you can invite them to sign up for your email list and become regular readers.

You can test-drive beehiiv with a generous 30-day free trial to see for yourself why it may be the best email marketing tool you’ve ever used. 

MailerLite vs Clickfunnels: Frequently Asked Questions 

What are the main differences between MailerLite, ClickFunnels, and beehiiv in terms of email marketing?

MailerLite is known for its simplicity and user-friendly interface. While ClickFunnels does offer email marketing functionality, its primary focus is on creating high-converting sales funnels. beehiiv is built for growth, with features to help scale and monetize an email audience

Can I create and customize newsletters easily on MailerLite, ClickFunnels, and beehiiv?

MailerLite is an easy tool suitable for beginners, and you can certainly create a newsletter there. ClickFunnels offers email functions within a larger context of building sales funnels, so it’s not as easy to use. beehiiv was built especially for newsletters. You can not only create and customize your newsletter on beehiiv, but also grow and monetize your audience.

Which email platform offers the best value for money for small businesses?

ClickFunnels is the most expensive of the three platforms. MailerLite’s price slides based on the number of subscribers, and quickly gets expensive as your audience grows. beehiiv has a simple, affordable pricing structure that will continue to be a good value as your audience grows.

Which platform offers better analytics and reporting tools for email campaigns?

Most platforms offer basic data such as the percentage of subscribers who open your emails, click on links, and unsubscribe after each campaign. But beehiiv goes further, with demographic data about your readers and information about the source they were acquired through This lets you hone your content and marketing plans.