I’ve been using both Beehiiv and Substack a lot – so I feel pretty qualified to compare the two and give a solid answer here.
Before I try to answer the question of whether you should choose Beehiiv over Substack or vice versa, I need to make an important point I haven’t seen anywhere else.
Beehiiv and Substack aren’t the only 2 websites. They don’t exist in a vacuum.
I wrote a post on Reddit about this here. It is about the formula I’ve found:
Beehiiv + Medium > Substack
I write most of my articles on Medium. Then I put the Beehiiv to collect emails directly into my Medium articles.
Read: Medium vs Beehiiv
Medium is much better than Substack for getting discovered.
If you write high quality articles on Medium, a lot of people can find you from both Google search and Medium’s own recommendation engine.
Getting discovered on Medium is a million times easier than getting discovered on Substack.
Here are my Medium stats this month so far (June 1 to June 10, 2024)
11400 views in 10 days. Not bad.
One reason people like Substack is because it is great for collecting emails – much better than Medium is.
But if you use Beehiiv like I’m doing, you can have the best of both worlds.
You get high traffic plus a lot of free email signups.
Read my honest Beehiiv review
Here is a screenshot of just some of the emails we’re getting in one day from putting my Beehiiv link into my Medium articles.
We’re actually getting well over 20 new email signups per day! 😊😊
Here is how our Beehiiv landing page looks (when someone clicks the link I put in Medium)
Another point worth mentioning is that Beehiiv doesn’t take any commission from paid newsletters.
Substack takes 10% commission.
If you are just starting out, this may not seem like much, but it really adds up if you are doing well.
Beehiiv has a great free plan up to 2500 subscribers.
If you end up getting that many subscribers (or less honestly), then paying the monthly fee for Beehiiv should be a lot cheaper than 10% commission from Substack.
So there you have it.
The optimal strategy for collecting email subscribers is to write articles on Medium, and then put your Beehiiv in the Medium articles to collect emails.
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