beehiiv vs Klaviyo

beehiiv is one of the best newsletter platforms out there if you're trying to build, grow, and actually make money from your audienceIt's built around marketing features and ROI in a way most traditional email tools just aren't.

Unlike tools like Mailchimp, Klaviyo, or ActiveCampaign, beehiiv feels much more purpose-built for newsletters, especially if referrals, sponsorships, paid subscriptions, and audience growth are part of the plan.

A lot of that comes back to why it was created in the first place. beehiiv was co-founded by former Morning Brew team members, including Tyler Denk, who was Morning Brew's second employee. Morning Brew for context was a dedicated newsletter business that exited for $75M.

And Tyler? He worked across product, engineering, and growth. He literally redefined what a newsletter could be, using viral growth tactics like a powerful referral system, which led to Morning Brew becoming one of the largest newsletter exists ever. They got very good at growing newsletters.

So this is why beehiiv actually feels different. Most email marketing software has bolted on newsletter growth features because customers asked for them, but beehiiv was built from the ground up by a team that actually understood the needs of a newsletter business at the deepest level.

They knew referrals, analytics, monetization, and audience growth needed to be core to the product from day one. And to them, it was super clear that there was a massive gap in the market as none of the existing platforms actually gave them what they needed. So Tyler and the team ultimately left Morning Brew to build the newsletter platform they wished they had.

Klaviyo is one of the best email marketing tools for e-commerce stores, especially if you want to build out things like different sales sequences, upsells, or abandoned cart flows.

Klaviyo gives you templates that are based on best practices from across the e-commerce space, which is why they tend to perform well. When speaking to friends in the e-commerce space, they all said they use Klavyio, it’s pretty much become the default tool e-commerce stores rely on.

While Klaviyo started as only email marketing flows, they now call themselves a B2C CRM where your customer data, messaging, and automation all live in one place. That’s what allows you to personalize flows based on real behavior (e.g. you can email someone if they added a product to their cart and didn't check out, or send them an email sequence if they haven't re-purchased in the past 60 days. Klaviyo also seems to be better than Shopify for A/B testing these flows.).