beehiiv vs Mailchimp

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.

You're probably exploring tools like Mailchimp, Hubspot (Marketing Hub), Kit, Loops, and even Postmark, and you're probably banging your head against the wall because you're overwhelmed with options and not quite sure of the actual differences.

You're probable checking "does it integrate with my CRM?" and the most confusing bit of it all is that what you think integrating with your CRM and what the marketing sites list as integrating are two totally separate things.

Mailchimp is the 800lb gorilla in the space—has been around the longest, has the most "integrations" out of the box, but as they've grabbed more and more of the market, they've had to expand their product offering to generate more revenue. Even expanding to offering websites, stores, and appointment booking (only to get worse with their recent acquisition by Intuit—how do you become a $100bn email sending company? You don't, you expand to everything but the kitchen sink):

The sheer number of options and products available is overwhelming

So dive into Mailchimp and you'll be introduced to what feels like 20 different areas to accomplish basic things (even just on the sending email front)—sending email shouldn't be so complicated.

They also focus heavily on "beautiful email templates that match your brand", well the open-rates and click-through of highly templated/branded emails have fallen off a cliff in recent years. Would you believe that with so much automated emails, people actually prefer receiving emails that feel like they were sent by a human? Big shocker, right? 😅

We highly recommend checking out a more simple tool like Loops to build out and manage your marketing emails (it's what we use for our newsletter).