Beehiiv is a newsletter platform built by early employees of Morning Brew. Tyler Denk, Benjamin Hargett, and Jake Hurd left the media company in 2021 to build the infrastructure they wished they’d had while scaling Morning Brew to millions of subscribers.
The platform targets newsletter creators and media companies with tools purpose-built for audience growth and monetization. The referral program system is a standout — creators can set milestone rewards that unlock when subscribers refer friends, mimicking the viral growth loop that Morning Brew used to go from zero to 4 million subscribers.
Beehiiv’s ad network connects newsletter creators with advertisers, handling the sales, placement, and billing. Creators set their available inventory and pricing, and Beehiiv fills it with relevant ads. Boost is a cross-promotion marketplace where newsletters recommend each other for a fee, creating a growth flywheel within the Beehiiv ecosystem.
The writing and publishing experience centers on a clean web editor with support for custom HTML, embeds, polls, and subscriber-gated content. SEO optimization for web-published versions of newsletters is built in, turning each edition into a searchable blog post. Custom domains, website builders, and premium subscription management (through Stripe integration) complete the monetization toolkit.
The free plan is generous — up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends, the referral program, and website hosting. Paid plans ($49/month and $99/month) add premium features like A/B testing, advanced analytics, and custom branding. Beehiiv has raised over $30 million in funding and powers newsletters for companies like Milk Road, Big Desk Energy, and The Neuron. It’s growing fast by winning creators away from Substack and Mailchimp.
