Elements vs Beehiiv
Beehiiv is a newsletter platform for writers, creators and media companies. A publisher writes posts that go out by email and appear on a Beehiiv website, and can host a podcast, sell digital products, run a community and send email automations. Growth tools include subscribe forms, a referral program and a recommendation network, and Beehiiv's Ad Network pays publishers to run ads in their newsletters. Beehiiv charges by plan, priced by list size and billed monthly or yearly. The Free plan covers a starting list, without paid subscriptions; Lite and Pro, the plan that removes Beehiiv branding, cost more as the list grows (pricing). Beehiiv does not take a share of paid subscription revenue, and Stripe's card fees apply (Stripe pricing).
Elements is not a newsletter platform. It is an integrated app environment for building web apps with an AI agent. The parts that matter against Beehiiv are scheduled jobs for sends and automations, email templates delivered through a provider such as Postmark, Stripe for subscriptions and one-time sales, and a Postgres database where posts, readers and orders sit together. From a prompt, an agent can put those together into a branded newsletter on your own server.
Beehiiv does not take a cut, so the case here is not a revenue share. It is the plan price, which rises with your list and with features such as removing the branding, and the other subscriptions that sit beside it. Build your own and there are no plan tiers to climb, and the store and the CRM sit in the same database as the newsletter. What you give up is Beehiiv's growth network, its ad marketplace and its unlimited sends. On price alone, Beehiiv is often the cheaper choice, so this trade makes sense when you would consolidate several tools into one app.
What Beehiiv Gives You That Is Hard to Build
Beehiiv sells more than software for sending email, and some of what it does, an app you build cannot reproduce.
- The ad marketplace. Beehiiv's Ad Network matches newsletters with advertisers. With your own app, you find and sell your own sponsors.
- Growth through other newsletters. Beehiiv's recommendation network and paid recommendations bring readers from other Beehiiv publications. A site of your own starts with the readers you bring to it.
- Unlimited sends. All Beehiiv plans "include unlimited email sends." With your own app, email is the cost that grows with your list.
- Deliverability. Beehiiv sends the email and looks after the sending reputation behind it. Sending from your own app, the provider is your pick, and so are the domain setup and the reputation that follows from it.
- No upkeep. Beehiiv ships new features without any work from you. On your own app, a new feature is one you or your agent builds, and keeping it running is on you too.
What Building It Looks Like
A paid newsletter is a small set of parts: posts, subscribers, payments, email and a schedule. Feature by feature, against Beehiiv:
| Beehiiv feature | In an app you build with Elements |
|---|---|
| Newsletter website with an archive | An archive of posts kept in Postgres, served as Elements HTML pages rendered on the server (html, database) |
| Your own branding, with no Beehiiv badge | Your app has no vendor branding; the design is yours (style) |
| Free and paid subscriptions | Stripe Checkout starts each subscription; your database tracks whether it is active (subscriptions) |
| Subscriber accounts and sign-in | Sign-in and sessions, with readers as rows in your own database (authentication recipe) |
| Each post emailed to subscribers | An Elements HTML email per post, delivered by the SMTP provider you pick, such as Postmark (email) |
| Scheduled posts and email automations | Background jobs scheduled for a time or a delay, queued in your database (jobs) |
| Digital products | Stripe Checkout for one-time payments, with the order kept in your database (checkout) |
| Upgrade, cancel and update a card | Upgrade and cancel from your app (subscriptions), and Stripe's customer portal for cards |
| Analytics on subscribers and revenue | A dashboard that updates live as people subscribe, using a LiveTable (livetable) |
| Sales tax | Stripe Tax, collecting in each place you have registered |
| Fraud screening | Stripe Radar |
| Ad Network, recommendation network and paid recommendations | No equivalent. These are Beehiiv's marketplace, and they stay with Beehiiv. |
Each Stripe product above has its own fee, listed at stripe.com/pricing. Because the newsletter, the store and the CRM can all be tables in the same database, a reader who buys a template, a sponsor in your pipeline and a paid subscriber are the same kind of row, in one list of people.
The Demo: Letterhearth
Letterhearth shows the newsletter half of that app. An AI agent built it with Elements from one prompt, with a free tier and an $8 monthly tier paid by card. A reader enters an email address to subscribe, can upgrade or cancel later, and finds paid posts in the archive cut off after the opening paragraphs, with a prompt to subscribe, until they pay. The writer writes posts in markdown with a live preview, marks each one free or paid, and publishes now or schedules for later. Publishing emails the post: free posts to every subscriber, paid posts in full to paid subscribers and as a teaser to free ones. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe link, and subscriber counts and revenue update live.
Its prompt is published on the demo page, so your agent can rebuild it locally as a starting point. For the store, Bytestall sells templates and ebooks by card with a download link, and for sponsors, Dealwren is a CRM with contacts, companies and a deals board. All three can be one app.
Adding It Up
Every newsletter is different, so this section shows how to make the comparison for your own rather than making it for you.
This is an example, not a customer. A writer has a list of readers, some of them paying monthly. They want the newsletter under their own brand, which on Beehiiv takes the Pro plan, and they track sponsors in a CRM. They pay for:
| Subscription | What it charges by |
|---|---|
| Beehiiv | By plan, priced by list size |
| HubSpot | Sales Hub Starter, per seat |
To compare, add up what you pay for these each month and set it beside the cost of your own app:
| Your own app | What it charges by |
|---|---|
| Elements | $100 a month for two licenses: your build computer and your server |
| DigitalOcean | One server, by size |
| Postmark | By plan, priced by emails sent each month |
Card fees on Stripe apply either way, and a self-built app on Stripe Billing also pays a fee on recurring charges.
Where it usually turns:
- A share of each sale grows with each sale. If the writer also sells templates on a platform that takes a share, such as Gumroad, that share rises with every sale, while Elements' cost does not.
- Several flat subscriptions add up. A newsletter plan, a CRM seat, a scheduling tool for paid calls and a second publication each add to the left column and nothing to the right.
- A single cheap tool is usually cheaper to keep. A writer on Beehiiv's Lite plan with nothing beside it pays less than they would to run their own app.
Beehiiv's price rises as the list grows; your own app's grows with email volume, and past a provider's plan a metered service such as Amazon SES charges per email sent. The subscriptions overview works through this and other cases.
When to Keep Beehiiv
- You are on the Free plan. Beehiiv charges nothing for a starting list (pricing), and nothing here beats free.
- Beehiiv is your one subscription. On Lite, Beehiiv usually costs less than running your own app.
- Ad Network income or recommendations matter to you. Leaving gives up Beehiiv's advertisers and the readers other publications send you.
- Your list is large and you send often. Unlimited sends on a fixed plan are hard to beat once your email volume is high.
- You would rather not run software. Beehiiv does the upkeep.
Questions
Does Beehiiv take a cut of paid subscriptions?
No. Beehiiv's pricing page says it takes no share of paid subscription revenue, and Stripe's card fees apply, listed at stripe.com/pricing. Beehiiv charges by plan instead: a free plan for a starting list without paid subscriptions, then Lite and Pro, priced by list size and less when billed yearly. The current figures are at beehiiv.com/pricing.
Is my own newsletter app cheaper than Beehiiv?
Often not, if Beehiiv is the one tool you pay for. An Elements app costs $100 a month for the license, plus a server and an email provider (the subscriptions overview covers each). It becomes the cheaper option when it replaces several subscriptions, such as Beehiiv Pro, a CRM and a store that takes a share of each sale.
How do I remove Beehiiv branding?
On Beehiiv, removing the branding takes the Pro plan, priced by list size, listed at beehiiv.com/pricing. An app you build with Elements carries no vendor branding.
Will email from my own app reach the inbox?
That depends on your email provider and your domain's authentication, which the provider walks you through. Elements renders the email and hands it to the SMTP provider you choose, such as Postmark or Amazon SES; it does not send mail without one.
Can I move my Beehiiv subscribers to my own app?
Beehiiv says you own your subscriber list, and an agent can import your subscribers and posts into your app's database. Paid subscriptions take more care, so confirm with Beehiiv and Stripe how existing paid subscriptions move before you switch.