Why you should swap to ConvertKit and get off beehiiv
I recently swapped newsletter providers from beehiiv to ConvertKit. Why?
p.s. future brook here. this post is stale. i moved to substack. so yeah.
Brook Slagle • 2023-11-05
I recently swapped newsletter providers from beehiiv to ConvertKit.
Why?
Well, for a few reasons.
But let's start with what are beehiiv and ConverKit. (if you already know what they are and what they do, skip down to the first heading)
At a basis, they are both email marketing solutions, and are commonly used and recommended to those who are looking to start a newsletter.
They both do relatively the same thing.
They both send emails, they both have hosted blog-style websites for their readers to see, they both allow you to schedule up content.
They both have analytics… you get the gist.
Within the scope of my current needs, I DO NOT pay for these services, I am only using their free tier.
So, why did I choose ConvertKit over beehiiv?
1. Landing pages and subscription forms
Landing pages are only offered as an upgrade in the Scale tier of pricing (the most costly paid plan) for beehiiv.
But they are FREE in ConvertKit.
Having a dedicated, customizable landing page is MASSIVE for brand affinity and identity.
Not even to mention that it allows you to monetize by creating landing pages for products and lead magnets. (This is why you probably here, because I created a free lead magnet)
And they are all seamlessly connected to your emailing list. Your off-platform source of possible clients and leads.
You can see why this is important…
Regarding subscription forms, you can generate a relatively customizable (color wise) subscription form in beehiiv.
This issue is that you are stuck to their rather bland template, and that template might now jibe with your branding in terms of feel. It didn’t for mine.
ConvertKit on the other hand, has many options for making embeddable subscription forms.
This is the selection of ConvertKit templates for inline forms alone:
It can be slightly limiting as well, but you have more templates that, overall, give you more options. As well, you mitigate nearly any limitation with…
2. Customization.
Along with more options, ConvertKit also has muuuuch better customization. Each of their forms and landing pages allow you to inject your own custom CSS.
Their templates are generally pretty solid, but with the ability to have custom CSS…. It takes their kinda generic templates to something usable and profitable for a brand and business.
An example use case: Something that I do with EVERY SINGLE ONE of my landing pages and forms is use Inter as my font.
With a little bit of knowledge with CSS and HTML, this can take you very far into the land of brand identity without paying any money.
As well, ConvertKit’s email formatting customization options for the free tier are second to none. You can have full-blown custom HTML emails being sent to your subscribers for free. This is insane. And their templates are pretty good too if you choose to go down that route.
In regard to beehiiv, you are pretty much stuck with their brand feeling in your emails as long as you are in the free-tier. It’s kinda sad.
As far as customization goes, the free tier of ConvertKit is unparalleled and lets you have a truly strong brand for no money at all.
3. Custom domains.
Another point for ConvertKit regarding brand identity is the ability for free users to have custom domains!
With beehiiv, you have to use their name.beehiiv.com domain like my old one https://keep-going.beehiiv.com/.
But with ConvertKit, you can supply your own primary domain and with a little bit of work you can set up a custom subdomain. For example, mine is https://mail.brookslagle.com which is a subdomain right under https://brookslagle.com. (The subdomain is mail in https://mail.brookslagle.com)
In doing so, I can keep my brand identity continuous across all my platforms, for FREE!
4. Scalable pricing.
I know I said that I don’t pay for either, but thinking long term, as my business grows and my respective email list grows, I want to be able to afford more as I need more. Especially in the early stages.
beehiiv’s pricing is relatively strict. You have three options:
Free.
Grow - $49 / month
Scale - $99 / month
ConvertKit has a similar model, but the pricing scales. So they offer:
Free
Creator - $ scaling / month
Creator Pro - $ scaling / month
One thing to note: Grow on beehiiv has pretty much the same feature boost as Creator does for ConvertKit. You can think of these both as relatively equivalent in jump in features and capability for a scaling business – except for the already mentioned benefits for the free user of ConvertKit. Those are paid features for beehiiv.
What does this pricing difference mean for the business owner?
Let's do an example:
A list with more than 1k subscribers but less than 3k will cost $49/m with ConvertKit on their Creator plan, and the equivalent Grow plan on beehiiv will cost the same $49/m. But if you have LESS than 1k subs, it cuts your monthly bill in HALF and is only 25 dollars per month.
For those bootstrapping, this makes a big difference. (you can find more information on this here https://convertkit.com/pricing)
Plus, the free tier will get you pretty damn far.
Something else to note about pricing and beehiiv’s business model:
There is a cutoff point to where it is worthwhile to have the scaling pricing model. ConvertKit becomes more expensive, period. But at that point, it probably won’t matter if it is more expensive… at least it shouldn’t if you play your cards right.
beehiiv is playing the long game.
They are banking on the fact that you see it is “cheaper” in the long run once you scale up to a 10k subs mailing list. When you are there, it won’t matter if you pay 50 or 200 dollars a month for you software. But you will be already in their system and it will be too painful to change providers.
And there is something to say about that… their system is super easy.
Their UI is impeccable. Using beehiiv’s website is an absolute pleasure.
ConvertKit has a bit of a learning curve, and to be honest could use a major UI redesign… But the features out-weigh the slight loss in ease-of-use.
I am glad I swapped.
I hope you have enjoyed and hopefully are deciding to make your own newsletter.
I know that each of these providers have their respective followings. And both can take you far.
But I chose and stated my reasons why I think you should choose ConvertKit for your email marketing needs.
Do you have a different opinion?
Maybe it will push me back into using beehiiv… Let me know! Reply to me and sway me the other way.
Or do you have another reason why ConvertKit is awesome? I would love to hear it.
As always…
KEEP GOING
B.S.