Beehiiv vs Kit: Which Newsletter Platform Is Right for You in 2026?

Updated: August 2026

If you're a solopreneur, coach, or creator trying to pick a newsletter platform in 2026, there's a decent chance you've narrowed it down to two names: Beehiiv and Kit (formerly ConvertKit).

I get asked this one almost as often as Beehiiv vs. Substack — and it's actually a harder call to make, because unlike Substack, Kit isn't the "easy mode" option. It's a real, mature platform that a lot of serious creators swear by.

Here's the thing that makes me a little different from most people writing this comparison: I've used both. I run Beehiiv here at Redefining Retirement (and I'm a Beehiiv affiliate), but I've also run Kit for years across other projects like my personal business, Corey Koehler Media, and my music project, Corey Koehler Music / Planet Corey. It was great for all of those. So this isn't a "the other guy is bad" post. Kit is genuinely good software. The question is which one fits what you're building.

I'm also an affiliate for both, which honestly makes this easier to write straight. I don't need to talk you into one over the other to make money. I just want you to end up on the right one for you.

Let's break down Beehiiv vs Kit so you can pick the right one for your goals.

Both are email/newsletter platforms built for creators and small businesses. They both let you grow a list, send campaigns, and monetize an audience. But they grew up solving different problems:

Both can send you newsletter subscribers. Which one you want depends on whether you think of yourself as running an automated email funnel or a publication.

This is Kit's home turf, and it shows.

Kit built its reputation on visual automations — you can build a subscriber journey with branching logic (if they click this, tag them and send that; if they buy, move them to a different sequence) without touching code. If your business runs on a funnel — lead magnet → nurture sequence → pitch — Kit's automation builder is more mature than Beehiiv's.

Beehiiv has automations too, and they've been catching up fast, but if pure email-funnel complexity is your priority, Kit is still the stronger tool. That automation engine is a big part of why it worked so well for me across a few different projects — it just runs, quietly, in the background.

If your business lives and dies by "does the right email get sent to the right person at the right moment," that's Kit's strength.

Both platforms want to help you make money — they just built different toolkits for it.

Kit offers:

Beehiiv offers:

Both have closed a lot of the gap that used to separate them here. The honest difference now is less "who has more monetization tools" and more "which set of tools matches how you already sell." If you're selling a course or digital product as the core of your business, Kit's Commerce tools were built for exactly that. If you want an ad network, referral system, and a publication-style archive all under one roof, Beehiiv casts the wider net. (For the full breakdown of every way to make money from a list, see my newsletter monetization guide.)

If you want your content to work for you on Google (and increasingly, AI search), this one matters.

Beehiiv gives you a public newsletter archive that functions like a real blog — custom URL slugs, meta titles/descriptions, and the option to use your own domain. This is the engine behind the "blogletter" approach: write once, send to your list, and let the same content rank on Google.

Kit has a website/landing page builder, and it's improved a lot, but it was never built around SEO-first publishing the way Beehiiv was. Kit's center of gravity is still the inbox, not the archive.

If you want your back catalog of newsletters to quietly bring in search traffic for years, Beehiiv is the stronger foundation.

Kit has the Creator Network — a directory/marketplace where creators recommend each other and cross-promote, plus a community/forum for Kit users to swap notes.

Beehiiv now has Native Community built in (feeds, channels, member profiles, DMs, group chats, moderation), plus native podcast hosting with monetization tools if you run a show alongside your newsletter.

Neither one hands you an audience the way Substack's in-app discovery does — with both Kit and Beehiiv, you're bringing your own traffic (social, search, referrals) and using their tools to convert and retain it once it arrives.

Kit:

Beehiiv:

Both let you make it look like your brand, not a generic template. Beehiiv leans slightly further into "this is your whole website," where Kit leans into "this is your email system with a landing page attached."

Kit:

Beehiiv:

Kit's tagging system is excellent for behavior-based segmentation (who clicked what, who bought what). Beehiiv's analytics are broader — acquisition + website + email in one dashboard. If you need to know where your growth is coming from, Beehiiv shows you more. If you need to know what each subscriber has done, Kit's tagging goes deep.

Kit:

Beehiiv:

Pricing changes on both platforms — verify current numbers at kit.com and beehiiv.com before you buy.

The number that matters more than the sticker price: what each platform takes as a cut of your revenue once you're actually selling something. Kit takes 3.5% + $0.30 on digital products at every tier. Beehiiv takes 0% on subscriptions (Stripe fees only) and also offers commission-free digital product sales. If you're planning to sell products or paid subscriptions at any real volume, that ongoing cut compounds a lot faster than the monthly plan fee does.

Here's how I'd sum it up:

Choose Kit if…

Choose Beehiiv if…

Brand new to newsletters and not sure where to even start? Read The Gen X Newsletter "Tech Stack": How to Launch in 48 Hours first, then come back and pick your platform.

I'm biased both ways here, which is honestly the most useful bias to have — I make money whichever one you pick, so let me just tell you straight.

Kit was great to me across my personal brand, Corey Koehler Media, and my music project — Corey Koehler Music / Planet Corey. If you've got an offer and you need emails firing off in the right sequence to the right person, Kit does that job well, and it did it well for me for years.

But Redefining Retirement isn't a funnel-first business. It's a publication — I want the content itself doing work in search, building an archive, standing on its own outside the inbox. That's why RR runs on Beehiiv and my other stuff has run on Kit. Same guy, different tool for a different job.

If you're running (or building toward) a publication — something with a website, an archive, content that should show up on Google — Beehiiv ($) is where I'd point you.

If your business is closer to "I have an offer, and I need the automation to sell it on autopilot" — Kit is the stronger tool for that job.

Want to try Beehiiv? I've partnered with them to give you a discount plus access to my AI Newsletter Fast-Track Checklist that walks you through my exact setup.

👇 Tap below to get a copy:

Either way, pick the one that matches how you actually plan to run this — not just the one with the shinier feature list.