Beehiiv vs Kit: Which Is Better to Build Your List?

Hesitating between Beehiiv and Kit (formerly ConvertKit) to start your email list?

This guide has you covered.

Kit and Beehiiv are both great autoresponders for content creators. Kit offers more handy features if you want to explore all the benefits of email marketing. But Beehiiv offers more monetization and audience growth options.

Kit vs Beehiiv: The Main Differences

Both are autoresponders. Which means that you can send:

• Welcome sequences
• & Email broadcasts

But Beehiiv is more than just an autoresponder.

It also allows you to publish your newsletter as SEO-optimized blog posts (a bit like WordPress.)

Growing Your Audience With Beehiiv vs Kit

Growing an audience from scratch is hard.

No matter the platform you choose, you’ll likely have to publish content on other platforms to get people onto your list.

However, both Kit & Beehiiv have some extra handy features to help you grow your audience:

Kit (formerly ConvertKit) allows cross-promotion through their Recommendations feature.

How Recommendations look like in Kit (Screenshot: Kit.com)

This lets you swap promotional mentions with other creators in your niche – when someone subscribes to your newsletter, Kit suggests other relevant newsletters they might enjoy. It’s a free way to reach new readers who are already interested in content like yours.

Beehiiv offers 3 main ways to grow your audience:

1. Recommendations: Similar to Kit, you can get your newsletter suggested to readers of other Beehiiv newsletters in your field.
2. Boost: A unique paid feature that lets you run targeted ads for your newsletter across other Beehiiv publications. You can set your budget and target specific audiences to gain new subscribers.
3. SEO-optimized articles: Unlike Kit, Beehiiv gives you a full blogging platform. This means your newsletter issues can double as blog posts, helping you attract readers through Google searches. You can optimize these articles with keywords, meta descriptions, and other SEO elements to improve your visibility in search results.

So while both platforms offer recommendation systems, Beehiiv provides additional growth tools through paid promotion and search engine optimization.

Pricing: Beehiiv vs Kit

Where do you get the most bang for your buck?

Depends on what you’re looking for…

But generally speaking, Beehiiv’s plan are 20% cheaper than Kit’s.

Now what about the free plan?

Free Plan Comparison

Kit’s free plan allows you to go up to 10,000 subscribers for free and you get:

• 1 email automation
• 1 email welcome sequence
• Unlimited email broadcasts
• Unlimited landing pages
• Unlimited opt-in forms

With Beehiiv’s free plan, you can get up to 2,500 subscribers. You also send unlimited email broadcasts, but you get 0 automation nor a welcome sequence.

Conclusion: Kit’s free plan is better than Beehiiv’s.

🔌 Integrations: Kit vs Beehiiv

Integrations make the digital world go round. Kit and Beehiiv both play the game, but who scores higher?

Kit is like the octopus of integrations. It connects with nearly everything (Zapier included), and even sports an API.

Picture a tool, and Kit probably integrates with it.

Beehiiv? It’s still in the minor league. It doesn’t natively link with online course tools like Podia or Teachable.

However, Beehiiv has a Zapier integration and a working API.

Still limited, but a nice start.

For now, Kit is winning the integration race. But Beehiiv has promise. If they step up, they might level the playing field.

🤖 Automations: Beehiiv vs Kit

Automations is the lifeblood of efficient email marketing.

Sadly, Beehiiv stumbles here. It does offer automations, but they’re locked behind their $99 plan. Even if you take the paid plain, the automations are… let’s say basic.

It’s like getting an umbrella in a hurricane – not quite enough, especially when you measure it against other autoresponders.

Kit, on the other hand, is like a seasoned magician. They’ve been around, they’ve learned the ropes, and they’ve got automations right.

Create rules based on tags, events, and segmentations? Check. Kit does it all, and it does it well.

If you’re looking for powerful automations, Kit outshines Beehiiv by miles.

Forms: Beehiiv vs Kit

Forms – the gateway to growing your email list.

Both Kit and Beehiiv let you plant these gates on your website. But how do they fare?

Beehiiv, while it keeps things simple, drops the ball a bit. The options are quite limited, like a menu with only two dishes. Worse yet, if your text button stretches too long, the form cracks:

In the game of forms, it’s not just about having them. It’s about flexibility and reliability too.

If you’re looking to personalize your forms and make them look pretty and clean, ConvertKit wins over Beehiiv.

Landing Pages

One of the tactics I’m using to grow my email list is to offer different lead magnets based on the content I’m publishing.

As an example, if I’m writing an article about AI, then my lead magnet is going to be about AI. If I’m writing about blogging, then my lead magnet is going to be about blogging.

These tactics allow me to get on average 25% more email subscribers than with a generic “sign up for my newsletter” call to action.

In order to use this tactic, you need different landing pages for different lead magnets.

With Kit, you’ll be able to create different landing pages for different lead magnets.

This is not possible with Beehiiv where everyone has the same landing page that goes like this:

As you see, every newsletter landing page looks the same.

There’s no way to deliver different types of lead magnets with Beehiiv.

Point for Kit.

Automations

Beehiiv has drastically improved their automations but it’s still not as powerful as Kit.

The triggers are limited to:

• Signed Up
• Email Submitted
• Survey Form Submitted

So I can’t segment or fire-off automation based on clicks in an email, etc.

Final Verdict: Beehiiv or Kit?

Beehiiv is gaining a lot of popularity. But it’s not as powerful as Kit.

Go for Beehiiv if…

Choose Beehiiv if you want a fusion of blogging and email marketing. If you want your email content doubles as blog posts, Beehiiv is your tool.

It’s great for folks who are just starting out, with a generous free plan of up to 2,500 subscribers. It’s also lighter in your pocket for larger lists. Beehiiv might not be the champion of automation or integrations, but it gets the job done:

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Go for ConvertKit if…

…You want a powerhouse of email marketing. ConvertKit is your choice.

It’s a veteran in the game, and offers a lot of features:

• Tags
• automation
• segmentations
• contact management features
• integrations with other platforms like Gumroad
• and rule-based actions are your bread and butter

It integrates with almost everything.

Kit is the perfect fit for those seeking a robust, feature-rich autoresponder for their email marketing campaigns.

No matter which platform you plan to choose…

My free email course below will show you how to turn your subscribers into income: