beehiiv

beehiiv is a newsletter-first creator platform offering content creation, website building, subscriber management, monetization (ads, paid subscriptions, digital products), growth tools (referrals, boosts, recommendations), automations, and a full REST API — organized across four pricing tiers. The platform has evolved from a newsletter tool into what it calls "the operating system for the creator economy," shipping a major product expansion in late 2025 (the "Winter Release") that added digital products, podcast hosting, an AI website builder, and website analytics. Founded in 2021 by the team behind Morning Brew, beehiiv now serves 55,000+ creators and has sent over 35 billion emails. This audit documents every discoverable feature, sub-feature, and configuration option as of February 2026.

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Pricing tiers gate nearly every advanced feature

beehiiv uses four subscriber-count-based pricing tiers that gate feature access. Understanding this structure is essential to the audit, as most monetization, growth, and automation features require at least the Scale plan.

Launch (Free) — Up to 2,500 subscribers, 1 team member, up to 3 publications. Includes unlimited email sends, custom website, custom domains, basic analytics, recommendation network, subscriber tagging and custom fields, custom HTML, magic links, API access, audience segmentation, email validation/fraud detection, subscribe forms, Giphy and Unsplash integrations, and 2FA.

Scale (from $39–49/mo) — Up to 100,000 subscribers, 3 team members, up to 3 publications. Adds email automations, referral program, Ad Network, Boosts (earn and grow), 3D analytics, beehiiv AI tools, segment sends, surveys and polls, A/B testing, digital products (link/media, file/download), paid subscriptions (0% platform fee), direct sponsorships, and new website templates.

Max (from $96–109/mo) — Up to 100,000 subscribers, unlimited team members, up to 10 publications. Adds beehiiv branding removal, priority support, audio newsletters, podcast hosting, RSS-to-Send, direct sponsor advertising storefronts, AI social post generation, coaching/1:1 digital products, NewsletterXP course, and beta feature access.

Enterprise (custom pricing) — 100K+ subscribers, custom publication limits. Adds dedicated IP addresses, white-label platform, concierge onboarding, dedicated account manager, Send API (programmatic post creation), and custom subscriber limits.

Pricing scales with active subscriber count within each tier. Annual billing saves approximately 12–20%. All plans include unlimited email sends.

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Content creation spans a 30+ block editor with AI and collaboration

The post editor is organized as a five-tab flow: Compose → Audience → Email → Web → Review. The Compose page uses a slash-command ("/") interface for inserting content blocks, with inline formatting and drag-and-drop reordering.

Content blocks available via the slash command

Basics (all plans): Bulleted list, numbered list, button (custom text, URL, styling), image, code block, table, blockquote (3 customizable variants with author byline, fonts, alignment, background color), content break (custom color, style, thickness, width percentage, gap), section (group components with custom spacing, background, border; per-channel visibility for web-only, email-only, or both; anchor tags), columns (adjustable structure), subscriber break (segment content for different subscriber types), table of contents (auto-generated from headings with anchor links), file attachment, and merge tags (dynamic subscriber/publication data with fallback values).

Embeds (all plans): Generic URL embed, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter/X, Stocktwits, Bluesky, audio file upload, YouTube video embed.

Premium blocks (Scale+): Ad Network advertisements, AI image generation, AI writer, referral program block, paywall breaks, HTML snippet (custom code injection), recommendation blocks, Boost blocks, and RSS content blocks.

Inline text formatting

The toolbar supports bold, italics, underline, strikethrough, highlight, hyperlinks, inline code, superscript, subscript, headings H1–H6, lists, blockquotes, code blocks, text alignment (left/center/right), font family, font weight, font size, text color, and format reset. Team comments are taggable inline and visible only to team members.

Style panel (Basic and Advanced tabs)

The Basic tab controls primary color (footer, buttons, blockquotes, byline), text-on-primary color, secondary color (dividers, borders), link color, heading font family and weight, paragraph font family, break styling, list styling (font, weight, size, line height, color, bullet/number style, padding), and individual customization of 3 blockquote variants. The Advanced tab controls widget customization for embeds and footer content.

Post creation workflow features

The Compose top bar includes real-time collaborator indicators, word count, undo/redo, search and replace, backlink setup (internal links between posts), commenting system, version history (view and revert previous versions), save-as-template, and an email size indicator that warns when approaching Gmail's 102KB clipping threshold. Posts support title, subtitle, thumbnail (with web-top toggle), content tags for categorization, author assignment (team or guest), post duplication, and a beehiiv.new browser shortcut to open a new draft.

The Audience tab controls include/exclude segments and independent toggles for email and web audiences. The Email tab sets subject line, preview text, sender name, and send time/scheduling. The Web tab configures SEO meta title, description, slug, and thumbnail visibility. The Review tab handles publish-now, schedule, or A/B test confirmation.

Reader comments on web posts

beehiiv supports native reader comments on published web posts. Comments can be enabled at the publication level and then configured per post with visibility controls such as All subscribers, Paid subscribers only, Disabled, or Locked (visible but closed for new comments). Comment participation requires subscriber login, and admins can moderate threads, remove comments, and apply comment bans by email.

A/B testing

Available on Scale+, A/B testing supports up to 4 subject line variations with customizable audience split percentage and test duration. Results auto-deploy the winner. Monitoring shows real-time open and click-through rates. A/B testing is unavailable during Smart Warming periods.

Preview and testing

The editor includes desktop and mobile preview modes, test email sending to up to 10 addresses, and a simulated subscriber option that renders merge tags with actual subscriber data.

AI features (Scale+)

AI Writer accepts prompts with configurable text length (paragraphs, words, characters), heading generation toggle, and tone-of-voice dropdown. Post-generation actions include discard, regenerate, or insert. Inline AI tools offer shorten, extend, and simplify operations. AI Editing handles spelling/grammar fixes and translation into multiple languages (Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and others). AI Image Generation creates images from text prompts in 7 styles: photorealistic, digital art, comic book, neon punk, isometric, line art, and 3D modal. AI Social Helper (Max+) generates platform-optimized social media posts from published content. AI usage is tracked per-workspace with visible tallies. AI spell check works for English-language content only.

Media library and asset workflow

The new Media Library is a shared, workspace-level asset system across publications. It supports folders, improved search/filtering, bulk actions (copy/move/delete), in-app image editing (crop/rotate/resize/filters/color adjustments/annotations), and AI image generation. It is accessible from post editor, automation email steps, welcome emails, and the Website Builder. External providers include Unsplash, Giphy, and Getty Images (3 monthly credits on Max and 10 monthly credits on Enterprise, per support docs).

Audio and podcasts

Audio newsletters (Max+) convert entire posts to audio via text-to-speech. Podcast hosting (Max+) supports RSS feed integration with existing podcast hosts, automatic episode syncing, dedicated customizable show pages, and an on-site audio player with links to preferred platforms.

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The website builder is a full no-code CMS

beehiiv's new Website Builder launched July 15, 2025, and is available on all plans. It was built on beehiiv's 2024 acquisition of Typedream and supports AI-assisted website creation through a chat interface.

Builder interface and page system

The drag-and-drop canvas includes an icons menu, top navbar, right-side design panel, and bottom preview toolbar with desktop/mobile toggle. Version history works per-site and per-page. Publishing can target specific pages or all pages simultaneously. Default pages include Home, Subscribe, Authors, Recommendations, and Upgrade. Custom pages are unlimited with configurable title and URL slug. Navigation is managed via Navbar and Footer settings.

Template elements and blocks

Prebuilt sections include heroes, CTAs, FAQs, posts feeds, pricing displays, and testimonials — all saveable as reusable custom templates. Content blocks include subscribe forms, posts feeds, buttons, pricing blocks, author bios, social links, content tags, testimonials, dividers, and recommendation widgets. Layout blocks cover sections, containers, columns, and dividers. Integration blocks support YouTube playlist/channel feeds and external podcast embedding. Synced data elements dynamically pull posts, author bios, content tags, and testimonials.

Conversion elements

Three popup types are available: email capture popup (scroll-triggered), full gate popup (blocks all content, targetable to non-subscribers, free tier, or specific paid tier), and inline gate popup (blocks content below a placement point with the same targeting options). Subscribe forms are fully customizable, and each form can trigger a unique signup flow with configurable post-signup steps: recommendations, surveys, paid subscription upgrade prompts, and custom thank-you pages.

Design and customization

The design panel offers per-element customization of padding, borders, backgrounds, and typography. Global themes control colors, typography (font pairings), and button styles. Custom fonts are uploadable. Animations and hover effects are supported. The builder includes a layers panel for complex layout editing, bulk selection of same-type blocks, and image carousels (added January 2026) with customizable layout, pagination, sizing, and arrows.

Website settings

SEO settings include per-page meta title/description, breadcrumbs toggle, and a remove-indexing toggle. The newer Website Builder SEO controls also include support for custom robots.txt rules to control crawler and AI indexing behavior. Additional settings cover social links, tracking pixels (Google Analytics, Facebook, etc.), testimonials management, favicon, website redirects, and a placeholder data toggle for design visualization.

Link-in-bio pages

A mobile-optimized link-in-bio page is fully integrated with the website, supporting analytics, product sales, subscribe forms, and social channel links. Available on all plans.

Custom domains

Partnered with Entri for automated DNS configuration (no manual changes required). A single custom domain per publication applies to website, email sending, and referral hub. Smart Warming automatically warms new custom domains over 6–8 weeks, gradually increasing sending volume and adjusting based on ESP feedback. During warming, emails send from both the custom domain and a beehiiv subdomain.

Mobile app (PWA)

Available on all plans through the legacy website builder only. This is a Progressive Web App, not a native App Store app, installable from the browser. Each publication gets its own app with a custom icon. Supports 3 push notification types: new post, comment reply, and comment like. In-app features include reading posts, commenting, and liking comments. The new Website Builder does not yet include this toggle.

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Subscriber management offers segments, tags, custom fields, and preferences

Segmentation (3 types, all plans)

Dynamic segments auto-update daily based on conditions (manual recalculate triggers immediate refresh). Static segments are point-in-time snapshots that do not update. Manual segments are based on specific imported subscriber lists. Segment conditions include subscriber tags, custom fields, subscription details, activity rating, acquisition source, engagement metrics, poll results, and more. Segment actions include CSV export, bulk tag application, automation enrollment, and subscriber deletion. Segment sends — targeted campaigns to specific segments — require Scale+.

Tags and custom fields

Tags are internal labels applied via import, bulk segment actions, automations, or manual assignment. They are additive on import (cannot override existing tags). Custom fields support text, number, date, and boolean data types with presets for first name, last name, full name, and company. Fields are case-sensitive, bulk-updatable via CSV with an overwrite toggle, updatable via automation nodes, and auto-populated by survey responses. Merge tags like {{first name | Reader}} enable personalization with fallback values.

Subscriber preferences center

Preference options are tied to custom fields with visible/hidden toggles. Subscribers manage preferences via email footer links or website login. Preferences can drive segmentation and are configurable in the Website Builder.

Subscriber profile dashboard

Each profile shows engagement stats, email, location (updated on opens/clicks), subscribe date, subscription tier, and quick links (referral link, Stripe link, management link). Acquisition details include channel, source, medium, device type, referring site, and full UTM data. Tabs cover post delivery/open/bounce history, automation history, poll responses, referral activity, other emails (welcome, Smart Nudge), subscription events (subscribe/unsubscribe/upgrade/downgrade), and billing/payment history.

Import and export

Free subscriber import supports CSV with field mapping, custom field creation during import, and toggles for sending welcome emails, adding to automations, and applying tags. An overwrite existing custom field data toggle controls whether imports update existing records. Paid subscriber import uses a Stripe migration tool that maps Stripe products to beehiiv tiers and preserves grandfathered pricing. Platform-specific importers exist for Substack, Mailchimp, Kit (ConvertKit), Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, Campaign Monitor, MailerLite, HubSpot, and Ghost. Exports are available as CSV for subscriber data and HTML for post content.

Subscriber statuses

Active, Inactive, Pending (referral confirmation), and Unsubscribed — all tracked in the subscriber profile's Events tab.

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Growth tools form a multi-channel acquisition engine

Boosts: a two-sided subscriber marketplace (Scale+)

Grow Boosts let publishers pay other newsletters to recommend their publication. Configuration includes setting a CPA (cost per acquisition), target audience description, quality controls, and a max spend limit. Minimum budget is $50, maximum $10,000 per transaction. Funds are held in escrow and refunded if unused after 72 hours. One live offer per publication at a time. Three boost types exist: Web Boosts (appear in the signup flow recommendations page), Email Boosts (inserted into newsletter posts, available only after Web Boost approval, with a 72-hour send window), and Direct Links (personalized affiliate-style signup links shareable on any platform, toggled off by default since January 30, 2025). beehiiv takes a 20% fee integrated into marketplace prices.

Earn Boosts let publishers get paid to recommend other newsletters. The marketplace is sortable by featured, newest, oldest, or highest payout. Earnings deposit to the beehiiv Wallet and can be transferred to fund Grow campaigns. A 10–17 day verification window ensures only verified, engaged subscribers are counted.

Referral program (Scale+)

Publishers create milestone-based rewards with customizable thresholds. Reward types are flexible (digital, physical, promo codes) with optional auto-fulfillment. The referral block is insertable in posts via /referral program. Merge tags include {{rp_refer_url}} (unique referral link), {{rp_referral_hub_url}} (referral hub page), and {{rp_personalized_text}} (progress toward next milestone). A fully customizable referral widget supports dynamic content showing per-subscriber progress. Referred subscribers receive "Pending" status until confirmed as an anti-abuse measure. Automation triggers include Referral Milestone Hit and Referrals Achieved.

Recommendations network (all plans)

A free cross-promotion system where publishers recommend other newsletters during the signup flow. Up to 4 "Top 4" recommendations are configurable with custom descriptions and drag-and-drop ordering. Recommendations can also be inserted directly into posts. Community badges (Starter through Supernova) are awarded based on referral volume to other publications. Heart status (1–5 hearts) reflects how many Top 4 lists feature the publication.

Subscribe forms (all plans)

Embedded forms for external sites include a full builder with header, description, email field, and additional fields (name, birthday, custom fields). Design customization covers color palettes, Google Fonts typography, and button styles. Post-submission options include a success message or redirect to an external URL. Three embed sizes: full-width, max-width, and minimal. Forms track acquisition source on subscriber profiles and can trigger automations. Website subscribe forms are native blocks with multiple design templates, each assignable to a unique signup flow.

Pop-ups and content gating

Customizable popup modals triggered by scroll, time on page, or exit-intent. Content gating requires email submission to access premium content. A/B testing of different pop-ups is supported. Mobile-friendly with conversion analytics.

Magic links (all plans)

One-click subscription URLs that pre-populate the recipient's email address. Compatible with 16+ email platforms (Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Kit, etc.). Support advanced UTM parameters (source, medium, campaign) and custom redirect URLs. Work in email contexts only, not web browsers.

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Five monetization channels with 0% platform commission

Paid subscriptions (Scale+)

0% platform fee — only Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. Multiple subscription tiers (e.g., Bronze, Silver, Gold) with per-tier configuration of name, preview text, benefits list, and currency. Supported currencies include USD, AUD, BRL, CAD, EUR, GBP, INR, MXN, and NZD. Plan types per tier: monthly, quarterly, annual, one-time, or "Name Your Price" ($1 minimum, not available in AU, HK, IN, ID, JP, TH). Features include content paywalls (per-post level with custom teasers), free trials (1–90 days, optionally without credit card), percentage discounts (forever, once, or repeating), complimentary access grants (days/months/years/lifetime), gift subscriptions (purchaser-to-recipient with scheduled delivery), and gift links for sharing paywalled content. An "Allow Multiple Recurring Subscriptions" toggle controls whether new subscriptions replace or stack with existing ones. Discord integration is available per tier. Apple Pay and Google Pay are enabled through Stripe.

Ad Network (Scale+)

beehiiv sources advertisers and delivers weekly ad opportunities every Sunday. Publishers review, accept, and schedule ads within a 14-day advance window. Ads are dragged into posts from a module at the top of the editor canvas. Maximum placement: 1 primary + 2 secondary ads per post. Ad content cannot be edited (standardized for brand guidelines and tracking). Pricing models include CPM (cost per 1,000 unique opens) and CPC (cost per unique verified click). Earnings derive from email sends only, not web views. Click verification includes a 72-hour tracking window followed by a 24-hour gap before performance reports. Payouts process on the 20th of the following month via Stripe Express to the beehiiv Wallet. The network reaches 50M+ readers with 1B+ monthly impressions. No exclusivity is required — publishers can use other ad partners simultaneously.

Direct sponsorships (Max+)

A self-serve sponsorship management system with a Sponsor Storefront showcasing newsletter reach and pricing. Ad product types include primary, secondary, classified, takeover, job, and other. Pricing supports flat-fee or CPM-based models with daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly frequency. Asset requirements are configurable (short response, long response, image, link). A calendar integration shows available and booked slots. Each transaction incurs a flat $10 beehiiv fee plus Stripe processing. Automated real-time performance reports are sent to sponsors.

Digital products (Scale+, coaching on Max+)

0% platform commission — only Stripe processing fees. Three product types: Link/Media (sell access to websites, affiliate links, hosted content), File/Download (PDFs, guides, templates, eBooks), and Coaching/1:1 (paid sessions with Cal.com or Calendly integration, Max/Enterprise only). Features include customizable product pages, multi-image galleries, international currency support (10+ currencies), Apple Pay and Google Pay, discount codes, full and partial refunds, native product reviews with automated collection and approval workflows, automation triggers on purchase, embeddable product blocks across website/link-in-bio/emails, upsell capabilities, and customer information collection with segmentation. A buyer subscriber center provides order history, downloads, booking management, reviews, and receipts.

In February 2026, beehiiv also launched Very Good Downloads, a curated gallery of live digital product pages built on beehiiv, alongside Digital Products v2 upgrades.

beehiiv Wallet (Scale+)

A central financial hub tracking all revenue from Ad Network, Boosts, paid subscriptions, and digital products. Supports withdrawals to bank via Stripe Express, transfers between Monetize and Grow Boost balances, and a dashboard with balance, escrow, and transaction history.

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Analytics cover emails, subscribers, website, and revenue

Subscribers report (Analyze > Subscribers Report)

Overview tab shows active/inactive/pending subscriber charts, new subscribers by acquisition source, date range filtering (default 90 days), and channel/source/medium/UTM campaign filters. Performance tab displays open rate and verified CTR by acquisition source and country, plus a subscriber table with referral metrics. Cohort Analysis tab shows active cohort percentages by month for the past 16 months (active = at least one open/click without unsubscribing), filterable by channel. CTR Cohort Analysis tab tracks new subscriber CTR for the first 30 days. All tabs export to PDF; individual tables are downloadable via menu.

Posts report (Analyze > Posts Report)

KPIs include delivered, opened, unique clicks, verified unique clicks, unsubscribed, and spam reported. Charts cover open rate, CTR, verified CTR, a post engagement funnel (delivered → opened → verified clicked), top-performing URLs, and email performance by date. Note: automation emails are excluded from the Posts Report.

Individual post analytics

The Performance tab shows recipients, open rate, CTR, unsubscribe rate, unique opens over time, a clicks table (total/unique/CTR per link), a click map visualization, and CSV export. Toggles switch between email, web, and combined views with optional verified-clicks display. The Interactions tab lists most engaged subscribers filterable by clicks, opened, unopened, or unsubscribed. Additional tabs show A/B test results and paid subscription data.

Clicks report (Scale+)

A detailed URL performance table showing verified total/unique clicks, total web clicks, and unique web clicks. Supports date range filtering, URL-contains filter, and PDF/CSV export.

UTM tracking

Automatic UTM tagging is enabled by default with customizable parameters for source (publication domain), medium (email/referral), and campaign (URL-friendly post title). Supports all 5 standard UTM parameters. Manual UTMs on links override auto-generated ones. UTM data populates subscriber profiles under Acquisition Details and supports segmentation via utm_term and utm_content.

Verified clicks

A proprietary click bot detection system that automatically removes bot clicks from reports. Requires no setup. Provides clean analytics for advertisers.

Website analytics (launched late 2025, full release early 2026)

Real-time traffic, behavior, and conversion tracking with device type, browser, time spent, and channel attribution. Audience segmentation by location, age, and gender. Intended to eliminate the need for GA4.

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Automations support visual workflows with 8 trigger types

The automation builder (Scale+) is a visual drag-and-drop interface. Launch plan users get only a single configurable welcome email.

Triggers (maximum 3 per automation, acting as OR conditions)

• Signed Up — new subscriber sign-up (imported subscribers not captured)
• Email Submitted — form submission via any or specific subscribe form (can re-enroll existing subscribers)
• Survey Submitted — when a subscriber completes any or a specific survey
• Poll Response — when a subscriber responds to a poll
• Manual — segment-based manual enrollment
• Unengaged — subscriber hasn't opened/clicked for a specified period (runs daily at 6:00 AM UTC)
• Segment Action — triggered when subscriber enters or exits a specific dynamic segment
• Enrolled via Automation — receives subscribers from another workflow

Each trigger supports optional custom conditions and must be individually activated before publishing.

Actions

• Send Email — full post editor within workflow (polls unavailable in automation emails)
• Update Subscription — update subscriber status, custom fields, apply/remove tags
• True/False Branch — conditional split based on subscriber attributes or behavior
• Enroll in Automation — chain to another active automation, bypassing its triggers
• Time Delay — configurable in minutes, hours, or days
• Webhook — send subscriber data to external platforms (supports GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE with custom headers and payloads)

Workflow configuration

Maximum 73 steps per automation (workaround: chain automations via Enroll in Automation). No limit on total automations. Re-entry settings control how many times and under what conditions subscribers can re-enter. States include draft, live, and inactive. An "Unpublished changes" badge appears when edits are made to a live automation. Quick start templates cover lead magnets, paid subscription downgrade retention, upgrade welcome, re-engagement (90-day inactivity), and partner moneymaker flows.

Overview dashboard

Shows enrollment, progression, and completion by day. Performance view tracks sent, delivered, unique opens, unique clicks, and spam reports both aggregate and per-email, plus completion rate with adjustable time frames.

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Email delivery infrastructure handles authentication and warming

Domain authentication

SPF and DKIM are auto-managed for beehiiv subdomains and configured via CNAME records for custom domains. DMARC is required for all custom domain users (2024 mandate). beehiiv provides a DMARC wizard for generating correct records and a free DMARC report analyzer. Recommended policy progression: none → quarantine → reject, with percentage-based enforcement. BIMI setup guidance is available for verified sender logos.

Smart Warming

Automatic domain warm-up activates for publications sending to 100+ subscribers on new custom domains. The process runs 6–8 weeks, warming domain name, sender, and IP address simultaneously. During warming, emails send from both the custom and beehiiv subdomains. The system adjusts volume based on ESP signal feedback (Gmail, Outlook). A/B testing is unavailable during this period.

Double opt-in and Smart Nudge

beehiiv supports publication-level double opt-in for new subscribers, with configurable opt-in email content and optional post-confirmation redirect URL. Subscribers remain in a Pending state until they confirm. Smart Nudge can be enabled to send an automatic reminder email 48 hours after the initial opt-in email for subscribers who have not confirmed.

Sending configuration

All plans include unlimited email sends. Configurable reply-to address, sender name, and email username. One-click unsubscribe is auto-handled. Spam rate threshold enforced at 0.1%. Email structure includes fixed header and footer elements for CAN-SPAM/GDPR compliance — publishers cannot fully replace these with custom HTML. Branded links display custom domain in email link tracking URLs. Dedicated IPs are Enterprise-only.

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Integrations span native apps, Zapier, Make, and webhooks

Native integrations (App Marketplace, ~30 integrations)

Documented integrations include Shopify, Stripe, HubSpot, Kajabi, Clickfunnels, Stocktwits (real-time cashtags, content syndication to 10M+ users), Discord (role assignment by subscription tier), WordPress, Webflow, Wix, Squarespace, Carrd, Google Search Console, Podia, Patreon, Circle, and platform-specific importers for Substack, Mailchimp, Ghost, and others.

Zapier (official integration)

Triggers (instant): New post sent, new subscriptions, new subscription confirmations, new subscription downgrades, new subscription upgrades, user unsubscribes, new survey responses. Actions: Create subscriber, delete subscriber, delete post, add tags, update subscriber, add to automation, create/update/delete custom field, delete segment, make custom API call. Searches: List automations, segments, custom fields, posts; view subscribers by email, segment members, publication details.

Make (official integration)

Similar trigger/action parity with Zapier. Offers additional data formatting and manipulation capabilities between automation steps.

Other integration guides (knowledge base)

Beyond native integrations and official Zapier/Make support, beehiiv's support center also documents additional integration patterns under "Other Integrations," including guides for Pipedream, Privy (via Zapier), and Segment.

Webhooks (Scale+)

Configurable via Settings > Integrations or API. Event types: post.sent, post.updated, subscription.created, subscription.confirmed, subscription.deleted, subscription.upgraded, subscription.downgraded, subscription.tier_created, subscription.tier_deleted, survey.response_submitted. Features include real-time logs with response data, enable/disable toggles, previous message attempt viewing, and no hard limits on webhook count. Webhooks must return HTTP 200 to confirm receipt. Also available as an action node within automation workflows.

Embed options

Three subscribe form sizes (full-width, max-width, slim/minimal) via iframe-based embed code. A Boosts recommendations widget triggers on form submission, page load, or manual placement and is embeddable via head script. Code injection (Settings > Advanced) supports custom JavaScript/HTML in header and footer sections site-wide.

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The REST API exposes 17+ resource endpoints

Base URL: https://api.beehiiv.com/v2/ | Authentication: Bearer token | Format: JSON | Spec: OpenAPI YAML downloadable from developers.beehiiv.com

API access is available on all plans including Launch (free). Webhooks require Scale+. The Create Post endpoint is beta and Enterprise-only.

Endpoint inventory

Pagination: Cursor-based (recommended, using opaque tokens with has_more and next_cursor) or offset-based (deprecated, limited to 100 pages). Default 10 results per page, maximum 100. Rate limiting is 180 requests per minute on a per-organization basis; responses include RateLimit-Limit, RateLimit-Remaining, and RateLimit-Reset headers, and overages return HTTP 429. Resource IDs follow the pattern {resource_prefix}_{UUID} (e.g., pub_*, post_*, evt_*).

Send API (Enterprise)

Uses the Create Post endpoint with two content modes: blocks (structured UI widgets) or body_content (raw HTML). Supports post_template_id for merging template styling with API content. Cannot send 100% custom HTML — fixed email structure with required header/footer persists. Custom CSS is injectable via Style panel's Advanced > Email Header > Code > Header custom CSS.

GitHub repositories (10 public repos)

The TypeScript SDK (beehiiv/typescript-sdk, 11 stars, last updated December 2025) is the only official client library, generated from the OpenAPI spec. Four Google Tag Manager templates handle base pixel tracking, Ad Network Pixel V2, event tags, and embed tracking. Other repos include crawlerdetect (Golang bot detection module), clickhouse-activerecord (Ruby ActiveRecord driver for ClickHouse, revealing their analytics stack), and has_state_machine (Ruby state machines for ActiveRecord, revealing their backend stack). No official Python, Ruby, or other language SDKs exist.

What the API cannot do

No endpoint for triggering email sends (campaigns). No Website Builder control via API. No OAuth2 flows — only static API keys. No GraphQL. Limited granular per-subscriber engagement data. Post creation is Enterprise-only and still in beta.

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Team collaboration supports four roles with real-time editing

Roles and permissions

Owner (1 per workspace, auto-assigned to creator) — exclusive rights to delete subscriber tags, publications, and workspaces. Ownership transfer requires a support ticket. Admin — full feature/settings/data access; workspace admins can create publications. Member — broad access with restrictions on data export and domain settings. Contributor — limited access focused on content creation. Workspace-level access extends automatically to all current and future publications; publication-level access must be granted per publication.

Team limits

Launch: 1 member. Scale: 3 members. Max: unlimited. Enterprise: unlimited.

Collaboration features

Real-time co-editing with teammate initials visible. Taggable inline comments for feedback (team-only visibility). Version history with compare and revert. Shared drafts. Media library scoped per publication (contributors/members see only their publication's assets). Team invitations expire after 72 hours.

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Dynamic content, surveys, polls, and RSS round out the feature set

Dynamic content (January 2026, Max and Enterprise)

The most requested feature of 2025. Enables personalized content by showing different blocks to different readers within a single send. Conditional visibility is based on subscriber data and behavior (e.g., hide a product promo for existing purchasers), and applies across standard posts plus automation, welcome, and opt-in email contexts. No code or custom templating required.

Surveys and polls (Scale+)

Surveys are full form builders with multiple question types (multiple-choice, dropdown, open-ended), customizable layout and branding, and configurable title, description, CTA, and thank-you messages. Responses auto-populate custom fields and drive segmentation. Surveys are usable in signup flows and for unsubscribe feedback. Polls embed directly in posts with customizable appearance, real-time results tracking, exportable data, and poll-based segmentation.

RSS-to-Send (Max+)

Automatically triggers newsletter sends from RSS feed updates. Configurable display includes title, subtitle, author, thumbnail, and categories. CTA styles include button, link, or title-as-link.

Content import

A dedicated import tool supports dropping a URL to pull content from other platforms. Subscriber migration via CSV with field mapping. Stripe subscriber migration preserves payment methods and grandfathered pricing.

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Conclusion: a maturing platform with gaps in automation depth and developer tooling

beehiiv's feature set is unusually broad for a newsletter platform, spanning content creation, website building, e-commerce (digital products), podcasting, advertising, and subscriber growth tools within a single product. The 0% commission on paid subscriptions and digital products is a genuine competitive differentiator. The Boosts marketplace creates a unique subscriber acquisition channel with no direct equivalent in competing platforms.

The most significant architectural gaps are automation sophistication (max 73 steps, limited trigger types compared to ActiveCampaign or Kit), API maturity (no programmatic send capability below Enterprise, no OAuth, static keys only, single TypeScript SDK), and mobile experience (PWA only, legacy builder only, no native apps). The inability to send fully custom HTML emails — with fixed header/footer for compliance — is a meaningful limitation for publishers requiring total design control.

The January 2026 additions of dynamic content and Automations v3 (product purchase triggers, redesigned automation management) signal continued investment in closing the automation gap. The AI website builder, built on the Typedream acquisition, positions beehiiv's website capabilities well ahead of Substack and comparable to Ghost, though still behind dedicated website builders. For a competing platform CEO, the key strategic observations are: beehiiv's growth moat is its network effects (Boosts marketplace, Recommendations, Ad Network) rather than any single feature, and its pricing architecture means most competitive features require the $49+/month Scale tier — the free tier is deliberately limited to drive conversion.

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beehiiv's complete technology stack, forensically reconstructed

beehiiv runs a Ruby on Rails monolith transitioning to microservices on AWS, with React/Remix and Next.js on the frontend, PostgreSQL and ClickHouse Cloud for data, Twilio SendGrid for email delivery, and Stripe for payments. This forensic reconstruction draws from 10 distinct source categories — job listings, GitHub repositories, founder interviews, infrastructure analysis, the ClickHouse case study, engineer LinkedIn profiles, developer documentation, BuiltWith/technology profilers, acquisition analysis, and partnership announcements. Every technology below is tagged with its evidence source and confidence level.

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The Rails monolith that sends billions of emails

beehiiv's core platform is a Ruby on Rails application, written by three ex-Morning Brew engineers who knew Rails intimately. The ClickHouse blog confirms: "They wrote the initial beehiiv product using Ruby on Rails." CTO Noah Pryor, who joined in September 2022 as employee #1 at Teachable (where he rebuilt a PHP MVP into Rails), doubled down on this choice. Benjamin Hargett's open-source contributions — heroicon (Rails view helpers), telephone (Ruby service objects), and has_state_machine (ActiveRecord state machines) — reveal canonical Rails patterns throughout the codebase.

The backend uses HAML for server-side templating, ActiveRecord as the ORM, Sidekiq with Redis for background job processing, and GraphQL alongside REST for API layers. A September 2023 job posting on the Vercel/Next.js GitHub discussion explicitly listed the stack: "Next.JS + Typescript, React + Tailwind, Ruby on Rails, GraphQL, Postgres + Redis, Heroku, Vercel, Notion, Slack, GitHub, Linear." This remains the most authoritative first-party declaration of the stack.

The frontend employs React with Remix (confirmed in multiple job listings as "React / Remix") for the application dashboard, and Next.js with TypeScript and Tailwind CSS for the marketing site deployed on Vercel. Jeet Mandaliya, beehiiv's dedicated "Editor Engineer," confirms the post editor uses Tiptap built on ProseMirror — the same block-based editing framework inherited from the Typedream acquisition. His GitHub bio reads: "currently @beehiiv as Editor Engineer, making our Post Editor awesome with Tiptap, React & Ruby on Rails."

Go (Golang) powers at least one microservice: beehiiv forked x-way/crawlerdetect into their GitHub organization for bot and crawler detection via user-agent analysis — critical for filtering fake opens and clicks from newsletter analytics. The reindexer JavaScript repository on their GitHub strongly suggests Elasticsearch (or a similar search engine) for content search and indexing.

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From PostgreSQL fires to ClickHouse in 22 milliseconds

beehiiv's data architecture underwent a radical transformation in 2023–2024, documented in detail by Eric Abis (Head of Data Infrastructure) at a ClickHouse NYC meetup. The legacy system, internally called "Honeycomb," ran on PostgreSQL with a Ruby queueing system. It handled hundreds of millions of events per week but caused multi-hour delays before users could see email performance data. Engineers spent their days "fighting scalability fires."

The new architecture centers on Apache Kafka for event streaming, feeding into ClickHouse Cloud for OLAP analytics. Every email interaction — processed, delivered, deferred, bounced, opened, clicked — generates events that flow through Kafka into ClickHouse. In six months, the system accumulated 33+ billion raw events in 1.5 TiB compressed (13 TiB uncompressed). Median query time dropped to 22 milliseconds; average is 85ms (skewed by heavy queries from large publishers). Users now see send performance data within seconds, not hours.

ClickHouse features used include ReplacingMergeTree (idempotent inserts), Dictionaries (instantaneous metadata joins), Ephemeral Columns (intermediate calculations without permanent storage), Materialized Views with shadow tables for pre-aggregated data, and heavy reliance on Window Functions. beehiiv maintains a fork of clickhouse-activerecord on GitHub, enabling their Rails app to query ClickHouse using familiar ActiveRecord patterns alongside PostgreSQL. CTO Noah Pryor confirmed in a 2025 ClickHouse blog: "We rely heavily on both Postgres and ClickHouse to power our mission-critical, customer-facing applications."

PostgreSQL remains the primary OLTP transactional database, managed via CrunchyData (confirmed in the Infrastructure Engineer job listing as a third-party integration). Redis handles caching and serves as Sidekiq's job queue backend. The managed PostgreSQL service runs alongside ClickHouse Cloud, both on AWS infrastructure connected via AWS PrivateLink.

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SendGrid delivers 4.35 billion emails and counting

beehiiv's email delivery runs on Twilio SendGrid, confirmed by an official Twilio customer case study featuring CEO Tyler Denk. beehiiv has sent over 4.35 billion total emails through SendGrid with a 1,147% year-over-year volume increase and a 52% improvement in deliverability rate. They use SendGrid's Engagement Score (SEQ) to segment senders, identify bad actors, and manage IP pool performance. Custom IP pools are segmented by sender quality, and SendGrid's Professional Services team functions as "an extension of beehiiv's team."

Email authentication for customer custom domains uses CNAME records pointing to sendgrid.net for DKIM. beehiiv's proprietary "Smart Warming" system gradually increases email volume over 4–8 weeks when new custom domains are connected. Integrated third-party email validation ensures list hygiene. SSL certificates for custom domains use Let's Encrypt and Google PKI (pki.goog).

For beehiiv's own internal platform communications (not customer newsletters), evidence from email header analysis by CampaignRefinery suggests Customer.io (which uses Mailgun underneath) handles transactional emails. The beehiivstatus.com status page explicitly monitors "SendGrid API v3" and "SendGrid Event Webhook" as separate components, confirming deep integration.

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AWS hosts the platform, but Heroku persists

beehiiv's infrastructure story is one of active migration. The September 2023 job listing declared Heroku as a hosting platform, and a February 18, 2026 status page incident definitively confirmed Heroku remains in production use: "Our upstream provider Heroku has acknowledged the incident... the majority of platform websites are currently unavailable due to an issue with our hosting provider Heroku."

Simultaneously, beehiiv is migrating to self-managed AWS infrastructure. The Infrastructure Engineer job listing — the most technically detailed source — describes building on Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) with Terraform as the primary infrastructure-as-code tool, Helm/Helmfile for Kubernetes management, and GitHub Actions for CI/CD. The listing explicitly mentions managing AWS EC2, ALBs, VPCs, Route 53, IAM, S3, SecretsManager, KMS, and CloudWatch. ClickHouse Cloud connects via AWS PrivateLink. Additional AWS services for data infrastructure include Amazon MSK (Managed Streaming for Kafka), Amazon QuickSight, Amazon RDS, Amazon Glue, and Amazon Kinesis.

Cloudflare serves as the primary CDN, DNS provider, and DDoS protection layer. The domain beehiiv.com resolves to Cloudflare IP 104.18.69.40, and the domain is registered through Cloudflare. Image optimization uses Cloudflare's image CDN at media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/. Amazon CloudFront provides an additional CDN layer. Cloudinary handles image management and transformation. NGINX serves as the reverse proxy/web server. Vercel hosts the Next.js marketing frontend.

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Monitoring spans six tools across three tiers

beehiiv's observability stack is unusually comprehensive for a company of ~90 employees. The Infrastructure Engineer listing confirms Prometheus and Grafana for infrastructure metrics, PagerDuty for alerting, and AWS CloudWatch for AWS-native monitoring. Datadog appears as a tag in the Welcome to the Jungle listing. New Relic provides application performance monitoring, and Sentry handles error tracking (both confirmed via Himalayas and job listings). Pingdom monitors uptime. User behavior analytics uses FullStory (session replay), Hotjar (heatmaps), and Segment.io as the customer data platform feeding these tools. Ahoy, a Ruby gem for first-party analytics, tracks visits and events within the Rails application. VWO (Visual Website Optimizer) handles A/B testing. The status page runs on Atlassian Statuspage at beehiivstatus.com, monitoring nine components.

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Stripe powers every dollar through the platform

Stripe is beehiiv's exclusive payments partner, deeply integrated across every revenue stream. Paid newsletter subscriptions use Stripe Connect. The Ad Network and Boosts marketplace pay creators through Stripe Express accounts. Stripe Identity Verification gates publisher onboarding and API key creation. The beehiiv Wallet system manages earnings, all backed by Stripe. Each publication receives a dedicated Stripe Express account. This is confirmed independently by beehiiv's support documentation, Himalayas tech profile, and developer docs (which note Stripe identity verification during API key creation).

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AI features hide their LLM provider, but ML runs on Python

beehiiv's AI writing assistant — offering content generation, text tools, spell check, translation, image generation, and social post creation — is available on paid plans with daily request limits (5–100/day by plan). The specific LLM provider is not publicly disclosed. No confirmed mention of OpenAI, Anthropic, or any specific LLM partnership was found across all sources researched.

However, beehiiv's dedicated ML team reveals infrastructure choices. Christopher Singer, Lead Machine Learning Engineer, brings expertise in Python, PyTorch, ONNX, MLflow, and Kubernetes from previous roles. His work at beehiiv focuses on recommendation systems, bot detection models, click-through rate optimization, and ad cost efficiency — aligning with the ClickHouse blog's mention of planned ML initiatives for fraud detection, spam filtering, and ad network optimization. SentenceTransformers (an NLP embeddings library) appears in the Bitscale technology profile, suggesting vector-based content similarity or recommendation features. The Infrastructure Engineer listing mentions a future project to "stand up an ML Infrastructure for total lifecycle management."

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The Typedream acquisition brought a ProseMirror-powered website builder

In June 2024, beehiiv acquired Typedream, a Y Combinator W20 AI-powered website builder, integrating its team and technology into beehiiv's new website builder feature (launched beta ~January 2025, major upgrade November 2025).

Typedream's core technology centers on Tiptap/ProseMirror extended into a full website builder — confirmed by co-founder Albert Purnama's description of "extending Tiptap/ProseMirror into a website builder shipped to thousands." The stack includes Next.js on Vercel, React with TypeScript, Cloudflare for image CDN, AWS for backend email pipelines, Google Cloud and DigitalOcean for data hosting, and Stripe for payments. The Typedream founders previously built Cotter (a passwordless authentication SDK acquired by Stytch), bringing deep auth expertise. Three of the five Typedream founders (Kevin Chandra, Albert Purnama, Michelle Marcelline) later left beehiiv to co-found The Prompting Company.

beehiiv also acquired Swapstack (September 2023), a newsletter advertising marketplace whose technology and team now power beehiiv's Ad Network. The Ad Network uses custom SSP (Supply-Side Platform) technology with bot click verification, supporting CPM and CPC models, and has grown 20x+ since launch to pay $1M+/month to publishers.

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Developer experience runs through Fern and OpenAPI

beehiiv's public API at api.beehiiv.com/v2/ is a RESTful JSON API using Bearer Token authentication and transitioning from offset-based to cursor-based pagination (with deprecation headers on legacy requests). The API specification follows the OpenAPI standard, available as a downloadable YAML file. Documentation at developers.beehiiv.com is built with Fern (buildwithfern.com), which also generates the official TypeScript SDK (@beehiiv/sdk on npm) programmatically. The SDK features automatic retries with exponential backoff, configurable logging (winston-compatible), and a 60-second default timeout. Webhook events cover post, subscription, and survey lifecycle events, delivered as JSON payloads. Integration platforms Zapier and Make.com have official beehiiv integrations; a community n8n node also exists.

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The complete vendor dependency map

The table below consolidates all identified technologies with confidence levels and evidence sources, organized for competitive analysis:

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Conclusion: strategic vulnerabilities and architectural bets

beehiiv's architecture reveals a pragmatic startup that scaled fast on proven technology (Rails + Heroku + PostgreSQL) and is now investing heavily in infrastructure modernization. Three observations stand out for competitive analysis.

The Heroku dependency is a live risk. As of February 2026, Heroku remains in active production use — the February 18 outage took down "the majority of platform websites." The ongoing migration to AWS EKS is clearly not yet complete. This creates a transitional period where infrastructure complexity is maximal: two hosting platforms, multiple monitoring tools, and Terraform state management across both environments.

SendGrid is a single point of failure for email delivery. Unlike competitors who run custom MTAs or multi-provider email infrastructure, beehiiv routes all newsletter delivery through Twilio SendGrid. The status page monitors SendGrid API v3 and SendGrid Event Webhook as separate components. At 4.35B+ emails and growing 1,147% year-over-year, this concentration creates both negotiating leverage and existential vendor risk.

The ClickHouse bet is paying off handsomely. The migration from PostgreSQL to ClickHouse Cloud for analytics — achieving 22ms median queries across 33 billion events — is beehiiv's most sophisticated infrastructure decision. It enables real-time analytics that directly differentiate the product. The clickhouse-activerecord fork lets their Rails engineers query ClickHouse with familiar patterns, reducing the cognitive overhead of a dual-database architecture. Combined with Kafka for streaming and planned ML initiatives (fraud detection, ad optimization), this data infrastructure is the technical moat beehiiv is actively building.