Mailerlite vs Beehiiv — You Should Get Both!
I’m going to compare Beehiiv and Mailerlite.
I’m in a unique position to do this, because I’ve actually used both.
Spoiler: I like both products, and I actually use both. I don’t like to review anything I don’t use myself.
It is so important to choose the right email marketing software for your exact needs. Everyone is using email marketing differently. You need to cut through the marketing hype and figure out what you need. I’ll help you do that.
There is a lot of overlap between different email marketing options, but also a ton of differences.
It’s not easy to make the right choice — I know, because I’m tasked with choosing!
Here’s the truth:
Beehiiv and MailerLite are both awesome, but for different reasons.
By the end of this article, you might come to the same conclusion as me — which is you might want to use both together.
Regardless — my goal is to help you understand the difference between Beehiiv and Mailerlite, give you an objective overview, and help you decide which one is best for you.
First, let’s do a summary of features both Beehiiv and Mailerlite have in common.
- Email Box
- Landing Page
- Send Email Newsletters
- Website Builder
- Landing pages
- List segmentation
- Forms
- Website builder
- Paywall (to Monetize your list)
- API’s for third party integrations
The truth is some of the features are better on each email platforms.
But lets get in the weeds and find out why each is truly unique and awesome and why you should try both.
So how can we choose?
Let’s start with Mailerlite
Mailerlite Features that are Unique
Landing pages — I mentioned that both Beehiiv and Mailerlite offer landing pages but the truth is that is a little misleading.
Mailerlite has a huge list of full page templates of landing pages that provide tons of information, images and text that look more like a brand landing page. Compare this to just a page that only has a Newsletter signup box (in a landing page)
Look at the below example from the Mailerlite template gallery. It is a full page that also has an email subscription box.
Beehiiv’s landing page is more of a newsletter subscribe form. That doesn’t mean Beehiiv’s is worse (because it’s awesome) at helping you grow your email list. We use Beehiiv for growing our email list!
You can see a working example of Beehiiv’s newsletter below and subscribe to our AI Growth guys Newsletter.
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You can also just click on the above link to get an idea how the Beehiiv email subscribe box actually looks.
As you can see, the landing pages are completely different styles.
The Beehiiv newsletter is solely built for subscribing to the newsletter and the Mailerlite landing page has way more content and can be used show anything not just subscribe to a newsletter.
Depending on your needs you may really want a way more detailed landing page builder. Mailerlite would be a much better choice. But if you are mainly growing one email list Beehiiv is amazing and simple. So you can focus on building your list without doing a million different things.
Use Mailerlite for Ecommerce and Selling Digital Products
Probably the largest difference between Beehiiv and Mailerlite is the ability to create and sell ANY digital product and not just for monetizing your email course.
This means you could sell ebooks, digital courses, downloads or any other kind of product you cancreate in the digital world. In this sense you can think of it more like Shopify except for digital products.
Because of the way more in depth landing page creator options in Mailerlite you can really build anything you want to sell and create free and paid digital products.
Beehiiv ecommerce is currently limited to putting a paywall on your newsletter.
Push Notifications on Mailerlite
As of writing this I haven’t seen this option in Beehiiv. Mailerlite offers push notifications.
These are the instant messages you see on your Mobile phone with a clear call to action link.
These can include promotional offers or transactional messages and updates such as new content or deals. This can help your conversion rate when selling digital products also where Mailerlite excels.
Autoresponders on Mailerlite and Beehiiv
Up until recently there was a big difference between Beehiiv and Mailerlite.
Mailerlite allows you to make different autoresponders of varying lengths.
Beehiiv now supports this since the last month or two. Beehiiv keeps adding features all the time as well so it is important to keep checking back on what they offer.
Often I find their new features can be buried in weird spots in the admin so you have to search for the feature sometimes to find out where or even if it exists.
This is normal for a growing platform when you keep adding features. You need to find somewhere to put them. But it’s important to keep checking!
What is an Autoresponder?
An auto responder is just a sequence of automated emails. I’m mentioning this because these are a powerful and often underutilized feature for new email marketers.
An example of an autoresponder is a thank you for signing up to a newsletter email after someone signs up for a newsletter.
But these autoresponders can be extended an have a lot of different use cases.
You can create a free email course for example. Imagine a course like 5 days to dominate email marketing and drip feed the content over 5 days without actually sending people each of the emails. This saves a ton of time and is super powerful.
The awesome part about automations such as autoresponders is that the emails are sent out automatically once you set them up and keep delivering. They basically do a lot of the work for you. In the age of AI it is easy to forget about powerful automated emails like these. These are often way better than anything AI related.
Now let’s talk about Beehiiv and why it is awesome.
Beehiiv is for Growing your email Newsletter
Beehiiv is really the newsletter for growth.
It would be easy to think Mailerlite seems great (and it is) with all the offers so why bother considering Beehiiv.
But it lacks in a major way for growing your list compared to Beehiiv. Mailerlite has all the features there but the power of Beehiiv comes into list building, leverage, monetization, and network effects.
Let me explain…
Why is Beehiiv the newsletter platform for growth?
It focus’s on building one list. Through its’ singular optin style of form and the simple website creator. It is setup to build one email list quickly.
What is the Beehiiv Recommendation network?
When someone signs up for your email newsletter you have the option to add recommended email newsletters for people to subscribe to.
Why would you recommend an email newsletter?
You do this to provide valuable opportunities for your audience but also for building partnerships. This is where Beehiiv shines and is totally different from other email marketing software.
The power is from the network effect. Imagine if you recommend for example, 5 other newsletters and start getting email subscribers for those newsletters.
You then reach out to those newsletters and ask if they can also recommend you.
You could be getting 10 email subscribers a day by yourself, but double your subscribers because of the partner newsletter ecosystem.
How does the Beehiiv Referral program work?
Another awesome feature unique to Beehiiv is the referral program.
Offer rewards to subscribers for taking the action you want.
For example, you could offer a free bonus report or gift if a subscriber refers an email subscriber to your newsletter.
You could make an offer like “Refer a friend to this newsletter and get this free report” normally valued at $297 USD.
If you have a good offer, imagine how much you could grow your list.
What are Beehiiv Magic links?
Forms are ugly and annoying to fill out. Magic links lets you make a button and in one click you can get them to sign up for their list.
People are already logged in on Google, Facebook, etc, so it uses the power of this to make it easier for people to subscribe to your newsletter. (easier to collect more emails and make more money)
What are Beehiiv Boosts?
Beehiiv Boosts are the option to become a paid sponsors that are shown to new email subscribers of other newsletters.
If you really want to turbo charge your email list growth you can get a you sponsored newsletter shown when people subscribe to other newsletters.
Yeah, it costs a bit of money but will help you grow quickly.
The cool thing is you can set a budget and price per actual subscriber and you can cap the max spending so you don’t break the bank.
And you can use the money you are making in the other Beehiiv monetization programs to grow your list without necessarily costing you money.
How to Make Money with your Beehiiv Newsletter?
Beehiiv allows you to charge your customers money for a paid newsletter just like Mailerlite, but it also has other monetization options.
This goes along with the other growth options. You can get paid if other newsletters sponsor you when signing up for their newsletters or you can even get sponsors for your individual email blasts.
We go into more details about these monetization options on our Beehiiv Review
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