LetterDuck vs beehiiv: growth platform or owned email?
beehiiv grows audiences better than we do. We run your email cheaper and let your whole team answer it. Here is the honest split.
What each one is
beehiiv is a media business in a box built around one job: growing a newsletter audience. The free Launch plan carries a hosted website, a podcast feed, custom domains, and up to 2,500 active subscribers with unlimited sends. Paid tiers add the machinery beehiiv is actually famous for: a cross-newsletter recommendation network, the Boosts marketplace where publishers pay each other for real subscribers, an ad network, a sponsorship storefront on Max, and paid subscriptions with a 0% platform take (only Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 applies). No newsletter tool we track has stronger monetization rails.
LetterDuck is an email workspace that also sends newsletters. One flat $50 a month covers a whole domain: every address on it (an address is a routing rule, not a paid seat), a threaded team inbox where anyone can reply as any address, and a newsletter composer with a designed template. Deliverability runs on your own domain and is managed for you: SPF, DKIM, DMARC, a warm-up throttle enforced in code, automatic suppression, and RFC 8058 one-click unsubscribe on every campaign. LetterDuck is in waitlist mode; the form on this page joins the list, it does not open an account today. The full argument for running a newsletter on a domain you control is in our guide to starting a newsletter on your own domain.
What it costs at four list sizes
| Monthly cost at | beehiiv | LetterDuck |
|---|---|---|
| 500 subscribers | $43 | $50 flat |
| 1,000 subscribers | $43 | $50 flat |
| 5,000 subscribers | $78 | $50 flat |
| 10,000 subscribers | $96 | $50 flat |
Public list prices, August 2026, annual billing where offered. beehiiv: Scale plan on annual billing. On monthly billing the same list sizes cost $49, $49, $89 and $109. The free Launch plan covers up to 2,500 subscribers. LetterDuck is $50 per domain, flat, unlimited addresses and subscribers.
The cost story
beehiiv's pricing is a ladder and your subscriber count is the thing climbing it. To beehiiv's credit, the ladder counts active subscribers only: unsubscribed and inactive contacts do not bill, per beehiiv's own support doc (updated June 22, 2026). But the steps are steep and they trigger themselves. On monthly billing, Scale runs $49 up to 1,000 subscribers, $69 at 2,500, $89 at 5,000, $109 at 10,000, then $169 at 25,000. Annual billing takes exactly 12% off each rung.
Work one example. A newsletter with 4,000 active subscribers growing 500 a month pays $89 today. In month three it passes 5,000 and the bill becomes $109. Twelve months in it sits at exactly 10,000, and the next 500 subscribers step it to $169, a 55% jump on the day one subscriber pushes it over. That first year costs $1,268 on monthly billing, or $1,151 if you prepay a year at the 10,000 tier. LetterDuck over the same year is $600, and the number on the invoice at 25,000 subscribers is the same number as at 400.
There is a second ladder hiding behind the first: branding. Removing "powered by beehiiv" requires the Max plan, which starts at $109 a month at 1,000 subscribers and reaches $219 a month at 10,000 ($2,313 billed annually). A branding-free 10,000-subscriber newsletter is therefore a $2,313-a-year decision on beehiiv and a $600-a-year decision here. One more data point for your file: Scale's entry price rose from $39 to $49 during 2026, and multiple Reddit users reported finding out on their billing statements rather than in an announcement.
The honest other side: below 2,500 subscribers, beehiiv is free and we are not. A $50 flat fee only wins once the tiers pass it, and for a small list beehiiv's free plan is genuinely one of the most generous in the industry.
Feature by feature
| Capability | beehiiv | LetterDuck |
|---|---|---|
| Price at 10,000 subscribers | $109/mo Scale, monthly billing | $50/mo flat |
| Free tier | $0 up to 2,500 active subscribers | None; paid product, waitlist |
| Recommendation network + Boosts | Paid, measurable subscriber acquisition | |
| Ad network and sponsorship storefront | ||
| Paid subscriptions | 0% platform take, Stripe fees only | Bring your own billing |
| Hosted website and podcast | ||
| Two-way team inbox on your domain | Newsletter-only, no shared inbox | Threaded, reply as any address |
| Unlimited addresses on your domain | An address is a routing rule | |
| Branding removal | Requires Max, from $109/mo | No platform branding |
| Team seats | 3 on Scale, unlimited on Max | Unlimited, included in the flat price |
| Send API and RSS-to-send | On Max | |
| Deliverability controls you can inspect | Managed platform-side, opaque | Warm-up throttle, suppression, complaint gates in your send path |
Choose beehiiv if
- Subscriber growth is your top problem. The recommendation network and Boosts marketplace acquire real subscribers; no email workspace does that.
- You monetize through ads or sponsorships. beehiiv's ad network and storefront are built in and have no equivalent here.
- You want the whole media stack hosted in one place: website, podcast, archive, paid subscriptions with 0% take.
- You are under 2,500 subscribers and do not need automations. The Launch plan is free and covers custom domains and unlimited sends.
Choose LetterDuck if
- Your list has passed roughly 5,000 subscribers and you would rather pay $50 than $89 to $169 on a ladder that climbs itself.
- Readers reply and a team answers. beehiiv has no inbox; we are built around one, with every address on the domain included.
- You want deliverability you can see: our throttle ramps a new domain from about 150 sends on day one to about 1,100 a day by day seven (Resend's documented ramp, codified), and the send path pauses itself at a 0.3% complaint rate or 2% bounces.
- You run newsletters for several properties and want each one to be a flat, predictable line item. That is the shape media sites tend to want.
Weighing more than these two? The wider field is in our beehiiv alternatives roundup.
Migrating from beehiiv to LetterDuck
The move is small because beehiiv exports cleanly and a newsletter list is just a CSV. Realistic budget: one afternoon of setup, then a first campaign paced by the relay ceiling, which is 95 sends a day on our current plan.
- Export your active subscribers from beehiiv as CSV. Export active only; importing unsubscribed contacts into any new tool is how complaint rates start.
- Add the DNS records for your sending domain. We hand you the exact TXT values at onboarding; the DMARC one looks like this and starts in monitoring mode:
Type: TXT Host: _dmarc
Value: v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc-reports@yourdomain.com
- Import the CSV into LetterDuck and rebuild your newsletter design in the composer. Designed templates are included; port your masthead and colors, not your HTML.
- Send your first issues under the warm-up throttle. It computes a curve opening at roughly 150 sends on day one, then enforces the lower of that and the relay ceiling. On our current plan the ceiling is 95 a day, so budget a 10,000-subscriber list as a campaign measured in months.
- Keep beehiiv's free Launch plan if you use the hosted website. LetterDuck does not host sites, and there is no rule that says the archive and the sending have to live in the same product.