Best Newsletter Platforms in 2026

beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform founded in 2021 by Tyler Denk, Benjamin Hargett and Jacob Hurd, who had been early employees at the email-first media company Morning Brew. The company says it is fully remote, with staff spread across 12 countries. It combines an email editor, a hosted website for each publication and podcast tools in one account, and it is positioned for writers who want to treat a newsletter as a media business rather than a marketing channel.

As of the second quarter of 2026 beehiiv reported more than 170,000 publications on the platform, more than 75 billion emails sent in total, more than 450 million unique readers and more than US$60 million earned by its users. Monetisation is the main differentiator: paid plans include an advertising network, a referral programme, recommendations between newsletters, paid subscriptions with a 0% beehiiv take rate, and digital products. The free plan allows up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends, but the ad network and recommendations are not available in every region and are excluded during trials. Analytics on the free tier are limited to a 30-day lookback, and branding removal requires the Pro plan.

Substack is a publishing platform operated by Substack Inc. that lets writers run free or paid newsletters, podcasts and video from one publication page. Its business model is a revenue share: creators keep 90% of subscription revenue, minus card processing fees, and Substack keeps the remainder; there are no platform subscriptions, tiers or contracts, and starting or leaving is free. The company states that publications on the network have passed 5 million paid subscriptions.

Substack differs from the other platforms in this list because it is a reader network as well as a tool. Readers hold one Substack account across many publications, and the company offers growth, community and discovery features alongside the editor. It also runs Substack Defender, a programme that provides legal support to publishers. The trade-off is control and cost at scale: because the fee is a percentage, a large paid newsletter pays more to Substack than it would on a flat-fee tool, and the design, automation and segmentation options are narrower than those of email marketing suites. Writers who only send free newsletters pay nothing, which makes the platform the lowest-cost route for unpaid publications.

Kit is an email marketing platform for creators that operated as ConvertKit until it rebranded as Kit, which it describes as an email-first operating system for creators. The product is aimed at people who sell courses, books, digital downloads and paid newsletters, and it covers landing pages, forms, broadcasts, sequences and a commerce layer.

The free plan supports up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited landing pages, forms and broadcasts, plus tagging, segmentation and the ability to sell digital products and subscriptions. The Creator plan adds unlimited visual automations and sequences, removal of Kit branding, SMS, RSS campaigns and integrations, while the Pro plan adds a newsletter referral system, subscriber engagement scoring, deliverability reporting, unlimited users and Facebook custom audiences. Kit also lists a Kit MCP connector for AI assistants on paid plans. Commerce is not free: Kit charges 3.5% plus 30 cents on digital product and subscription sales on every plan, so paid newsletters carry a percentage fee on top of the plan price. The automation builder is the main reason creators choose Kit over publishing-first tools such as beehiiv or Substack.

Ghost is an open-source publishing platform that combines a website, member subscriptions and email newsletters. It was founded in April 2013 by John O'Nolan and Hannah Wolfe and is run by the Ghost Foundation, a non-profit whose constitution means the company cannot be bought or sold. The organisation has been fully remote since 2013 and has never had an office.

Ghost publishes its own metrics: at the time of review its about page showed an annual run rate of US$11,140,013 and 30,316 active customers, with all revenue reinvested in the product and community. Publishers can self-host the open-source code for free or pay for the managed Ghost(Pro) service. Ghost takes 0% of paid subscription revenue on the Publisher plan and above, leaving only the payment processor's fees. The Starter plan is limited to one staff user and does not offer paid subscriptions. Ghost is the strongest choice in this list for publishers who want full ownership of a site with a newsletter attached; it has fewer built-in growth tools, such as ad networks or referral programmes, than beehiiv, and self-hosting requires technical maintenance.

Mailchimp is an email and customer-engagement platform owned by Intuit, the maker of TurboTax and QuickBooks. Intuit completed the acquisition in 2021 for approximately US$5.7 billion in cash plus 10.1 million Intuit shares with a fair value of about US$6.3 billion at the 29 October 2021 closing price. Intuit described Mailchimp as a marketing platform for small and mid-market businesses.

Mailchimp is a general email marketing suite rather than a newsletter-first publishing tool. Its plans run from Free through Essentials and Standard to Premium, and include templates, audience segmentation, automations and reporting. The free plan is small: 250 contacts and 500 sends per month, with a cap of 250 per day. Essentials allows monthly sends of ten times the contact count, Standard up to 6,000 emails per month at its entry tier, and Premium up to 150,000 emails a month. The prices shown on the pricing page at the time of review were 12-month introductory discounts of 50%, and the post-promotion rate was not displayed, which makes long-run costs harder to compare. Mailchimp suits businesses that send a newsletter alongside promotional and e-commerce email.

MailerLite is an email marketing platform that also offers websites, landing pages, forms and digital product sales. The company says it is fully remote, with 163 people working from more than 40 countries. It is one of the lower-priced general email tools and is frequently used for small business and creator newsletters.

The free plan allows 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, two user seats, one website, three active forms and three active automations of up to five steps, plus one active digital product or booking. Sending is locked if a free account exceeds 250 subscribers. The Comfort plan starts at US$12 per month and allows monthly sends of ten times the subscriber tier, while the Power plan starts at US$25 per month with unlimited sending under a fair-use policy and unlimited digital products; annual billing saves 10%. An Enterprise tier covers lists above 200,000 subscribers. MailerLite does not run a reader network or ad marketplace, so growth depends on the publisher's own channels. Its strengths are a clean editor, low entry pricing and enough automation for most small senders.

Brevo is a marketing and customer-communication platform that covers email, SMS, WhatsApp, transactional messages and a sales CRM. For newsletter senders its distinguishing trait is volume-based pricing: plans are set by the number of emails sent per month rather than the number of contacts stored, which benefits publishers with large lists that send infrequently.

Every account starts on a free plan that does not require a credit card; once Brevo approves the account for sending, the free plan allows up to 300 emails per day. The Starter plan costs US$9 per month (or US$97 a year) from 5,000 emails a month and includes email, SMS and transactional sending, with SMS credits sold separately. Standard costs US$18 per month (US$194 a year) and adds unlimited multi-step automation workflows and testing, while Professional costs US$499 per month and starts at 150,000 emails a month, adding WhatsApp, pop-ups and mobile channels. Brevo is a marketing suite rather than a publishing tool: there is no paid-subscription system, no reader network and no newsletter archive website, so it suits businesses that want a newsletter alongside transactional and SMS messages.

Buttondown is a small, independent newsletter service built for writers and developers who prefer plain text and Markdown. Instead of fixed tiers, it sells a base plan priced on active subscribers and lets publishers add individual features as monthly add-ons. The base plan is free for the first 100 subscribers and includes both a Markdown editor and a rich-text editor, plus sending from a custom domain.

Add-ons are priced separately: paid subscriptions cost US$9 per month; segmentation, comments and surveys, analytics, RSS-to-email and attachments are US$9 per month each; sponsorships, multiple newsletters and automations are US$29 per month each; and white-labelling and teams cost US$79 per month each. Hosting the archive on a custom domain is a US$29-per-month add-on. Published prices assume no more than one email a day to the full list; higher-volume senders need usage-based pricing from the company. Registered non-profits receive 50% off. The modular approach keeps simple newsletters cheap but means a feature-rich setup can cost more than an all-inclusive plan elsewhere. Buttondown has no reader network or ad marketplace.

EmailOctopus is a low-cost email marketing service used for newsletters by small publishers, non-profits and creators. It offers templates, a drag-and-drop editor, custom HTML import, landing pages and forms. Its free Starter plan is one of the larger free allowances among general email tools: 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, with EmailOctopus branding, one landing page, one form, one user and reports kept for 30 days.

The Pro plan starts at US$9 per month billed yearly and removes branding, keeps reports indefinitely and allows unlimited landing pages, forms and users, with priority support. Sending options include gradual delivery spread over up to 24 hours and smart timing that sends when each subscriber is most likely to open. Lists above 500,000 subscribers require a custom quote. EmailOctopus does not offer native paid subscriptions, an ad network or a hosted publication website, so writers who want to charge readers need a separate payment tool. It is best treated as a cheap, reliable sender for free newsletters.

Flodesk is an email marketing platform known for design-focused templates and a flat pricing model: the plan price does not rise as the subscriber list grows, and subscribers are unlimited on every plan. The company's pricing page illustrated this with the Email plan at US$38 per month for a list of 14,000 subscribers.

Three plans were listed at the time of review: a free plan, the Email plan at US$38 per month billed yearly (about US$46 billed monthly) and the Everything plan at US$79 per month billed yearly (about US$99 monthly), which adds selling tools such as checkout, payment processing and sales-tax handling. A 14-day free trial requires no credit card. The flat model makes Flodesk relatively expensive for a list of a few hundred subscribers and relatively cheap for a large list. Flodesk is aimed at small brands, coaches and creators who prioritise visual email design; it offers fewer segmentation and deliverability-reporting tools than larger marketing suites, and it does not run a reader network or ad marketplace.

AWeber is one of the older email marketing services; its site carries a copyright line running from 1998. It is used by small businesses and solo operators for newsletters, autoresponder sequences, landing pages and automations.

Pricing is tiered by subscriber count from 500 to 150,000 subscribers, with lists above 100,000 directed to sales. The Lite plan costs US$12.49 per month billed annually or US$15 monthly at the 500-subscriber tier and includes one list, three landing pages, three automations and three users, with sends capped at ten times the subscriber count each month. Plus costs US$19.99 per month billed annually or US$30 monthly and removes the list, landing-page, automation and user limits, with sends capped at twelve times subscribers. A Done For You option adds expert setup for a US$79 one-time fee. Lite and Plus carry a 14-day free trial; no permanent free plan was described on the pricing page. AWeber's long track record and support are its main selling points, while it lacks the paid-subscription and discovery features of newsletter-first platforms.

Campaign Monitor is an email marketing platform owned by Marigold, a marketing-technology group. It is used by brands and agencies for designed newsletters, campaign automation and reporting, and sells add-ons such as a website builder at US$10 per month and API access.

The plan line-up comprises Lite, Essentials, Premier and Enterprise. Lite allows 2,500 sends a month, while Essentials and Premier allow unlimited monthly sends; prices are set by a contact-tier selector, and annual billing carries a 10% discount. The free option is a 30-day trial limited to 500 contacts and 500 emails. Plan prices were rendered by the page's contact calculator and could not be captured for this review, so they are omitted here. Campaign Monitor's emphasis on template design and agency workflows makes it a fit for marketing teams that produce branded newsletters for several clients; it has no paid-subscription feature, no hosted publication website and no reader network, and its trial-only free tier is less generous than permanent free plans elsewhere in this list.