AWeber vs Beehiiv: which one should you use?

Newsletters like Morning Brew and The Hustle turned "send a good email every morning" into a media business, and that spawned a category of platforms built for exactly that, with beehiiv at the front of it. AWeber comes from the other direction: it has been the workhorse behind list-building businesses since long before "newsletter" meant "media company."

So the question isn't really which platform is better. It's which business you're building. If the newsletter itself is the product and sponsors pay for it, start with beehiiv. If the newsletter exists to turn readers into buyers of your coaching, course, service or shop, start with AWeber. The sections below explain why, with each platform's prices and the features that decide it.

Beehiiv: built for the media model

Beehiiv's feature set makes sense once you see that it is aimed at people who earn from sponsors, ads and paid subscriptions rather than from a product of their own.

• A built-in ad network. beehiiv matches publishers with advertisers and pays out per placement, so a newsletter can earn from sponsors without anyone selling ad space by hand. It comes with the paid plans.
• Paid subscriptions with no platform cut. On paid plans beehiiv takes 0% of subscription revenue, leaving only the card processor's fee. That makes a premium tier of a publication straightforward to run.
• Growth tools built in. A referral program that rewards readers for bringing in friends, plus a recommendation network where newsletters suggest each other at sign-up. These are the mechanics media newsletters grow on, and AWeber has no equivalent.
• A website that is the newsletter. Every issue publishes as a web post with its own archive, which helps a publication get found through search.

AWeber: built for turning subscribers into customers

Beehiiv is very good at one big send to everyone at once. It is thinner on nurturing individual subscribers over time, which is the whole point of AWeber.

• Sequences that run for months. Someone downloads a guide and AWeber carries them through a series that introduces your service and eventually asks for the sale, without you sending anything by hand.
• Tags based on what people do. Clicks, purchases and sign-up sources can all apply a tag, so the next promotion only goes to the people it is relevant to.
• Checkout on the landing page. Sell a coaching slot, a workshop or a download through Stripe without a separate cart tool, for a 0.6% platform fee on Plus.
• RSS-to-email and web push. New blog posts, podcast episodes or YouTube videos can go out as emails automatically, and site visitors who won't give an email address can still opt in to browser notifications.
• Support you can reach. Live chat and email around the clock on every plan and a US phone line from 8am to 8pm Eastern. beehiiv's Free and Lite plans are self-serve; 24/7 priority support comes with its Pro plan.

What each one costs

The pricing story has flipped in beehiiv's favour for small lists. beehiiv's free plan covers up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends, which is far more generous than AWeber's free plan at 500 subscribers and 3,000 sends a month. A pure newsletter under 2,500 readers can run on beehiiv for nothing.

Once you need the money-making features, the comparison changes. beehiiv's paid plans start at $49 a month on yearly billing (Lite, which adds the ad network, paid subscriptions and automations) and $95 a month for Pro, which removes beehiiv branding and adds priority support; the price rises with your subscriber count. AWeber Lite starts at $15 a month for 500 subscribers ($12.50 billed yearly) and Plus at $30 ($20 billed yearly). At 2,500 subscribers AWeber Lite is $35 a month and Plus $55, with yearly billing taking those down to roughly $29 and $46.

So for a newsletter that sells nothing, beehiiv is cheaper at every size up to 2,500 readers and competitive beyond that. For a business that needs sequences, tags and a checkout, AWeber gets you there for less than beehiiv's first paid tier.

Where each one falls short

beehiiv's automations are fine for a welcome series but they are not where the product's attention goes, and there is no built-in way to sell a one-off product or book a call from a landing page. If your income comes from your own offers, you end up bolting other tools onto it.

AWeber, in turn, has no ad network, no referral program and no recommendation network, so growing a list from zero leans entirely on your own channels. Its newsletter templates also look more dated than beehiiv's clean, web-first design, and it doesn't publish issues as a searchable website. A media-style newsletter will feel more at home on beehiiv on day one.

Switching later, and what you own

Both platforms let you export your subscribers as a CSV at any time, so neither choice locks you in. beehiiv imports lists from most providers in a few clicks, and AWeber will move your subscribers, sign-up forms and templates across for free through its migration team. What doesn't travel is history: open and click data, automation progress and beehiiv's web archive of past issues stay behind, so a publication with years of posts indexed on beehiiv has more to lose by leaving than a list on AWeber does.

A practical pattern we see: publishers start on beehiiv's free plan, and the ones who later launch a course or a service either add AWeber for the sales side or move the whole list once the product outgrows the newsletter. If you already know a product is coming within the year, starting on AWeber saves the second move.

Summary comparison

If you still aren't sure which camp you're in, look at where the money comes from. A newsletter paid by sponsors to reach readers is a different business from one paid by readers who eventually buy something.

The verdict

If your newsletter's real product is the newsletter, look at beehiiv first: it is cheaper while you grow, and it has growth and monetisation tools AWeber simply doesn't. If your newsletter's real product is trust and a slow build toward a sale, AWeber is set up for that job, and it costs less than beehiiv's paid plans to run. Creators who sit somewhere between the two should also read our AWeber vs Kit comparison, since Kit splits the difference with a large free plan and visual automations.