Beehiiv vs Mailchimp 2026: Which Is Better for Newsletters?

Beehiiv and Mailchimp both send emails, but they are built for fundamentally different users. Beehiiv is a newsletter-first platform designed for content creators, media operators, and anyone whose primary product is a recurring publication. Mailchimp is an email marketing platform designed for businesses that sell products and services and use email as one channel in a broader marketing strategy.

This distinction matters more than any individual feature comparison. Choosing between them is less about which is "better" and more about what kind of operation you are running.

Feature Comparison

Pricing Breakdown

This is where the comparison gets brutal for Mailchimp.

Beehiiv's Scale plan costs $39/month and covers up to 100,000 subscribers. That is the entire story. You get all growth tools, the ad network, referral programs, analytics, and unlimited sends. The Max plan at $99/month adds premium features for power users.

Mailchimp's pricing scales with your contact count. The Standard plan (the most popular) costs $13/month for 500 contacts, $45/month for 2,500 contacts, $100/month for 10,000 contacts, and $299/month for 25,000 contacts. At 50,000 contacts, you are looking at roughly $450/month. The Premium plan is even more expensive.

At 10,000 subscribers, you pay $39/month on Beehiiv versus $100/month on Mailchimp. At 50,000 subscribers, you pay $39/month on Beehiiv versus $450/month on Mailchimp. The gap widens relentlessly as you grow. For newsletter creators who measure success by subscriber count, Mailchimp's pricing model is actively punishing.

Mailchimp also counts unsubscribed and inactive contacts toward your limit unless you manually archive them. Beehiiv counts active subscribers only. This seemingly minor detail can push Mailchimp costs even higher in practice.

Newsletter-Specific Features

Beehiiv was built from the ground up for newsletters. Every feature exists to help you grow, retain, and monetize a subscriber base. The referral program incentivizes readers to share. The Boost network lets you pay (or get paid) for cross-promotions with other newsletters. The ad network places relevant ads in your newsletter for passive revenue. The SEO-optimized website turns every issue into a search-discoverable page. Subscriber analytics show you exactly where each reader came from and how they engage.

Mailchimp bolted newsletter capabilities onto what is fundamentally an e-commerce email marketing platform. You can send a newsletter through Mailchimp, but the platform does not understand what a newsletter business needs. There is no referral system. There is no ad network. There is no cross-promotion marketplace. The analytics focus on purchase attribution and revenue per email rather than subscriber growth and engagement.

Using Mailchimp for a newsletter is like using a pickup truck to commute. It works, but you are paying for capabilities you do not need while missing capabilities you do.

Where Mailchimp Wins

Mailchimp genuinely excels for businesses that sell things. Its e-commerce integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and dozens of other platforms are deep and mature. You can trigger emails based on purchase behavior, abandoned carts, product recommendations, and customer lifecycle stages. The CRM features let you build rich contact profiles with purchase history, lifetime value, and engagement scores.

Mailchimp's automation builder is also more sophisticated than Beehiiv's. You can create complex multi-step journeys with conditional logic, time delays, A/B branches, and API triggers. If your email strategy involves triggered sequences based on user behavior across a website or app, Mailchimp handles this well.

The template library is extensive. If you send promotional emails, product announcements, or transactional messages alongside your newsletter, Mailchimp gives you pre-built templates for every scenario.

Deliverability

Beehiiv has a meaningful edge here. As a newsletter-focused platform, Beehiiv's sending infrastructure is optimized for content emails rather than promotional blasts. Newsletter engagement rates tend to be higher than marketing emails, which helps maintain strong sender reputation across the platform.

Mailchimp serves millions of accounts, including many that send low-quality promotional email. Shared IP pools can be affected by other senders' behavior. Mailchimp does offer dedicated IPs on higher-tier plans, but that adds another cost. Reports of Mailchimp deliverability issues have increased over the past two years as the platform has grown its user base.

Migration Considerations

If you are currently on Mailchimp and considering a switch to Beehiiv, the migration is straightforward. Export your subscriber list as a CSV, import it into Beehiiv, and verify your domain. Beehiiv accepts standard CSV imports and can map custom fields.

If you are on Beehiiv and considering Mailchimp (unlikely for newsletter creators, but possible if your business model shifts), the same CSV export/import process works in reverse. Both platforms allow full data export at any time.

Who Wins?

Choose Beehiiv if:

• Your newsletter is your primary product or business
• You want to monetize through ads, sponsorships, or paid subscriptions
• You want built-in growth tools (referrals, boosts, recommendations)
• You want predictable flat pricing that does not punish growth
• You want an SEO-optimized website for your content
• You want strong deliverability from a newsletter-focused sender
• You are a content creator, journalist, or media operator

Choose Mailchimp if:

• You run an e-commerce store and need deep product integrations
• You need CRM-style contact management with purchase history
• You send a mix of newsletters, promotional emails, and transactional messages
• You need complex behavioral automations triggered by website/app activity
• You need multi-channel marketing (email, social ads, postcards)
• Email is one marketing channel among many, not your core product
• You need extensive third-party integrations for your tech stack

Final Take

This comparison has a clear answer for most readers of this site. If you are here researching newsletter platforms, you are almost certainly better served by Beehiiv. It costs less at every subscriber tier, it offers newsletter-specific tools that Mailchimp lacks entirely, and its pricing does not penalize you for growing.

Mailchimp remains a strong choice for e-commerce businesses that use email as a marketing channel. If you sell physical products, run a Shopify store, or need behavioral automations tied to purchase events, Mailchimp's ecosystem is mature and well-integrated. But for newsletter creators, it is the wrong tool.