beehiiv
Newsletter publishing, growth, monetization, and email platform
You can build a newsletter CMS and send emails, but beehiiv's moat is deliverability, growth network, recommendations, ad marketplace, automations, analytics, and migrations.
Build verification: not recorded. How we judge buildability
What you give up
- email deliverability
- referral/recommendation network
- ad network
- automations
- analytics
- paid newsletter tooling
- migrations
Why people still pay
They pay because audience growth and email reliability are harder than writing and sending HTML.
Your build guide
The stack, security requirements, and agent rules for a focused replacement.
Before you start
- Runtime and tools: TypeScript, Node, PostgreSQL, a scheduled worker and one user-supplied email delivery provider.
- Before starting: A verified sending domain, a provider account, consented example recipients and its current webhook/signature documentation.
Use these project rules and optional skill references alongside the prompt. Review each skill before adding it to your agent; the AGENTS.md export includes the same guidance.
Project rule — domain: Store Subscriber, ConsentEvent, Issue, PublishedRevision, SendBatch and DeliveryEvent; deduplicate provider event IDs and keep hard-bounced addresses suppressed across later issues.
Project rule — scope and recovery: Use one verified provider and a double-confirmation signup flow. Referral networks, paid subscriptions and open-rate certainty are deferred; image-proxy opens are not reliable readership evidence.
Project rule — acceptance: Replay a bounce webhook, unsubscribe another recipient mid-batch and retry one failed delivery; counters remain stable and suppressed recipients do not receive later sends.
Project rule — delivery: document real setup commands and permissions; do not claim a build, accuracy level, performance result or security certification that has not been demonstrated.
Recommended skill: supabase-postgres-best-practices — review this PostgreSQL domain schema, uniqueness constraints, transaction boundaries and access-scoped queries; Supabase hosting is not required. Follow the maintainer's installation instructions and match its requirements to the chosen runtime.
Recommended skill: sharp-edges — review configuration and API defaults against the app-specific invariants and recovery boundaries above; this is not a security certification. Follow the maintainer's installation instructions and match its requirements to the chosen runtime.
Implementation plan
Phase 1
Pin the working slice and create its example input: Compose an issue, send it to confirmed subscribers, publish a public post archive and show delivery/bounce totals for that issue. Confirm setup: A verified sending domain, a provider account, consented example recipients and its current webhook/signature documentation.
Phase 2
Implement persistence and write-time invariants before decorating the UI: Store Subscriber, ConsentEvent, Issue, PublishedRevision, SendBatch and DeliveryEvent; deduplicate provider event IDs and keep hard-bounced addresses suppressed across later issues.
Phase 3
Connect the working view to real saved state. Separate drafts, recipient snapshots, attempts and provider receipts. Honor unsubscribe and suppression at dispatch time, authenticate provider webhooks, and never replay an ambiguous send automatically.
Phase 4
Expose the app-specific limits and recovery path in context: Use one verified provider and a double-confirmation signup flow. Referral networks, paid subscriptions and open-rate certainty are deferred; image-proxy opens are not reliable readership evidence.
Phase 5
Walk through this concrete acceptance case and preserve its exported evidence: Replay a bounce webhook, unsubscribe another recipient mid-batch and retry one failed delivery; counters remain stable and suppressed recipients do not receive later sends. Finish the README and backup/restore instructions; report unfinished capabilities explicitly.
Build the following focused alternative to beehiiv. This is a deliberately limited personal or small-team substitute, not parity with the paid service. WORKING SLICE Compose an issue, send it to confirmed subscribers, publish a public post archive and show delivery/bounce totals for that issue. SETUP AND ARCHITECTURE Use TypeScript, Node, PostgreSQL, a scheduled worker and one user-supplied email delivery provider. Prerequisites: A verified sending domain, a provider account, consented example recipients and its current webhook/signature documentation. Before integrating anything, record actual versions and permissions, plus model files or provider limits only where used, in the README; make unavailable dependencies visible rather than simulating success. DOMAIN MODEL AND INVARIANTS Store Subscriber, ConsentEvent, Issue, PublishedRevision, SendBatch and DeliveryEvent; deduplicate provider event IDs and keep hard-bounced addresses suppressed across later issues. IMPLEMENTATION CONTRACT Separate drafts, recipient snapshots, attempts and provider receipts. Honor unsubscribe and suppression at dispatch time, authenticate provider webhooks, and never replay an ambiguous send automatically. Provide an input/setup view, the main work view, and a review/export view appropriate to this workflow. Preserve the last saved state if a job or save fails. Include empty, loading, permission-denied, partial and retryable-error states. Log identifiers and error categories without secret values or unnecessary private content. APP-SPECIFIC BOUNDARY AND RECOVERY Use one verified provider and a double-confirmation signup flow. Referral networks, paid subscriptions and open-rate certainty are deferred; image-proxy opens are not reliable readership evidence. ACCEPTANCE SCENARIO Replay a bounce webhook, unsubscribe another recipient mid-batch and retry one failed delivery; counters remain stable and suppressed recipients do not receive later sends. Also reopen the app after an interrupted operation, confirm the saved record/export remains inspectable, and document the recovery action. These are implementation acceptance requirements, not a claim that this guide has been tested. DELIVERY Deliver a runnable repository with migrations or project-format versioning, a non-sensitive example, environment/permission setup, the exact manual acceptance steps, and a backup/export-and-restore walkthrough. Implement the working slice before optional integrations; list any deferred paid-product capabilities honestly. Do not add capabilities outside the working slice just to resemble the original product. PROJECT RULES FOR AGENTS.md Keep the domain invariants above executable at the write boundary. Propose scope changes before adding providers or permissions. Never fabricate source evidence, publish results, identity matches or successful delivery. Preserve user originals and require an explicit confirmation for destructive changes or external publication.
$ open in your agent (prompt prefilled, you press enter), copy the prompt or copy or download AGENTS.md
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Alternatives to building your own
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beehiiv pricing
| plan | monthly | annual (per mo) | what you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| launch | $0/workspace | $0/workspace | Up to 2,500 subscribers, unlimited email sends, 3 publications, 1 team member, 10 AI credits/day, 1 podcast episode/month, 1 show. |
| scale | $49/workspace | $43/workspace | Up to 100,000 subscribers, unlimited sends/posts, 3 publications, up to 3 team seats, 25 AI credits/day, 4 podcast episodes/month.Annual card showed $43/mo and $517 billed annually; FAQ said paid plans start at $49/mo. |
| max | $109/workspace | $96/workspace | Up to 100,000 subscribers, 10 publications, unlimited team seats, 50 AI credits/day, unlimited podcast episodes, 3 shows, 3 Getty credits.Annual card showed $96/mo and $1,151 billed annually with $157/year saving; monthly value is reconstructed from the same official annual/save numbers. |
| enterprise | — | — | 100,000+ subscribers, custom publications/subscriber limits, 100 AI credits/day, 10 Getty credits, dedicated IPs, SSO, account manager.Contact sales. |
free tier$0; 2,500 subscribers, unlimited sends, 3 publications, 1 team member, 10 AI credits/day, 1 podcast episode/month, 1 show.
billingmonthly + annual; annual cards show lower per-month price billed annually
hidden costsStripe processing applies to paid subscriptions; beehiiv take rate is 0% on paid subscription revenue; Enterprise needed above 100K/custom limits.
pricing sources checked 2026-08-10 · pricing source ↗
Questions about beehiiv
Can you build your own beehiiv with AI?
Partly. You can build a newsletter CMS and send emails, but beehiiv's moat is deliverability, growth network, recommendations, ad marketplace, automations, analytics, and migrations.
What does the beehiiv build prompt cover?
The prompt starts with this scope: Compose an issue, send it to confirmed subscribers, publish a public post archive and show delivery/bounce totals for that issue. Full-product capabilities excluded from the comparison include: email deliverability; referral/recommendation network; ad network. Follow the implementation plan and its prerequisites before expanding the build.
How do I use the prompt, AGENTS.md and agent skills?
Start with the beehiiv prerequisites and stack, then copy the prompt into your coding agent. Save the project rules as AGENTS.md in the project root. Linked skills are optional packages or source instructions for specific tasks; review their current contents and install only those matching the chosen stack. A skill does not supply API credentials or verify the finished app.
How long will this beehiiv project take?
The catalogue estimate is multi-day for the limited scope. Setup, integration approvals, debugging, deployment and ongoing maintenance can add time. This is an estimate, not a delivery guarantee.
What would I give up by replacing beehiiv?
email deliverability; referral/recommendation network; ad network; automations; analytics; paid newsletter tooling; migrations. They pay because audience growth and email reliability are harder than writing and sending HTML.
What price is this guide comparing against?
The recorded Scale plan is $49/mo (monthly), checked 2026-07-30. Check the linked pricing source before buying. Building your own also has hosting, API and maintenance costs; the recorded amount is not a guaranteed saving.
What can I use instead of building beehiiv?
Ghost: Publishing, newsletters, memberships and paid subscriptions on your server; beehiiv's ad network and growth machinery stay behind. Check each option's license, hosting needs and feature limits.