Sign inStart free

Best newsletter platforms compared: the three ways they charge, and which one fits a newsletter you intend to earn from

Newsletter products charge by subscriber, by seat or by a share of your revenue. The model you pick decides what happens when the list grows, so choose the model before the product.

Published by AI Knows Us · Updated 21 October 2026

Newsletter platforms charge in three incompatible ways, and the way they charge is the decision. One charges by how many subscribers you hold. One charges by how many staff can log in. One charges nothing monthly and takes a share of what your readers pay you. A newsletter that will stay free and small, a newsletter attached to a business, and a newsletter intended to become the business each want a different one of the three.

The three charging models

ModelWhat happens as the list growsFits
Per subscriber bandCost steps up at each threshold whether or not you earn moreA newsletter that supports a business, where the list is a marketing asset
Per staff seatCost is flat as the list grows and rises when the team doesA publication with several writers and a big audience
Share of reader revenueCosts nothing until readers pay, then scales with earningsA writer intending to be paid directly by readers

The third model looks free and is the most expensive at scale, because a percentage never stops. The first looks cheap and becomes the most expensive if your list grows faster than your revenue. There is no trick here, just arithmetic: work out your own subscriber count and revenue at twelve and twenty four months and price all three.

What each platform publishes, read on 21 October 2026

  • beehiiv publishes unlimited email sends on every plan including the free one and sets the tier by subscribers, seats, guest authors and publications: up to 2,500 subscribers with one seat, one guest author and one publication free, then 100,000 subscribers with two seats and three publications, then 250,000 with ten seats and ten publications, then a custom tier. For a newsletter mailing often, unlimited sending on the free plan is the most generous published allowance in this group.
  • Ghost prices on members and staff users, starting at 1,000 members with three staff users, then fifteen staff users, then unlimited, and includes a custom domain with the hosted plans. It is the one that charges the team rather than the audience, which makes it the cheapest of the three models for a large free list.
  • Substack publishes no monthly plan at all. Its own going paid page states that writers keep ninety percent of their revenue minus credit card fees, which makes it free to run and the most expensive once reader revenue is substantial. It is also the only one of the three that brings its own discovery network, which is a real benefit and not a fee.
  • MailerLite publishes the full feature set on every paid plan with price moving only on list size and sending, plus unlimited monthly emails and unlimited user seats, so a newsletter that also needs commercial email features is not pushed up a tier for them.
  • Brevo sets its tiers by monthly email volume rather than subscribers, from 5,000 emails a month on its first paid tier, and publishes removal of its own footer branding as a tier feature.

Said plainly, each wins on a different published fact: beehiiv on sending allowance, Ghost on cost of a large free list, Substack on costing nothing to start and on built in discovery, MailerLite on not gating features, Brevo on suiting a big list mailed rarely.

The five things to settle before the first issue

  • Who owns the list. Check the export: contacts with subscribed status, source and consent date, in a file, whenever you want it.
  • Your own sending domain, authenticated. This is the biggest single lever on whether the issue arrives at all.
  • Where the archive lives. A newsletter whose back issues are on a domain you control earns search traffic for years. One that is not, does not.
  • The paid wall mechanism, if you will ever charge. Retrofitting payments is the most common platform migration in this category.
  • A shape for the issue. Seven blocks, consistently used, outperforms a different layout every week. The template and two filled examples are in the email newsletter template and the lines every send has, and worked examples of issue structure are in examples of email newsletters and why the shape decides whether it gets read.

What writers ask when choosing a newsletter platform

Which is best if I might charge readers later?

Pick a platform where payments already exist and the archive sits on your own domain, so turning on a paid tier is a setting rather than a migration. The revenue share model is the fastest to start and the one you are most likely to leave.

Does the platform affect how many people see it?

Only through two things: inbox placement, which is mostly your list hygiene and domain authentication, and built in discovery, which some platforms have and others do not. Neither is a substitute for a reason to subscribe.

Should the newsletter live on my company domain?

If it supports a business, yes, because the archive then compounds into search demand for the business rather than for the platform. If it is a personal publication you may move, the discovery network can be worth more than the domain equity.

How often should it go out?

Pick a rhythm you can hold for six months and hold it. One good issue a month beats four rushed ones, and a predictable schedule trains both your readers and your sending reputation.

What a newsletter cannot do, and what covers it

A newsletter is the best asset in marketing for keeping people who already know you. It does nothing for the person who has not heard of you and is asking somewhere else who to use. That question increasingly goes to an assistant: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude or Google AI Overviews, which answers with two or three names assembled from reviews, roundups, directories and forum threads rather than from anybody's archive.

We do not sell a newsletter platform and this page does not suggest buying us as one. Buy one of the five above. The adjacent category, measuring whether assistants name a business when a buyer asks who to buy from, is ours, and on the criterion used above, how a provider charges and what it publishes, AI Knows Us publishes its charging unit openly: one buyer question asked on one app once, with a Claude check published as three because Claude costs more to run, five surfaces named, one login with full access on every plan, and United States prices rendered on the pricing page. Where a rival publishes a better arrangement for a publisher with many titles, say so: Rankscale publishes brand dashboard slots from ten to one hundred on rankscale.ai/pricing, read 21 October 2026, while we cover one business on every plan except the agency one.

If the newsletter exists to grow a business, do one extra thing in the first month. Ask your buyer's question in two assistants and note whether the business is named. The archive will keep the readers you win; that check tells you where the next ones are being sent instead.

One adjacent purchase gets confused with this one. Buying a placement inside somebody else newsletter is a media buy, not a platform choice, and it is priced and judged completely differently. That market is set out in buying placement in somebody else newsletter, and why it is not the same purchase.

Read next

Simon-Kucher pricing strategy, what the firm publishes about its own method and what a Singapore buyer should ask before briefing itThe firm publishes its approach, its scale and four named service lines, and publishes no fee, so the useful work before any call is reading what it claims and deciding which decision you are buying.International pricing strategies for a Singapore company, and the corridor that stops one market undercutting anotherA converted home price is the one answer that is almost always wrong, so set a price per market and keep the gaps narrower than the cost of moving a unit between them.Premium pricing strategy for a Singapore business, and the fence that makes the higher number holdCharging permanently more than the credible alternatives works when the buyer can name what the extra money buys, and the published Singapore writing ladder shows exactly how that is built.Red Antler publishes no price, so here is what its own site does publish and how to cost the same scope from SingaporeRead on 29 October 2026, three pages of redantler.com carry a complete deliverable list, three business stages and not one figure about what any of it costs.Hiring a full service content agency, the five stages a retainer has to cover and the two handoffs where the money leaksMost content retainers buy production and quietly leave strategy and distribution with you, so price the stages rather than the word count.Hiring a branding agency for a Singapore financial services firm, and the three registers to search before you fall in love with a nameIdentity work for a licensed firm starts with a clearance search rather than a mood board, and two of the three registers are free to read in a browser today.

Or browse the whole archive.

See what AI says about you.

The first scan is free, it needs no account, and it asks the questions your buyers ask.

Free. No card. We ask 5 real buyer questions on 2 AI apps.

Already sure you want this? Start free. No card needed, and the free plan stays free. Pay only when you want the work done. Or talk to a person if you have a question first. Or read how we fix what it finds.