5 Newsletter Platforms for Creators Who Want to Earn
Most newsletter platform comparisons are written as if the hard part were choosing an editor. It isn’t. Every platform here will let you write an email and send it to people who asked for it. The part that actually shapes your income is quieter: what the platform takes the moment readers start paying you, and what it costs to leave once they do.
That’s the lens for this comparison. Below are five platforms that creators use to run paid newsletters — Substack, beehiiv, Ghost, Kit, and MailerLite — compared on how you get paid, what each one keeps, and which one fits the stage you’re at.
A note on method: this comparison is built from each platform’s published pricing pages, help centers, and feature pages — checked directly against the official pages — not from years of running a paid newsletter on all five. Where something depends on daily use, I say so. Every platform here is free to start or offers a trial, and a few weeks of real writing will tell you more than any comparison.
Two ways a platform gets paid
Newsletter platforms charge creators in one of two basic ways, and the difference matters more than any feature.
A cut of your revenue. You pay nothing to start, and the platform takes a percentage of what readers pay you. Substack works this way, and Kit’s commerce fee is a small version of the same idea. It’s the lowest-risk model when you’re earning little or nothing, because the platform only makes money when you do.
A flat monthly fee. You pay a fixed subscription, and the platform takes 0% of your subscription revenue. beehiiv, Ghost, and MailerLite work this way for paid newsletters. It costs you something before you earn anything, but once revenue grows, every extra paying reader is almost entirely yours.
On top of either model, someone has to process the card payment. On most of these platforms that’s Stripe, and its fee is separate from whatever the platform charges. Kit is the exception worth noticing: its 3.5% + 30¢ fee is stated as already including card processing.
So the real question isn’t “which platform is cheapest.” It’s “at what point does a flat fee become cheaper than a percentage?” We’ll work that out below.
The platforms at a glance
Prices are the platforms’ published USD prices, shown at 1,000 subscribers wherever the price depends on list size.
| Platform | Free option | Cheapest way to charge readers | Platform’s cut of subscriptions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Substack | Free to use, no subscriber limit | Free | 10% of revenue, plus card fees |
| Kit | Free plan up to 10,000 subscribers | Free plan | 3.5% + 30¢ per transaction, card processing included |
| MailerLite | Free plan up to 250 subscribers — no paid newsletters | Comfort: $19/mo ($17.10/mo billed yearly) | 0%, plus Stripe fees |
| Ghost(Pro) | No free hosted plan | Publisher: $35/mo ($29/mo billed yearly) | 0%, plus payment processor fees |
| beehiiv | Launch plan up to 2,500 subscribers — no paid subscriptions | Scale: $49/mo ($43/mo billed yearly) | Listed as 0% (see note below), plus payment processor fees |
Pricing in this category changes often. Treat this table as a starting point and confirm on each platform’s own pricing page before you commit.
What 50 paying readers actually cost you
Percentages are hard to feel, so here’s a concrete case: a newsletter with 1,000 subscribers, 50 of whom pay $5 a month. That’s $250 a month in subscription revenue.
| Platform | What the platform takes each month | What’s included in that figure |
|---|---|---|
| Substack | $25 (10% of $250) | Platform cut only; card fees are extra |
| Kit | $23.75 (50 × (3.5% of $5 + 30¢)) | Card processing included |
| MailerLite (Comfort) | $19 flat | Payment processing fees are extra |
| Ghost(Pro) (Publisher, monthly) | $35 flat | Payment processing fees are extra |
| beehiiv (Scale, monthly) | $49 flat | Payment processing fees are extra |
At this size, the revenue-share platforms and MailerLite are close, while Ghost and beehiiv cost more. Kit looks slightly cheaper than Substack here, and that comparison actually flatters Substack, because Kit’s figure includes card processing and Substack’s doesn’t.
Now double the paying readers to 100, and the picture changes. Substack’s cut doubles to $50. Kit’s fee doubles to $47.50. The flat-fee platforms don’t move at all.
That gives you a simple break-even rule against Substack’s 10%. A flat fee becomes cheaper once your monthly subscription revenue passes ten times that fee:
- MailerLite Comfort at $19 a month breaks even at $190 of monthly revenue.
- Ghost Publisher at $35 a month breaks even at $350.
- beehiiv Scale at $49 a month breaks even at $490.
These figures ignore card processing, which you pay on every platform, and they don’t count what each platform includes for the money. But they’re a useful sanity check: if you earn well below the break-even figure, a flat fee is costing you more than a percentage would.
One more thing the arithmetic reveals. Kit’s fixed 30¢ per transaction weighs heavily on small monthly prices — on a $5 subscription it’s 6% of the charge before the 3.5% is added. If you use Kit, offering an annual subscription option turns twelve 30¢ fees into one.
Substack
Substack is the platform that made paid newsletters mainstream, and its model is the simplest on this list: it’s free to use, there’s no subscriber limit, and it takes 10% of revenue only when you earn money.
Where it’s strong. There’s nothing to pay before you have paying readers, which makes it the lowest-risk way to find out whether anyone will pay for your writing at all. Cross-publication recommendations let other Substack writers point their readers toward you, and Substack states that you can export your full publication data at any time.
Where it costs you. The 10% cut never shrinks. That’s easy to accept at $100 a month and much harder at $5,000, when you’d be sending Substack $500 every month for the same service a flat-fee platform provides for a fixed price. Your newsletter also lives inside Substack’s product and brand, which is part of its growth appeal and part of its trade-off.
Choose Substack if you’re testing whether your writing can earn anything, and you’d rather pay a percentage later than a fee now.
beehiiv
beehiiv is built around growth and monetization, and its paid plans bundle more earning tools than anything else here.
Where it’s strong. The free Launch plan covers up to 2,500 subscribers and includes a custom domain. On the Scale plan, beehiiv adds paid subscriptions with a listed 0% take rate, its own Ad Network, paid recommendations (the feature formerly known as Boosts), and digital products. If you want several income streams — reader payments, ads, and recommendation income — under one roof, that’s the pitch. If you’re coming from another platform, beehiiv supports importing existing paid subscribers from Stripe on its paid plans.
Where it costs you. None of the earning features are on the free plan: paid subscriptions, the Ad Network, and digital products all start on Scale, which is $49 a month at 1,000 subscribers, or $43 a month billed yearly. That’s the highest entry price for paid subscriptions on this list, and the break-even point against Substack’s 10% is correspondingly high. One more detail: the 0% take rate on beehiiv’s pricing page carries an asterisk, and the conditions it refers to weren’t spelled out on the page when I checked. It’s worth asking beehiiv directly before you build a business plan around it.
Choose beehiiv if you’re building a newsletter as a media business with several revenue streams, and you’re confident enough in its growth to pay a meaningful flat fee.
Ghost
Ghost is an open-source publishing platform, and Ghost(Pro) is its hosted version. It takes 0% of your subscription revenue on its paid plans.
Where it’s strong. Ghost is the most website-like option here: a full publication with a newsletter built in, rather than a newsletter with a web page attached. A custom domain is included on all plans, and so are recommendations and a referral program. Member import and export are available on every plan, and paid members can be imported by linking their existing Stripe customer records, which makes arriving with an existing paid audience more manageable.
Where it costs you. There’s no free hosted plan. More importantly, the cheapest plan, Starter — $18 a month, or $15 a month billed yearly, at 1,000 members — doesn’t include paid subscriptions. To charge readers you need Publisher, at $35 a month or $29 a month billed yearly. Ghost’s “ad networks” are integrations with outside services rather than a network Ghost runs itself.
Choose Ghost if you want your newsletter to be a real publication with its own website and brand, and you’d rather own the setup than rent space inside someone else’s network.
Kit
Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is the only platform here that lets you sell subscriptions on a free plan that goes well past a few hundred readers.
Where it’s strong. The free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers and includes selling digital products and subscriptions. Kit says commerce is available on every plan, including Free, for a fee of 3.5% + 30¢ per transaction, inclusive of card processing. The Creator Network lets other Kit newsletters recommend yours, a growth channel with no counterpart at MailerLite or Ghost.
Where it costs you. The free plan has no visual automations and no email sequences, so even a welcome email for new subscribers requires the Creator plan — $39 a month, or $390 a year, at 1,000 subscribers. Kit’s paid recommendations program is only on Creator and Pro, and Kit takes a 23.5% cut of it. The newsletter referral system is Pro only, and newsletter sponsorships aren’t on the Free plan. And if you ever leave, Kit’s own help center says there’s no convenient way to migrate your paid subscribers’ subscriptions to another platform — your list exports as a CSV, but the recurring payments don’t come with it.
Choose Kit if your newsletter is the center of a creator business that may also sell digital products, and you want to start charging readers before paying for the platform.
MailerLite
MailerLite isn’t a newsletter-first platform in the way the others are, and for some creators that’s exactly the appeal. It’s a general email marketing tool that happens to include paid newsletters at a low flat price.
Where it’s strong. MailerLite takes 0% commission on paid subscriptions; only Stripe’s fees apply. Paid newsletters and recurring subscriptions are included on the Comfort and Power plans, and Comfort costs $19 a month at 1,000 subscribers, or $17.10 a month billed yearly. That gives it the lowest break-even point on this list against Substack’s 10%. You also get the machinery a newsletter business eventually needs — up to 50 automations on Comfort, landing pages and websites, and digital products — at the same price. If your newsletter sits alongside a service business or a product, one account covers both.
Where it costs you. The free plan stops at 250 subscribers and doesn’t include paid newsletters, so there’s no free way to test whether readers will pay. MailerLite doesn’t offer a recommendation network like Substack’s or Kit’s, so growth is entirely your own work.
Choose MailerLite if you’re confident you’ll earn a steady amount, you want to keep every percent of it, and you’d like your newsletter and the rest of your email marketing in one place.
Growth features, compared
Getting paid is only half of it. The other half is getting enough readers for payments to matter, and the platforms differ sharply here.
Recommendation networks let other newsletters on the same platform send readers to you. Substack, Kit, and Ghost all have one, and beehiiv offers paid recommendations on its Scale plan and above. This is the closest thing to free distribution in the newsletter world, and it’s a real reason to choose a platform with a large network if you’re starting from zero.
Ad and sponsorship income is built in on beehiiv’s Scale plan through its own Ad Network. Kit offers newsletter sponsorships, though not on its Free plan. Ghost connects to outside ad networks through integrations. None of these platforms publishes the share it keeps from ad income on the pages I checked, so ask before you count on a number.
Referral programs that reward your own readers for bringing in friends are on every Ghost plan and on Kit’s Pro plan.
Leaving later: the question to ask on day one
The hardest part of switching newsletter platforms isn’t moving your email list. It’s moving the readers who pay you, because their subscriptions are tied to payment records.
Here is where each platform stands, based on what it publishes:
- Kit says there is no convenient method for migrating paid subscribers’ subscriptions elsewhere.
- beehiiv supports importing existing paid subscribers from Stripe on its paid plans.
- Ghost lets you import paid members by linking their existing Stripe customer records.
- Substack states that you can export your full publication data at any time.
- MailerLite lets you export subscribers as a CSV; it doesn’t publish a process for moving paid subscribers.
None of this should decide your choice on its own. But if you’re likely to outgrow your first platform, it’s worth knowing before you have 200 paying readers rather than after.
Picking by situation
You don’t know yet whether anyone will pay. Substack or Kit. Both let you charge readers without paying a fixed fee first. Substack is simpler; Kit gives you a larger free plan and lets you sell digital products too.
You’re earning a steady amount and want to keep it. MailerLite. At $19 a month on Comfort, it’s the lowest flat fee for paid newsletters here, and it breaks even against a 10% cut at $190 of monthly revenue.
You want a publication, not just a newsletter. Ghost. You’ll pay for Publisher to charge readers, but you get a full website with your own domain and 0% taken from subscriptions.
You’re building a newsletter as a media business. beehiiv. The Scale plan is the most expensive entry point, but it’s the only one bundling paid subscriptions, a first-party ad network, and paid recommendations together.
You sell courses or digital products alongside the newsletter. Kit, especially if you value its Creator Network for growth.
The honest way to decide
Every platform here will deliver your newsletter. What separates them is when, and how, they take their share.
So start with the arithmetic from your own situation. Estimate what you’ll earn in the next year — honestly, not hopefully. If it’s modest or unknown, pay a percentage and keep your fixed costs at zero. If it’s steady and growing, a flat fee will leave more in your pocket every month from the break-even point onward.
Then write two or three issues on the platform you lean toward before you commit. How it feels to write there every week matters more than any feature on this page.
Related: If you’re weighing Kit against MailerLite specifically, see Kit vs MailerLite. For the broader picture, see our comparison of email marketing tools for small teams.