The Future of Newsletters Looks a Lot Like...

Hey honeys and hustlers,

beehiiv’s Summer Release is the kind of product update virtual event that feels like it’s trying to answer a bigger question than “What can we ship next?” And trust me, they ship new product updates and features frequently. It’s really asking: what does a modern newsletter platform need to be if creators are building real businesses—and real communities—on top of it? After watching the live recording, a few themes stood out: beehiiv is doubling down on audience ownership, trying to make monetization more flexible for serious publishers, and expanding into adjacent formats (like podcasting) that still feel a little like… a second thought. But the surprise feature—the one that feels most aligned with the soul of newsletters—is the new community experience.

Newsletters have always been community products mixed with a media product. Yes, you publish. Yes, people read. But the real conversations happen in the replies, the forwards, the comments, the “this made me think of you” texts shared with friends or colleagues, and the conversations that don’t happen on the internet at all. For years, those conversations have been scattered across platforms creators don’t fully control: Slack groups, Discord servers, Instagram comments, Reddit threads, private group chats.

beehiiv’s new community feature is a smart move because it brings community back to where it belongs: next to the writing. I originally started writing on Substack for this very reason. It had a built-in community chat tool. I couldn’t get it to be super active when I first started writing on the platform, but I wasn’t using it regularly or encouraging others to do so. It still exists and seems to actually be taking off now that more creators are kicking the tires, and readers see Substack as more of a calm social platform.

From what it looks like, community is available to all paid beehiiv users and can be configured with four access options:

A free space to cultivate belonging, a premium space to deepen relationships, or a multi-tiered structure that mirrors how your audience actually wants to give and receive support from you and the community you’ve built.

I consider it the dark horse feature of the bunch released today. I kind of saw the writing on the wall when they quietly added the ability to connect your beehiiv to a Discord channel. If the whole point is to build relationships with your audience, integrating some sort of community chat feature seemed inevitable – I just didn’t think they’d do it this soon. It’s not flashy in the way new ad tools or shiny integrations are flashy, but it’s the kind of feature that quietly changes retention, loyalty, and how shareable your publication feels over time.

There’s a use case I can’t stop thinking about: live posting during events. Imagine a conference, summit, TV show premiere, or virtual event premiere like this one from beehiiv. Instead of relying on a public social platform’s algorithm or asking people to join yet another app, you can host a living conversation right inside your ecosystem. The infrastructure for a place where conversations live before, during, and after the event, where your subscribers are reacting, adding notes, asking questions, and sharing their takeaways and perspectives. I think more and more brand deals will be based on engagement, and this is an easy way to achieve it authentically.

beehiiv has been pushing further into podcast functionality; YouTube and Spotify video uploads are coming soon, and dynamic podcast ads are on the horizon. But podcast hosting still feels disjointed from the newsletter workflow and beehiiv’s core product. Kit, beehiiv, and Substack have all been courting podcasters to their product. Substack also has native audio and video podcast hosting, which I had some qualms with as well. It’s not that creators don’t want audio. They do. It’s that the why and the how feel less cohesive. A newsletter platform trying to become a podcast platform can either look like:

Right now, it feels more like the latter.

If beehiiv is getting into podcast hosting because they think that newsletter writers and media owners want the ability to have both in one place, and this is a big if, then I think there’s something to that line of thinking. However, since beehiiv launched AI podcasts (using an AI voice to narrate written articles) and now added native podcast hosting, neither has felt tailored to creators. They’ve felt more like afterthoughts. I would like to have seen, and am keeping my fingers crossed I’ll see these in the future:

YouTube still doesn’t allow host-read dynamic video ads, but I would love it if a platform made this possible. (Spotify, now is your time to shine.)

beehiiv made improvements to paid subscriptions, including the addition of group subscriptions, paid trials, and metered paywalls. These are a pretty big deal, especially for journalists and “creator journalists” who aren’t just dabbling in paid, but building a sustainable reader revenue model. I can definitely tell these suggestions likely came from the publications that are part of the beehiiv media collective.

It signals that beehiiv is competing for a different kind of customer: not only the indie writer trying to scale monetization on a free list, but the publisher who needs:

In a crowded platform market, paid subscriptions are one of the clearest ways to differentiate. These updates feel like beehiiv putting distance between itself and platforms that treat paid as shared revenue model (coughs Substack coughs) rather than a core business system.

beehiiv also teased updates to physical products saying that integrations with dozens of platforms are “coming soon.” That’s… fine. But it’s hard to get excited about a vague promise without specifics. Physical product functionality is great, but we’ve also been waiting on courses since the launch. Courses remain one of the most natural revenue extensions for newsletter audiences, especially since drip courses and cohort courses could be easier implemented for things like this. I also think webinars or multi-day virtual events, both free and paid, could benefit from more integration. If beehiiv wants to own the creator business stack, courses and related items feel like a missing puzzle piece.

Copilot is the feature I’m most excited to use. Previously, beehiiv’s MCP approach was powerful in theory but confusing in practice. It required connecting to another AI tool to read your beehiiv data and give you insights. Now Copilot is native, and crucially, it “knows” your newsletter: your writing, your audience, and your data. It reminds me of what I love about Notion AI: it’s not just a generic writing assistant—it’s a context-aware collaborator. The more you write, the more useful it becomes. Copilot can help you by giving you audience, growth, community, and monetization insights, but it can also help you generate ideas, write drafts of your newsletter, build automations and sequences, and create products.

If beehiiv gets Copilot right, it could become the main reason creators stay and consistently build a newsletter. Not because switching is hard, but because leaving would mean losing a partner who understands your body of work and goals.

The Summer Release feels like beehiiv widening its footprint. They’re betting on how creators will grow in the next phase: not only by publishing more, but by building spaces and systems that keep audiences connected. Some bets (like podcasting) still need a clearer integration story. Some promises (like physical products) need specifics to be meaningful. But Community and Copilot? Those are foundational.

One question will always remain: How does beehiiv compare to Ghost, Substack, and Kit?

Ghost just added native email automation (to my understanding, you previously needed Outpost for this), so they still feel behind the curve in terms of community and product functionality. Their website templates have been an important part of their appeal, but beehiiv is also closing the gap on that with both AI/vibe coding and making the website builder more intuitive (at least to me).

Kit just added MCP functionality, and it looks like it’s only available to paid users as well. Kit does take a percentage of any paid subscriptions or product sales, so they aren’t a pay-once platform. They are also costlier than beehiiv without website, community, or podcast functionality.

Substack has made random feature improvements recently: it gave writers the ability to add color to their text, gave all users the ability to save Substack Notes (their social posts), and gave writers the ability to decide which parts of an article are shown to free or paid members only, thus prompting viewers to either subscribe or upgrade to see a full article. beehiiv calls this dynamic content, and it is only available to Max plan users. Substack also recently added an ad network, but again, only bestsellers have access to these. Their community parties in NYC seem to be huge hits where bestsellers can meet, swap ideas, have fun, and talk shop.

This isn’t a full and complete comparison, as I’ve written previous articles about each platform. If you want to go on a deep dive, you can check these out:

Here’s what I’d like to see from beehiiv next:

Are you writing a newsletter? What features or functions matter the most to you? What features do you want to see most from any newsletter hosting platform?

Yes, I’m using my own product to promote my own product. That’s how much I love it, and I know you will too.