The best newsletter software of 2026

Platformly suits a newsletter that is also a business: one that sells paid tiers, products or a service and wants to know which issue and which link brought in each customer. Sales from Stripe, Paddle, Shopify and WooCommerce are tied to the email, link or source behind them, and you can compare five attribution models and see revenue per subscriber.

The publishing side covers what a regular newsletter needs. Every issue can appear on a web archive with its own page, search-friendly settings and an RSS feed. Paid subscriptions run through Stripe, with tiers, trials, offers, gifts and group seats, and issues can carry polls and surveys. Readers get a preference center and one-click unsubscribe. The block editor has a template library, A/B tests and sending by each reader's time zone, and show-when blocks let one issue show different content to different segments.

Automations, SMS, a shared inbox and a sales pipeline work on the same subscriber records, and you can send through Platformly or your own provider, such as Amazon SES, SendGrid or Postmark. That is more than a writer with a free newsletter needs, and beehiiv or Substack will get you started faster. See Platformly's site for current plans.

beehiiv is built around one job: sending a newsletter and making money from it. The free plan covers up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends, a website, the recommendation network and API access, which is more room than most free plans give a new publication.

The money features start on Lite. At 1,000 subscribers, Lite costs $59 a month, or $49 a month billed yearly. It adds the beehiiv Ad Network, paid subscriptions, digital products, email automations, surveys and polls, and two team seats. beehiiv takes 0% of your paid subscription and digital product revenue, so you pay only Stripe's processing fee of 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction. Pro is $109 a month, or $95 billed yearly, and removes beehiiv branding, adds a sponsorship storefront, RSS to send, up to 10 publications and 10 seats.

Every plan includes unlimited email sends, so a daily newsletter costs the same as a weekly one. Lite and Pro come with a free trial that needs no card, though beehiiv's pricing page does not say how long it lasts.

Moving up is a big step: going from free to Lite costs $588 a year at 1,000 subscribers, and you need Lite before you can earn anything inside beehiiv. If you only want to send a free company update, MailerLite costs less.

Kit, the tool formerly called ConvertKit, suits a creator whose newsletter feeds a business: a course, a paid community, templates or coaching. The free plan is the largest in this guide at up to 10,000 subscribers, and it already includes landing pages, forms, broadcasts, paid newsletters and digital product sales. What it leaves out is automation, so welcome sequences and tagging rules need a paid plan.

At 1,000 subscribers, Creator costs $39 a month or $390 a year, and adds the visual automation builder, email sequences and RSS campaigns. Pro costs $79 a month or $790 a year and adds unlimited users, engagement scoring, a referral program and deliverability reports. Until November 7, 2026, Kit takes 25% off the first year of Pro on yearly billing, which brings it to $593. Creator and Pro both come with a 14-day trial and no card.

Kit's Recommendations network lets newsletters suggest each other at signup, and Creator adds paid recommendations, where Kit keeps 23.5% of what you earn. On paid newsletters and product sales, Kit charges 3.5% plus 30 cents per sale on every plan.

Kit is a weaker choice for a publication that wants a full website and article archive. Ghost and beehiiv handle that better.

Substack costs nothing to start. You set up a publication, write and send, and Substack charges nothing until a reader pays you. When you turn on paid subscriptions, Substack keeps 10% of that revenue and card processing fees come out on top, so you keep 90% minus those fees.

The reason to pick Substack over a cheaper-per-sale tool is its reader network. Substack has its own iOS and Android app, publication recommendations, Notes, trending topics and leaderboards, so new readers can find you inside Substack instead of only through your own promotion. You can also host a podcast and post live video from the same account. Substack says its publications have more than 5 million paid subscriptions.

That 10% grows with your revenue. A writer earning $5,000 a month from subscriptions hands Substack $500 of it every month, where beehiiv or Ghost would charge a flat plan price with no cut. You also get less control over your site's design than Ghost or beehiiv give you, and fewer email marketing tools than Kit.

Substack fits a writer who wants to publish this week, has no budget, and values readers from the network more than control over the page. To use your own domain, Substack has charged a one-time $50 fee per publication.

Ghost is an open-source publishing platform with newsletters built in. Every post can go out by email and live on your site at the same time, readers sign up as free or paid members, and you can send different newsletters to different groups of readers. Ghost advertises 0% payment fees on member revenue, so you pay your plan price and your card processor's charges.

You can install Ghost on your own server or pay for Ghost(Pro) hosting. At 1,000 members, Ghost(Pro) Starter is $15 a month billed yearly ($180 a year) or $18 month to month, with one staff user and official themes, but no paid subscriptions. Publisher is the plan most newsletters need: $29 a month billed yearly ($348 a year) or $35 month to month, with paid subscriptions and custom themes. Business costs $199 a month billed yearly. Ghost(Pro) starts with a 14-day free trial.

The website is the main reason to choose Ghost. Ghost gives you a proper website with themes, tags and search-friendly article pages, so each issue gets its own page that readers can find through search. 404 Media, Platformer and Tangle all publish on Ghost.

Ghost asks more of you than Substack does. You pick and set up a theme, and self-hosting means running your own server. Its email tools are also simpler than Kit or MailerLite for automated sequences.

MailerLite suits a business whose newsletter sits beside other email: a welcome series, a sale announcement, a form on the website. It costs less than the creator-first tools at small list sizes and gives you three editors (drag and drop, custom HTML and a simple plain editor), signup forms, landing pages, a website builder with a blog section, and RSS campaigns.

The free plan is small: 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails a month, two user seats and up to three active automations. Above 250 active subscribers, MailerLite locks campaign and automation sending until you upgrade. Comfort costs $12 a month for 500 subscribers or $19 for 1,000, billed monthly, with sends capped at 10 times your subscriber tier. Power costs $25 a month for 500 or $39 for 1,000, with unlimited monthly emails, unlimited seats and 24/7 live chat. Yearly billing takes 10% off, and new accounts get 14 days of premium features with no card.

MailerLite also lets you send paid newsletters and sell recurring subscriptions through Stripe, so a business can charge for a premium edition without moving tools. Its pricing page does not make clear which plan you need for that.

Its pricing page lists nothing like the reader app of Substack or the ad network of beehiiv, so a writer trying to grow a publication from nothing will get more from those.

Buttondown is a small, focused newsletter tool for people who would rather write than design. You write in rich text or Markdown, send from your own domain, and get a hosted archive of past issues. It charges only for active subscribers, the people receiving your emails.

It is free for your first 100 subscribers. Buttondown's pricing data lists Basic at $9 for up to 1,000 subscribers, Standard at $29 for up to 5,000 and Professional at $79 for up to 10,000. Its prices assume you send at most one email a day to your whole list.

Extra features are add-ons, priced per month. Paid subscriptions, tagging and segmentation, analytics and RSS-to-email cost $9 each. Automations, sponsorships, multiple newsletters and an archive on a custom domain cost $29 each. Teams and white labeling cost $79 each. Nonprofits can get 50% off by sending proof of registration.

That model rewards a writer who needs little. A plain weekly letter to 800 readers costs $9 a month. Once you add paid subscriptions, analytics and automations, you are paying $47 a month on top of the base plan, and beehiiv or Kit bundle more for a similar price.

Mailchimp is a general email marketing tool, and its newsletter features are the familiar ones: a drag-and-drop editor, templates, signup forms, segments and reports. It makes sense for a newsletter when your company already runs its marketing email there, because you keep one list and one set of reports.

The free plan holds 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, with no more than 250 sends a day. That is too small for a weekly newsletter to a growing list. Essentials starts at $13 a month and Standard at $20 a month, both for up to 500 contacts. Essentials includes single-email automations and flows up to four steps, and Standard expands flows and adds flow templates. Monthly send limits are 10 times your contact limit on Essentials, 12 times on Standard and 15 times on Premium.

Mailchimp charges by contact tier, and the price climbs as your list grows. Mailchimp is built for marketing email, and the plan pages we read list no paid subscriptions, reader network or ad network. For a newsletter that is the product itself, beehiiv or Kit suit better. For a cheaper business newsletter, compare MailerLite at your list size first.

AWeber is one of the older email tools, and its newsletter features are solid: a drag-and-drop builder, templates, RSS to email, a hosted archive of your broadcasts, and an AI subject line assistant. What sets it apart for a newsletter is the Done For You plan.

Done For You costs $20 a month billed yearly for up to 500 subscribers, plus a setup fee that AWeber shows as $79, down from $599. AWeber's team builds your email setup in seven days: a branded template, landing pages, a thank-you page and a signup form, then a one-to-one setup call and 30 days of unlimited edits. The plan's benefits also list newsletter drafts delivered weekly. For a business owner who knows they should send a newsletter but never gets around to writing one, that service is the reason to pick AWeber.

The software plans are simpler. Lite costs $15 a month for 500 subscribers or $25 for 1,000 on monthly billing ($150 or $250 a year), with one list, three landing pages and three automations. Plus costs $30 or $45 on monthly billing ($240 or $450 a year) and removes the limits and AWeber branding. Both have a 14-day trial.

AWeber's pricing page lists no reader network or paid subscriptions, so a writer building an independent publication will do better with beehiiv or Substack.