Will beehiiv live up to the hype?

beehiiv is no longer a newsletter company.

Thursday, beehiiv dropped their Winter Release. A 30 minute YouTube video announcing 10 new features and more importantly, a new direction for their company.

beehiiv now describes themselves as “the operating system for the content economy.”

It's a big change and a bold statement.

Can they actually pull this off?

Here’s my take:

For the past 4 years, beehiiv has mostly focused on newsletters.

Their tagline was: “The newsletter platform built for growth.”

Objectively, they’ve succeeded in that role. They’ve:

• Built a product that rivals competitors like Kit, Substack, and MailChimp who had a 5-10+ year head start.

• Become loved by users and dominate the newsletter conversation on social

• Reached ~$2M+ MRR, ~50k+ users, and raised ~$50M in funding

So why the change?

3 reasons:

1) It’s a natural evolution.

Companies start niche. Dominate that niche. Then slowly expand over time.

beehiiv started with newsletters. Then email marketing. Then subscriptions, websites, recommendations, ad network, and now an all in one tool for content businesses.

2) They want to go big — and need to be big.

When beehiiv raised a ~$33M Series B in April 2024, everyone who knew anything about VC knew they were going beyond email soon.

(And they already started with a simple website builder and ad network).

beehiiv is aiming for a big exit. Or maybe they have the goal to be a public company in the long run. They must be more than a newsletter platform to do that.

3) It’s what customers need.

Media and newsletters have changed fast since beehiiv started in 2021.

You need to be more than “just a newsletter” to succeed in the content business.

I wrote about this throughout 2023 and 2024 and did a deep dive on why newsletters are “dead” in May.

beehiiv and its competitors had early success by making media models that required enterprise software and big teams to pull off, accessible to everyone:

• beehiiv made it easy to build a Morning Brew style newsletter business

• Substack made it easy to start a Stratechery style paid subscription business

• Kit made it easy to collect emails from your blog and sell products with email marketing

But business models change. And if platforms don't have the tools to support the new types of models that customer need, those platforms will die.

beehiiv's customers are going beyond newsletters, so beehiiv is too.

What’s changing

Here are the new features and updates:

• Link in bio

• Digital products

• Dynamic content

• AI website builder

• Native website analytics

• Dynamic podcast websites

• Improvements to automations

• New website and email templates

• Improvements to the ad network for publishers

• Improvements to the ad network for advertisers

I'm not going to explain each of these. The winter release video does that.

Here's what I will say: I like the product direction.

Every new feature is an essential tool media and content businesses need.

beehiiv users were already using other tools for many of these things. (Linktree, Kajabi, Loveable, Gumroad, Google Analytics, Pod Pages, etc).

If beehiiv can provide those features in one place (and they work) it’s a win for users.

But there are some features that go further than just replacing other tools:

Dynamic content is a game changing.

With this you can tailor what readers see based on location, interests, survey responses, subscription tier, and more.

It unlocks new revenue opportunities like:

• Dynamic ads and ad copy (different ads for different interests or demographics)

• Dynamic marketing copy (that's more relevant for different segments of your audience)

• And much more

AI website builder, native analytics, and new templates

The future of website building is prompting AI, not “drag and drop” builders — but you need both. Prompting for building pages from scratch in minutes and drag-and-drop to make the small changes before going live.

beehiiv’s web builder does both. It’s the best of webflow and lovable in one place.

Plus, native website analytics are awesome. Everyone hates Google Analytics.

Ad network

beehiiv is building the Facebook ad manager for newsletter ads. This might be more ambitious than all the other features, but if they pull it off, it will unlock newsletters as an accessible growth channel for tens of thousands of marketers.

This could provide you as a publisher/creator with endless ad inventory to fill any ad spots you didn't sell directly.

The caveat

I love beehiiv’s new direction. Assuming they stay focused on something like this:

The operating system for the new media and content economy with a core focus on the most powerful channel: Newsletters and email marketing.

These are all the right features to launch.

The only question is, will they successfully pull it off?

Many SaaS platforms have pivoted to an all-in-one tool, but every feature is mediocre.

Sometimes businesses are better off doing one thing exceptionally well.

With beehiiv, time will tell.

But so far, I’m impressed. I haven't got to test every new feature, but the ones I've explored so far (AI, web builder, templates, and more) look great.

That’s it

If you want to try out the new features yourself, use this link to start a free trial of beehiiv and get 20% off for 3 months »

Or if you already have a beehiiv account, use code MATT20 when you upgrade for 20% off for 3 months.