Should a local newsletter use Substack or Beehiiv?

My short answer is Beehiiv. Substack is basically only good for two things: ease of use and discoverability. If you want your own business, where you're in control, Beehiiv wins.

Why do so many people start on Substack?

Because it's free, and because it's the only one they've heard of. Those are the real reasons, not fit. I talked to an operator who launched a business-focused local newsletter on Substack. When I asked why, his answer was basically that he saw people talking about it. For what he was doing, it was the wrong call.

What does Substack actually do well?

Two things, and they're real. It's free, and it's discoverable. Substack is trying to be a social network, so people can find you there in a way they can't find a newsletter that lives only on your own platform. Beehiiv has no built-in discoverability.

What's wrong with Substack for a local media brand?

Control. If you build a media business on Substack, you don't really control your business. You're leasing from a company that doesn't want you to have your own business.

• They message your readers. Substack emails people on your list about things that have nothing to do with you.
• They can change the experience. In one reported test, readers got a newsletter that cut off after four sentences and told them to download the app to keep reading.
• Customization is thin. What you can customize on Beehiiv is far beyond it.
• Money and onboarding. On Beehiiv you control onboarding and management, and you keep 100% of any fees you charge.

"Substack will email people on your list that has nothing to do with you. You get these emails like, oh, you should read this. This is your brand. Why are somebody sending that on your behalf? Hell no, right?"

Why does the signup survey matter so much?

Because first-party data is valuable to advertisers and lets you target people. Substack doesn't give you a survey when people subscribe. On Beehiiv we get about a 50% fill-out rate. For a newsletter with 6,000 B2B subscribers, that would be about 3,000 people telling you their income, industry, role, whether they're hiring or job hunting, and whether they care about AI.

That data does two jobs. It's proof for advertisers, and it lets you target people. Beehiiv also added dynamic content, so you can show different pieces of content to different readers based on their survey answers. More on that in how to send different emails to different groups.

When would I use Substack?

When the newsletter is marketing, not the business. For a newsletter that exists to get found, where the money comes from software rather than the media itself, free plus discoverable is a great fit.

There's also a middle path: keep your list on your own platform and republish your content on Substack for discovery. Dylan Redekop told me on my podcast that he does exactly that, posting on Substack as a growth platform while sending through his own email platform, and that people often follow him there first and subscribe later. I hadn't thought about it for local before. With only one brand, I'd definitely try it. I'm not sure I'd do it five times a week across several brands.