beehiiv vs SparkLoop Comparison 2026
Both cover newsletter & email. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Newsletters with paid subscriptions and referrals
Get paid for recommending other newsletters
At a glance
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
beehiiv | SparkLoop | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $49 | Not listed |
| Pricing model | Free plan, paid tiers | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Not stated |
| Free trial | None | Not stated |
| API | Yes | Not stated |
| Data export | Everything, in an open format | Not stated |
| Their cut | None | Not stated |
| Runs on | Not stated |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
beehiiv
Newsletters with paid subscriptions and referrals
beehiiv handles sending, paid subscriptions, a referral program and a basic website, which covers most of what someone writing a weekly letter actually needs. It was built by people who ran Morning Brew, and it shows in the growth tooling. Automation is thinner than a dedicated email platform.
Our note
If you are starting a newsletter you intend to charge for, start here. The free tier goes further than it looks, the growth tools are the reason people stay, and the export is clean if you decide to leave.
Only on this side
- Covers monetization & payments
SparkLoop
Get paid for recommending other newsletters
SparkLoop turns a newsletter's own audience into revenue by paying it to recommend other newsletters, either inside the email or on the page somebody lands on after subscribing. The same network runs the other way, so a publisher can buy subscribers from it as well as sell them. Both sides sit on the free plan. It works with the mainstream sending platforms rather than replacing one.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.