Using Beehiiv's Paid Subs Feature

Since I’m already offering paid memberships through both my Substack site (Write with Lisa) and my Ghost site (The Freelance Fairytale), it makes sense to offer paid membership via my Beehiiv site too.

Although all three platforms allow you to set up paid subscriptions, there are some differences and limitations.

Substack is the most limiting, as you can only have one plan with a monthly fee, an annual fee, and an optional founding member fee (which I renamed super member). And it limits the number of benefits you can list.

On the subscription sign-up page, it shows the discount for the annual plan to make it more appealing, but you can’t add any extras.

Ghost allows you to set multiple tiers/plans, each with both monthly and annual prices:

You can add multiple benefits for your paid plans, but unfortunately, you can’t add extra benefits just to the annual plan. Again, it will show the discount on the subscription page.

Beehiiv lets you set up multiple plans/tiers with a choice of monthly, annual, one-off and pay-as-you-feel options.

You can also add additional benefits to the annual plan, which is great for me because I offer extra benefits. Anyone who signs up for the annual plan gets free access to my online Blogging for Business course (worth £99).

Although I have listed the extra benefits on the sales pages on both my Substack and Ghost sites, I would have liked them to be shown on the subscribe pages. Beehiiv lets you do that, and I think it makes things much clearer.

It will be interesting to see which of the platforms attracts the most paying members and whether there are differences in how many people pay monthly (£20 per month) versus annually (£200 per year).

And although a membership is the most cost-effective option, I am also offering all co-working and lunch and learn events on a pay-as-you-go basis at £15 per event.

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