The best online newsletter platforms [2025]

If you’ve built a business or create content people can’t get enough of, the smartest move you can make is staying connected with your audience.

While there are countless ways to communicate, from social media platforms to community forums, email newsletters have consistently proven to be one of the most effective. They keep your audience engaged, informed, and aware of what’s happening with your brand.

But with so many email newsletter services out there, how do you know where to start?

This guide will walk you through the top newsletter platforms available today and show you practical ways to maximize your newsletter’s monetization potential.

10 best online newsletter platforms

1. Whop

With Whop, every forum post you make doubles as a newsletter - it’s automatically sent as an email to your community.

That’s because Whop isn’t just a newsletter tool, it’s a full platform for running any online business or community. When you create a whop, you can add apps (features) to customize how you connect with your audience.

For example, if you’ve built a big following on TikTok and want a direct way to keep fans updated, just create a whop and add the Forums app. Every post instantly reaches your audience through both a Whop notification and an email, so nobody misses your news.

You decide how interactive it is too: keep comments on for discussion, or turn them off for simple, one-way communication like a traditional newsletter.

And as we said, Whop is more than a newsletter platform. You can sell courses, memberships, exclusive content, or anything else right alongside your newsletters.

• Pros: Whop’s app-based ecosystem gives you total flexibility. You can sell courses, memberships, communities, or any offer alongside your newsletters.
• Cons: The newsletter function isn’t labeled as “newsletters,” which can be confusing at first. It’s powered by the Forums app — once you add it, every post doubles as a newsletter email.
• Pricing: Whop is completely free to use and there's a transaction fee of just 2.7% + $0.30 on sales you make.

2. Mailmodo

Mailmodo is one of the best online newsletter platforms, letting you grow your ecommerce business thanks to the variety of features it offers.

We're talking AI integration and templates that can really speed up your email copy, instant automation, and precise segment targeting.

Most exciting of all, Mailmodo's gamification, interactivity, and AI powered customization and analytics can boost conversion, which is a big bonus.

Why? You’re already getting a best-in-class product, and the many extras turn the dial up to 11.

With AMP for email, you're essentially sending your audience a mini-website inside of your newsletter. Odds are, they're going to love it.

• Pros: Drag and drop builder for AMP and HTML, full stack campaign manager, AI-powered automations.
• Cons: Can get expensive if you have a large contact list thanks to flexible pricing. This means you won’t pay too much for a small mailing list but you may not get all the benefits of scale with a large one.
• Pricing: Flexible pricing gives you a rate depending on how many contacts you have. The Lite and Pro plans start at $39 and $79 respectively for up to 2500 subscribers, while Max costs $159 up to the 10k contact mark.

3. Smartrmail

Smartrmail has plenty of advantages if you go premium, but it’s one of the most generous services that you can use without paying.

You can have up to 250 email subscribers and shoot off 1250 emails a month for free, which is great if you’re just starting off on your newsletter journey.

The platform offers tons of useful features that you can take advantage of too, from various automated workflows to AI powered product recommendations and newsletter creation based on customer buying data.

There's A/B testing of subject lines, product lookups within your newsletters, segmentation, and you can add custom HTML code if you want to.

• Pros: You can test out the advanced Pro plan with a free trial, and Smartrmail offers just about every feature a newsletter really needs.
• Cons: The number of subscribers you can have on a free plan is limited, but it's definitely better than nothing.
• Pricing: The free plan gives you 250 subscribers and 1250 emails per month, without locking off any features.
  
  The 'Essentials' plan at $13 and 'Standard' plan at $20 per month gives you 500 contacts, while 'Premium' for $350 per month gives you 10,000.

4. Mailchimp

Mailchimp started out as an email newsletter platform for small businesses but is now very much an all-in-one marketing platform.

That’s good news for because it offers lots of advantages no matter what stage of your business or content creation journey you're in.

As a platform, it's easy to use, and can help manage your website, landing pages, socials, SMS campaigns alongside your newsletters, and even generative AI tools to improve or fully build your emails.

Mailchimp also features a drag-and-drop email builder that can really help minimize the time you need to perfect design.

It's also kinda fun to play around with, and helps unlock your creative side!

• Pros: Mailchimp is really easy to use and intuitive in its design, and it serves as an all-in-one marketing platform. That helps small businesses since you can conserve your time and budget.
• Cons: The free plan is very limited, and you’ll have to buy templates if you really want your newsletters to look good.
• Pricing: Mailchimp’s full-featured Premium plan starts at $350 per month for 10k contacts, Standard starts at $20 per month for 500 contacts, and Essentials drops down to just $13 per month for 500 subscribers.
  
  The Standard plan has most of the tools you’ll need to scale, featuring advanced automations and data-driven optimization, and it scales well — at a maximum of 100k contacts and 1.2 million monthly email sends, it only goes up to $800.

5. Kit

Kit — formerly known as ConvertKit — is all about creators and creativity. What does that mean? For starters, maximum automation and a super easy-to-use set of features.

Platforms that are tough to work with really kill creativity, and Kit is totally aware of that — even the UI design is clean and pleasant, giving you a canvas to express yourself.

On top of that, it also offers several monetization options right from the inside your newsletter.

That's a big one, since you can unlock premium conversion, list your digital products, and offer subscriptions without your readers needing to click away.

• Pros: Provides plenty of monetization options and growth-related features to go alongside engagement boosts.
• Cons: Design is text-forward, which can suit some types of content better than others.
• Pricing: Kit’s free plan covers 1000 subscribers. Paid options start with the Creator plan at $39 per month for 1,000 subscribers contacts, going up to $79 per month for 1,000 subscribers and advanced features like A/B testing and referral systems.

6. Benchmark

Benchmark is an email newsletter platform that's chock-full of features, with AI leading the charge.

The platform’s “Smart Design AI” is a companion that helps you whip up professional emails featuring your own logos, images, colors, and messaging with minimal input.

That sounds good, but how it does that is the cool bit – it pulls all of that data straight from your website, then whips up copy for you.

All that remains is for you to do the editing.

And, as it happens, there are tools to help you out here too. There's a drag-and-drop editor, HTML code editor, or a plain text editor to choose from in order to get the job done.

• Pros: Benchmark's flagship is its Smart Design AI, but also has all of the automations and other options that you need from an email newsletter platform.
• Cons: The free plan is very limited, basically just giving you a single sign-up form and basic segmentation and automations.
• Pricing: Benchmark’s free plan lets you send 3,500 emails per month to 500 contacts and the Pro version has customizable contacts with 7,500 emails monthly starting at $13 per month.

7. Substack

Substack. Of course it had to be Substack.

This service has been a gamechanger for a lot of influencers, combining power with reach. And, what do you want from a newsletter platform? To get your message out to your audience directly, of course.

Substack does that, does it it well, and does it for free to boot.

As far how things are beneath the hood? Substack is a blog, webside, content platform and payment processor all rolled into one.

It's also important to add that there aren't any editorial restrictions when you use Substack, and you retain full ownership of all of your content.

Plus, there's also a network effect to take advantage of — Substack visitors can happen upon your content when they're browsing, so the platform can help you grow.

• Pros: Substack is free to use, and it gets the job done by sending your content to the inboxes of your audience. Importantly, site viewers can organically find your content, which sets it apart from many other platforms.
• Cons: Substack isn’t a specialist newsletter platform so you don’t have as many features and design options as other services.
• Pricing: Free to use, but the platform takes 10% of your revenues when you turn on paid subscriptions.

8. Flodesk

Just about every newsletter platform we've covered so far uses contact-based pricing. That means one simple thing: the more you grow, so does the amount you pay them.

Let's be straight here. Props to them for figuring out an effective way of pricing for their own services. Still, you're not here for their top line — you want to grow yours.

Enter Flodesk, an excellent newsletter platform that welcomes growing creators and businesses by offering flat-rate pricing.

Flodesk has all of the features you might want as you scale, too. Automation, analytics, advanced segmentation? It's all there, along with a pricing model that's perfect for growth.

• Pros: Flodesk is a simple, feature rich platform that includes plenty of monetization options within your newsletters.
• Cons: Starting price can be considered high if you have few or no subs, so you don't want to start here unless you're confident of rapid growth.
• Pricing: Flodesk charges a flat $35 per month for email marketing irrespective of how many subscribers you have or how many emails you want to send.

9. Beehiiv

Sometimes, the best platform are put together by users who just can't find the perfect option — so they just pick up tools and build it themselves.

Developed by the team behind the Morning Brew, beehiiv is a newsletter platform that lets you build an epic newsletter without needing to know any code.

It’s easy to work with and packed with tons of familiar features like AI writing assistants and social helpers, but it's a standout option because of its monetization.

So, how can you make money with beehiiv?

First of all, beehiiv allows monetization via its ad network — this feels like a surprisingly obvious addition given that you can monetize most other types of content through ads.

And if that's not cool enough, you can also earn by recommending other newsletters or converting readers into premium subscribers.

• Pros: Modern, intuitive design and extremely powerful tools to help you put out your newsletter, including automations and generative AI that help you save time.
• Cons: Slightly lacking in terms of visual customization compared to some of its competitors.
• Pricing: beehiiv has a free plan supporting up to 2500 subscribers. The main premium plan is called Scale, starting at $49 per month for 1,000 subscribers and unlocking access to all beehiiv’s key features including full monetization.
  
  Finally, the Max plan at $99 for 1,000 subscribers lets you get rid of beehiiv branding, giving you a white label option.

Discover more email newsletter software in this guide

10. Omnisend

Unlike many other newsletter platforms, Omnisend is built for ecommerce businesses that want a strong automation system.

One of the most powerful aspects of Omnisend is its integration with Shopify and other ecommerce platforms that allows you to convert people from mail subscribers to buyers.

It's also not going to fall behind on AI capabilities - whether you want help on subject lines or the entire content, Omnisend's AI assistant will help you out.

• Pros: Omnisend is perfect for ecommerce businesses that want to improve their marketing with newsletter campaigns. Something went wrong? Even the lowest membership tier offers 24/7 customer support.
• Cons: If you're not selling products, you won't need some of the coolest Omnisend features.
• Pricing: With a customizable contact list size, the Standard tier is $11.20 per month with 3,000 emails a month. The Pro tier, on the other hand, costs $41.30 per month and comes with unlimited emails and global SMS messaging.

What to look for in an email newsletter platform

With so much choice out there, how do you pick between platforms? Well, there are a few things to keep in mind.

Here are some of the most important things to consider:

Ease of use

This one's big, because what's worse than spending ages trying to even learn how to use a new service you sign up for?

The best newsletter platforms let you build attractive, professional-looking newsletters without knowing a single line of code.

Some knowledge in this regard can help, of course, but you shouldn’t need any sort of extra skills to be able to communicate with your audience.

After all, you’ve got other things to put all that time and effort into, so to minimize headaches in the long run, find a platform that's easy to use.

Pricing

The next thing to look at is pricing. Thanks, Captain Obvious!

Actually, hang on a moment. Like many online services, the newsletter industry does have a few special ways of doing things.

Most newsletter services operate on some sort of flexible pricing system. Some have plans that ramp up when you have a bigger audience. Others, like Substack, will take a percentage across the board.

Beyond your subscriber count, different feature sets can cost a different amount. So, you may have to decide between a more basic tier and a pricier one that differ based on feature selection.

Segmentation

Segmentation is important to any marketer, and being able to do that via your newsletter is a pretty powerful feature.

Segmentation means dividing your audience based on things like demographics and behavioral traits.

It's crucial for building strategies around marketing and sales, so it's something to look for if you're getting really serious about your business.

That said, super niche newsletters or really new ones can probably ignore this feature.

Analytics and reporting

Analytics and reporting are another important part of running a business, or keeping an online community growing.

They can help you evaluate how your email campaigns are doing and adjust strategy, allowing you to get real business value out of your newsletter.

Without robust analytics and reporting features? Well, you’ll have no understanding of how one email campaign did great while another fell flat.

Monetization

Let's be honest here: monetization is a critical piece of the puzzle when it comes to running a newsletter.

Sure, you may not be running yours for the sole purpose of making bank, but that's the end goal, right?

Even if you're committed to keeping your newsletter free, the reason you're sending it out may be to alert people about your new product.

Rather than link to it, some services let you sell that product right from within the newsletter. It's convenient, saves a click, and could earn you thousands.

Besides, many businesses have found that a smaller, highly connected audience has the potential to be far more profitable than a larger, less-invested one.

And a newsletter? It's all about connection and engagement.

Newsletters: 3 successful examples for a little inspiration

1. Morning Brew

We've mentioned them already so let's start here — these are the folks who started beehiiv. And, today, they're probably more of a content network than a mere newsletter.

The Morning Brew has always been known for being on the humorous side, and are always good for a grin to go with your first sip of the day.

(The quip about weddings in the image is probably going to be a head-scratcher by the time you read this, but on June the 9th, it was relevant!)

Despite being acquired by Business Insider, the newsletter still has plenty of email subscribers. And by plenty, we mean millions.

How did they get to the point where they could be profitably taken over?

Monetization, and lots of it. Native ads, branded content, sponsorships, the Morning Brew did all of that while also being a comforting, daily wake-up for its loyal readers.

Key takeaway: Figuring out a niche and then staying consistent can really help. The Morning Brew has always given readers a peek at current affairs to wake up to. It's even right there in the name.

2. Product Habits

Hiten Shah's Product Habits newsletter is a good source of the sort of insights that are driving the world of ecommerce forward at any given point.

It's not just theory either — readers get plenty of case studies that show innovative principles put to the test, and how companies tackle the problems put to them.

Complex topics made accessible, actionable tips delivered right into your inbox, and, wait for it... a free ebook for subscribing?

The incentives to bang your email address in are laid out loud and clear.

Key takeaway: Something like a free ebook or PDF document can be enough of an incentive to get people to subscribe. Once you've got them on your newsletter, you've got a chance to demonstrate your value, engage, and ultimately convert.

3. Distance Covered

Distance Covered is a newsletter published by author, podcaster, and football statistician Josh Williams.

It's currently #42 in the Sports category on Substack, which isn't bad at all — certainly not when you consider that Josh's work, which is focused on stats and data, is pretty niche.

That said, he's covering the sport with the most global appeal, and focuses on a club, Liverpool FC, which is highly successful and widely supported.

Josh is well known for his podcasting, and he mixes in a significant amount of this form of content if you become a paid subscriber.

Top tier subscribers also get a signed copy of his book, so there's tons of value to be had for those who do take the plunge.

Key takeaway: Giving your audience multiple forms of content if possible is definitely the way to go, and platforms that offer many types of digital products are worth consider.

Your newsletter is just the start - Whop helps you build more

Newsletters are powerful, but with Whop, they’re just the beginning.

Instead of stopping at emails, you can use your newsletter as the foundation for a full business. Share content, launch products, and build a thriving community — all in one place.

Here’s how it works: when you create a whop, you can add apps (features) to grow and monetize your audience:

• Send newsletters (via the Forums app)
• Sell premium content like ebooks, downloads, and courses
• Run paid communities with the Chat app
• Offer exclusive perks or subscriptions
• Gate content by tier, topic, or member type
• Even build your own custom app

Instead of sending readers off to scattered marketplaces, funnel them into your whop, where everything lives under one roof.

With Whop, your newsletter becomes the gateway to real revenue — subscriptions, premium content, workshops, paid communities, and beyond.

So if you’re ready to scale, grow, and monetize your newsletter, Whop makes it simple.