With Revue shutting down soon, many creators are looking for alternative newsletter platforms to migrate.
And as we started Unita’s newsletter a week ago, we also looked for alternatives to start fresh and found plenty of free and paid options.
Here’s our review of the most popular platforms shared on Twitter, along with some others hidden gems that are perfect for web3 communities.
Alternatives to Revue
Substack
Substack is a great alternative for newsletter creators looking for a straightforward way to start their own free newsletter. But although you can start for free, it also offers monetization tools to switch to a paid newsletter.
You can add a subscription fee, or offer a paid membership that gives them access to exclusive content. There’s also another option to add a “Support” button that allows your readers to make a one-time or recurring donation.
But probably one of the best features of Substack is its simplicity. It allows you to easily create and publish your newsletter without coding or design skills, so it’s great for content creators who want to launch a newsletter in no time.
That’s one of the reasons why creators are preferring Substack to replace Revue.
In terms of pricing, Substack offers a free plan that allows you to create and publish without paying for it but includes basic analytics and monetization options.
Free plan:
- Unlimited newsletters and posts: You can create and publish as many newsletters as you want without any cost.
- Basic analytics: You can track your subscribers, open rates, and click-through rates for your newsletters.
- Community: Substack has a built-in commenting system that allows your readers to interact with you and each other.
- Easy to migrate from Revue to Substack (just upload your subscribers’ list and you’re done).
Paid plan:
If you choose to add paid subscriptions to your newsletter, Substack charges a 10% platform fee on all revenue earned through paid subscriptions. Additionally, there is a credit card processing fee charged by Stripe, which is Substack’s payments processor.
The exact amount of this fee varies depending on the country and currency in which you’re operating.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit is mostly designed for blog and newsletter. It offers a range of features that allow you to grow your audience, automate, and monetize.
It is one of the favorites of the creator community on Twitter, and many already migrated from revue to ConvertKit before the shutdown.
Some of the best features of this platform are its automation and the landing page builder. With ConvertKit, you can create a landing page to capture subscribers and write and publish content without leaving the dashboard.
In terms of pricing, ConvertKit offers three different plans: Free, Creator, and Creator Pro, and it prices grow as your emails list does.
Free plan:
The Free plan is designed for new creators with email lists of up to 1000 subscribers. It includes detailed analytics of your audience growth and customizable opt-in forms and landing pages.
Premium plans:
Creator plan starts at $9/month but it varies according to how many subscribers you manage. It’s great for growing creators who are automating their work. It includes:
- Unlimited landing pages, forms, and broadcasts
- Audience tagging and segmentation
- Automation
- Visual automation builders
- Third-party integrations
Beehiiv
Beehiiv is a great alternative for newsletter creators looking for a platform that offers both simplicity and advanced features as you grow. One of the things that stood out to us when we were searching for a new platform for Unita’s newsletter was Beehiiv’s user-friendly interface and easy-to-use features.
In terms of pricing, Beehiiv offers three different plans: Launch, Grow (starts at $42/month) and Scale. Here’s an overview of each one:
Free plan:
The free plan is designed for those who are just getting started, it includes:
- Campaign & Subscriber Analytics
- Audience Segmentation (Limit 3)
- External Subscribe Forms
- Optimized Inbox Deliverability
- RSS
- Unlimited Sending
Here are step-by-step instructions to migrate subscribers from Revue to Beehiiv:
Still, there’s a limit on the manual imports you can make to Beehiiv, so if you’re migrating from Revue, I strongly suggest you make it all in a simple CSV.
On the other hand, it’s also worth to mention free plans don’t allow you to customize your profile picture or domain. So it won’t look perfect in your subscribers’ inboxes.
Also, you have a link where people can see the latest editions and subscribe, but embed forms are only available on paid plans.
Grow plan:
- Custom Domains (Email + Web)
- Offer Premium Subscriptions
- Unlimited Audience Polls
- Audience Segmentation (Unlimited)
- Multiple Team Members
- Promotional Offers & Trials
- A/B Testing Subject Lines
- API Access
- Custom HTML forms
- Subscriber Forms
Paragraph
Paragraph might not be as popular as Substack or Beehiiv, but it’s a great alternative for those building community on the blockchain. Here, you can create communities (whether on web2 or web3) and share different content across all communities.
There’s also an option that allows subscribers to grant access with NFT tokens.
But what I liked most about Paragraph is that you can easily write and publish with a subdomain to share a link on social media. Also, it offers custom HTML forms with a free plan!
Free plan:
I have to say the features offered on the free plan are more than enough to start a newsletter and blog at the same time. Also, when you’re ready to scale, it’s easy to tokenize access to your community.
With the free plan, you get:
- Statically generated website for your publications
- Unlimited subscribers
- Easy to use CMS (similar to Beehiive)
- Unlimited posts hosted on the Arweave permaweb
- Customization and branding
- Pageview metrics
- Custom domain with SSL (for a one-time fee of $50)
Enable Payments:
There’s no pro membership on Paragraph, but when you enable paid subscriptions they’ll charge a fee of 5% per paid subscription.
Mailchimp
I know, Mailchimp is not of those sites that feel “illegal to know” because it has been on the market for years, and you probably already used it more than once.
But it has changed over the years, and after not using it for a while, I actually liked the new builder and the predefined templates. It looks like the common block builder such as Elementor, which is intuitive and simple.
From my point of view, it’s also better than the Beehiive email builder.
It also has a creative assistant (only in paid plans) that imports your brand’s logo and colors, allowing you to import your brand just with your website link.
After using it for a while, I believe Mailchimp it’s a great option for those new to email marketing, as it offers a generous free plan and easy-to-use tools.
Free plan:
- Includes basic features such as email campaigns, templates, and personalization
- Allows you to send up to 2,000 emails per month to a maximum of 500 contacts
- Includes basic reporting and analytics
- Offers a limited number of pre-built email templates
Standard plan:
- Starts at $20 per month
- 6,000 email sends per month
- A/B testing
- Automation
- Creative assistant to import brand logos and colors
Sendinblue
Sendinblue offers many features that are perfect for newsletter creators looking to automate everything without leaving their dashboard. It has been our main email marketing tool for a couple of years now and we have found it to be a great alternative to Mailchimp.
The key modules offered by Sendinblue include custom email marketing campaigns, automation, and an easy-to-use designer. The email design tool is easy to use and offers a visual interface with drag-and-drop functionality and ready-made blocks. Plus, you can import your own email template in raw HTML form.
Still, maybe the best feature is the custom workflows. These are amazing automation that will help you increase engagement, traffic, and conversions without you worrying about each member in your email list.
For example, you can trigger a new action to invite members to an event, or send anniversary messages to increase loyalty.
But what I don’t like about Sendinblue it’s that seems outdated on some features. For example, they still use SMS to share your newsletter, which sounds weird in 2023. Not sure if anyone is doing it anymore.
Pricing for Sendinblue ranges from a free plan to a Starter plan starting from $23.35/month, a Business plan starting from $61.25/month, and a custom-priced Enterprise plan for large organizations.
Here’s an overview of the most popular plans:
Free plan:
- Unlimited contacts
- 300 emails/day
- Customizable Email Templates
- Drag & Drop Editor
- Transactional Emails
- SMS & WhatsApp Campaigns
Starter plan:
- From 20k emails/month
- No daily sending limit
- No Sendinblue logo (add-on)
- Basic reporting & analytics
- Email support
Business plan:
- From 20k emails/month
- Marketing Automation
- A/B testing
- Advanced Statistics
- Multi-user access
- Send time optimization
- Phone support
Mirror
Mirror it’s a user-owned option for web3 enthusiasts who want to take their communities to the next level.
You can build your publications directly on web3, embed NFTs, and turn your entries into collectibles. It’s perfect for those who are interested in monetizing subscriptions with the power of the blockchain.
It allows you to build wallet-based communities that can be used all across web3. In addition, Mirror supports DAOs, co-authorship, and multisig. So it’s a great way to democratize collaboration because you can split earnings with authors, sell ownership of a piece, and more.
Also, publishing on Mirror is decentralized. A permanent record of your pieces will be stored on Arweave so you can access whether or not Mirror is available.
The best of this platform is that is completely free for publishers!
Elink
Elink.io is a platform that offers a solution for automating or dramatically speeding up the process of creating email newsletters. It’s a great choice for those looking to create visually appealing content from links.
What I like most about this platform is how it’s easy to save links while navigating online and turn them into newsletters.
You can create email newsletters with just a few clicks. Moreover, it has the option to embed the grid on your website, and the ability to curate content from multiple sites using RSS.
Also, Elink has an amazing collection of well-looking templates with HTML code available to test them in a 3rd party tool.
If you’re planning to embed and share links to your newsletter massively, this might be a good choice.
Elink.io offers three pricing plans: a Free plan, a Pro plan starting from $12/month billed annually, and an Autopilot plan starting from $36/month billed annually.
Pro Plan:
For $12 per month (billed annually), the Pro plan offers all the features of the free plan, plus team collaboration, unlimited published posts, an RSS feed reader, HTML email newsletter export, design settings, and SEO settings.
Auto Pilot:
For $36 per month (billed annually), the Auto Pilot plan offers all the features of the Pro plan, plus Zapier integration, and more automation features.
