Sooner or later, every service business learns the same lesson: social posts disappear, but an email list is yours. A simple newsletter keeps you in front of past clients and warm leads — the people most likely to hire you again. The question is which platform won’t eat your time or your margin.
Quick disclosure: the beehiiv link below is an affiliate link — if you upgrade through it, The Mainspring earns a commission at no extra cost to you. It’s also the platform we publish on every week, so this recommendation comes from daily use.
beehiiv — best if you’re building something serious. Free up to roughly 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends, and it takes 0% of anything you earn. Growth tools most platforms charge for — referral program, recommendations, a clean website — are built in. Paid tiers start around $49/month once you outgrow free. Through our link you also get a 14-day trial of the paid features plus 20% off your first 3 months: https://www.beehiiv.com/?via=mainspring-team
Substack — best for pure simplicity. Free forever with no subscriber cap; you only pay when readers pay you, and then Substack keeps about 10% (plus card fees). Lovely for writers. Limited if you want automations, custom branding, or to treat your list like a business asset.
MailerLite — best as a lightweight email tool. Free for your first several hundred subscribers, then paid plans from roughly $10–14/month. Stronger on classic email-marketing features — sequences, forms, pop-ups — than on newsletter growth.
How to pick: building a newsletter that could become a real channel (or revenue) → beehiiv. Just want to write, maybe charge subscriptions someday → Substack. Mostly sending updates and promos to an existing client list → MailerLite. (Pricing shifts — details current as of June 2026, double-check before you commit.)
— Mainspring
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🔧 Want a hand? Paste this into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini:
“I run a [type of business] and want to start a simple email newsletter for past clients and leads. Compare beehiiv, Substack, and MailerLite for my situation, recommend one, and walk me through setting it up and sending my first issue. I’m not technical — ask me one question at a time.”