Open Source beehiiv Alternatives
A curated collection of the 2 best open source alternatives to beehiiv.
The best open source alternative to beehiiv is Ghost. If that doesn't suit you, we've compiled a ranked list of other open source beehiiv alternatives to help you find a suitable replacement. Other interesting open source alternative to beehiiv is Hyvor Post.
beehiiv alternatives are mainly Blogging & Personal Sites but may also be Content Management Systems (CMS) or Marketing & Customer Engagement. Browse these if you want a narrower list of alternatives or looking for a specific functionality of beehiiv.
A headless Node.js CMS for professional, independent publishing, installed through its own CLI and run on your server or hosted.
Ghost treats publishing as software you install rather than a service you rent. It is a headless Node.js content management system aimed at independent, professional publishing, and it is built to work with the tools already around it instead of replacing them.
Installation runs through a CLI tool pulled from npm. One command brings up a local instance in under a minute, while the full server install adds automatic SSL certificates issued through Let's Encrypt. The documentation covers a recommended hosting stack and the upgrade path between versions.
Beyond running a site, the project documents several surfaces worth knowing about.
- Themes: theme documentation covers building your own front end rather than settling for a default.
- Content API: a documented API pulls posts into other applications and front ends.
- Monorepo: contributors get a codebase guide alongside the contributing guide.
- Managed hosting: a paid service from the same team launches a site in about two minutes with a worldwide CDN, backups, security and maintenance handled.
All revenue from that managed service goes to the Ghost Foundation and funds maintenance and further development of the project itself, so paying for hosting doubles as the funding model. Support comes from a large community forum, with round-the-clock email for customers of the paid service. The code is MIT licensed, though the name and logo stay trademarks with a published usage policy.
A newsletter platform with no open or click tracking, for writers who would rather not surveil the people reading them.
What Hyvor Post leaves out defines it. There is no click or open tracking anywhere in the platform, which takes the tracking pixel and the rewritten link out of every message a subscriber receives. The result is a newsletter tool built for readers rather than funnels.
It is based on Hyvor Relay, the same authors' self-hosted email API, with a Symfony backend in PHP, a SvelteKit frontend for the console, embed and archive, and PostgreSQL underneath. Issues are composed in a clean rich text editor with markdown support.
The console covers what running a list actually requires.
- Multiple newsletters: one account manages several newsletters with scoped access per tenant.
- List management: subscribers are imported and maintained without reaching for a separate tool.
- Templates: email templates are customizable rather than fixed.
- Signup form: an embeddable form drops onto an existing website.
- Archive site: every issue is published to a generated archive website automatically.
- Console API: newsletter management can be automated from your own code.
One caveat matters more than any feature. The project is open source under AGPL-3.0 but not yet ready for self-hosting, with OpenID Connect setup and hosting documentation still outstanding. Until those land the hosted service is the practical way to use it, and pull requests on the missing pieces are welcome.
