Drry vs beehiiv
A warmer home for your community, without the cut.
beehiiv is a strong newsletter platform, and credit where it is due: a free tier, unlimited sends, a website on your own domain, paid subscriptions it states it takes 0% of, a referral program, and an ad network. What it is built around is the send. Drry is built around the people, so your writing sits beside courses, guides, audio, events, messages, and a community feed they log into.
Drry vs beehiiv, the full picture
| Drry | beehiiv | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes. 100 members, 5 GB, unlimited courses, and the community feed. No card. | A free tier that is genuinely free, no card, with the bigger features arriving on the paid plans. |
| Fee on your member payments | 0%. You keep 100%, only Stripe's standard processing fee applies. | 0% of your paid subscription revenue, which it states plainly on its own pricing page, with Stripe's processing fee the only cut. Level with us on this row, and worth saying so. |
| Courses + community together | Both built in, in one branded space you own. | A community feature arrives on its paid tiers, and its digital products can sell a course as something to buy. The COURSE named among the plan features, NewsletterXP, is beehiiv's own newsletter training rather than a builder for yours, so if you need lessons your members work through and get credited for finishing, check that before you commit. |
| Step-by-step guides and how-tos | Built in and free on every plan, with no cap on how many: build a guide from rich-text steps with images and video you upload to Drry and stream, a what-you-need list with real amounts and units members tick off as they go, and chips like prep time or servings, all on a tab you can rename to Recipes, Workouts, or Protocols. Because the amounts are structured, a member can scale a recipe to a different serving count or switch between metric and US, and they can keep the screen awake while they follow it or print the whole thing. Flip any guide public and it gets one shareable link, published with recipe details a search engine can read, plus a QR code, a lead-capture form and your own call to action, and you can hold the last steps back behind an email if you want it to work as a lead magnet too. | A post can be a how-to and its website publishes that where search can find it, which genuinely works. What there is no format for is a step-by-step with a supplies list, quantities, and check-off, or a guides tab of your own to browse them in. |
| Funnels + landing pages | Built in: compose landing pages from proven sections, capture leads with email boxes and embeddable forms, and see views, joins, and revenue per funnel. 1 free, unlimited on paid plans. | Landing pages sit inside a website builder with a custom domain, plus a referral program and a recommendation network, all pointed at growing the LIST. Views, joins, and revenue attributed to a membership is a different report. |
| Your own brand and domain | Your own address like grace.drry.com on free; connect your own domain plus site white label (no Drry branding, the site is 100% yours) on paid plans, and on Growth your email sends from your own domain too. | Yes, a website on your own custom domain. |
| Knowing who is showing up | See who is showing up, who is drifting away, which content people love, and how many finish each course. Included on Creator ($29/mo). | Campaign analytics, polls, surveys, and segmentation, sharp on the send. It tells you who opens; who is showing up, and to what, is a membership question. |
| Where pricing starts | Free, then $29/mo (Creator), $99/mo (Growth). | Free to start, then paid tiers priced on how many subscribers you hold. |
| Getting paid for 1:1s and packages | Send any client a one-time or installment link with an agreement they sign before they pay, built in, free on every plan, 0% platform fee. Most platforms make you bolt on a separate contract tool. | Paid subscriptions and digital products, sold to a list. A per-client one-time or installment link with an agreement signed before payment is a different shape of sale entirely. |
| Email your members | Built in on every plan: send a broadcast to your whole community or to an audience your forms captured (free covers 100 sends a month, unlimited on paid). Creator adds automations: a library of ready-made journeys that welcome new signups, deliver a lead magnet, fill an event, and win back quiet members on their own. | Excellent, and the reason to be here: unlimited sends on every tier, automations, segmentation, and an ad network and boosts to grow the list on top of it. |
| Selling digital downloads | Built in on every plan, free up to 10 products and unlimited from Creator: sell any file (PDF, video, audio, zip) straight from your bio link, keep 100% of it, and buyers get an instant download plus a receipt with the link. You keep their email, so a one-off buyer becomes someone you can actually reach again. | Yes, digital products are named on its own pricing page. |
| Audio and private podcast feeds | An audio library on every plan including free: upload a track and members get a real player with 0.75x to 2x speed, a sleep timer, resume, and lock-screen controls. Growth adds a private, revocable podcast feed per member, which you switch on if you want it, so your library also plays in Apple Podcasts, Overcast, or Pocket Casts, downloaded for offline and unlisted in every directory. And you still see which members listened and which finished, which a podcast feed on its own can never report. | Genuinely strong: podcasts are a real part of the product with their own section in its support centre. What Drry adds is a library that lives inside your membership, and knowing which members listened and which finished, which a feed on its own can never report. |
| Letting clients book a call with you | Built in and free on every plan (2 session types on free, unlimited from Creator): publish your session types, share one link, and a booked time becomes a real private session on the same calendar your classes run on, with the invite, the reminders, the joining link, and cancellation all handled. Availability is yours to shape (weekly hours with split ranges, a buffer after, minimum notice, how far ahead, caps per day and per week, days off), anything already on your calendar closes its own slot, intake can be one of your real forms, and the person who booked becomes a contact you can email or drop into an automation. From Creator the call can happen in your own branded room, recorded when you press record, instead of on someone else's link. | It is a publishing platform, so picking a time with a client happens in whichever scheduler you already pay for, and the call lands on that tool's calendar rather than beside everything else you run. |
| Members messaging each other, and you | Direct messages built in on every plan including free, 1:1 and in groups: images and files, reactions, unsend your own message, and blocking. Group threads are yours and your admins' to start. Your side is a real inbox, not a notification list: saved replies you fire with a slash, and beside a one-to-one thread that person's lifetime revenue, tags, join date, and your own private notes about them. On Growth you can switch on optional AI screening that flags a worrying message into your moderation queue for you to judge. Messages are a switch in your Studio, on by default for new communities. | Its community on the paid tiers explicitly includes DMs and group chats, so members really can talk to each other; below that your readers are subscribers on a list. Either way your side of it is a publishing dashboard rather than an inbox with saved replies and, beside a one-to-one thread, what that person has paid you. |
| What each member is worth to you | Lifetime revenue per person, free on every plan including free: every membership charge, payment link, and product sale that person has settled adds up on their row in your members list, on their profile, beside their name in your message inbox, and in the CSV you export. Refunded product orders and unsettled payment links are left out. It is not a report you have to go and run, and it is not saved for a top tier: it is just there, next to their name. | It reports subscribers, opens, and revenue for the publication. Lifetime revenue per PERSON, on their row, on the free plan, is a membership number rather than a newsletter one. |
| Drip, prerequisites, and quizzes | Drip release, prerequisites, and graded quizzes, all three free on every plan including free, and enforced on the SERVER rather than hidden in the interface. Release a lesson a set number of days after someone joins, on a fixed date, or a set number of days after they finish what comes before it, and gate whole modules and whole courses the same way. Add multiple-choice quizzes with a pass mark you choose, and make a lesson wait on the prerequisites it depends on. A locked lesson's video, transcript, attachments, and body are not merely hidden: the routes that serve them refuse, so there is no URL to guess your way past. | There is no course of your own here to release on a schedule, gate, or quiz. Its automations drip EMAILS, which is a different job and one it does well. |
Details reflect each platform's publicly stated model and can change. Check current terms before deciding.
Moving off beehiiv is easier than staying.
Keep your margin
On Drry, every member payment stays yours on every plan, including free. 0% platform cut; only Stripe's standard processing fee applies.
One tool, not five
Courses, community, payments, and funnels in one place, your brand on all of it. No bolt-on page builders or separate apps.
You own the rails
Your own Stripe account and member list. Leaving never means starting over, because your customers were always yours.
Why creators pick Drry
- Keep 100% of member payments. Only Stripe's standard processing fee applies, we take nothing on top.
- Payments run through your own Stripe account, so your customers and subscriptions belong to you, not the platform. No payment lock-in.
- Funnels built in: fast landing pages on your domain with views, joins, and revenue attributed per page. Standalone funnel tools charge $49 to $97 a month for less.
- A genuinely free tier: 100 members, 5 GB storage, unlimited courses, and the community feed, with no card required.
- Courses, a community feed, members, and payments in one branded space you own.
- Step-by-step guides built in and free on every plan, with no cap: rich-text steps with images and native video, a what-you-need list members tick off, on a tab you can rename to Recipes, Workouts, or Protocols. Flip any one of them public and it becomes a shareable, search-indexable how-to page with a QR code, a lead-capture form, and your call to action, so the same guide serves your members and brings you new ones.
- Your own address like grace.drry.com out of the box, with custom domain and site white label on paid tiers, and white-label email from your own domain on Growth.
- Member analytics on the $29 Creator plan: who is showing up, what is landing, and who is quietly drifting away. The kind of insight other platforms save for their priciest plans.
- Get paid for 1:1s and packages: send a client a one-time or installment link with an agreement they sign before paying. Built in, free on every plan, and no platform fee. Other platforms make you bolt on a separate contract tool, and most never reach 0%.
- Let clients book you without a second subscription: publish your session types and share one link, free on every plan (2 session types on free, unlimited from Creator). A booked time becomes a real session on the same calendar your classes run on, so the invite, the reminders, and cancellation come with it, and anything already on that calendar closes its own slot. From Creator the call can happen in a room of your own instead of on someone else's link, and either way the person who booked becomes a contact you can follow up, by hand or automatically. Standalone schedulers hand you a time and an email address and stop there.
- Bring your list with you, and take it back out whenever you want. Import your contacts from a CSV in the browser (we check every address before it lands, so a bad list never touches your sending reputation), and export the whole audience on any plan including free. Most platforms make leaving quietly difficult; we would rather you stay because it is working.
- Audio your members can actually take with them: the library is free on every plan, with a player that does speed, a sleep timer, resume, and lock-screen controls, and Growth adds a private, revocable podcast feed per member so the same library plays in Apple Podcasts or Overcast, offline and listed in no directory. Most platforms cap audio or send you to a second paid product to do this, and the ones that do have feeds cannot tell you who actually listened. We can, because the web player stays primary and the feed is additive.
- Email your whole community, built in on every plan, even free (100 sends a month free, unlimited on paid), no add-on and no second tool to wire up. Creator adds email automations: welcome journeys, lead-magnet delivery, and win-backs that run on their own.
- Give a journey a goal, and it stops chasing people who already did the thing. Set the goal to paying, or active in the community, or holds a tag, and every enrolled person is re-checked against it each time the journey comes back to them, instead of marching to the end of a script written weeks ago. It also applies to people who are already partway through: the goal is read fresh every time, not frozen into their journey the day they entered, so one you add today reaches them at their next step rather than only catching people who start after you.
- Members can message each other and you, 1:1 or in a group you or an admin starts, on every plan including free. Images and files, reactions, unsend your own message, blocking. Your side is a real inbox rather than a notification list: saved replies you fire with a slash, and beside a one-to-one thread that person's lifetime revenue, tags, join date, and your private notes. On Growth you can switch on optional AI screening that flags a worrying message into your moderation queue for you to judge.
- Lifetime revenue per member, free on every plan, so you can see what each person is actually worth: every membership charge, payment link, and product sale they have settled adds up on their row in your members list, on their profile, beside their name in your inbox, and in your CSV export. Not a report you go and run, and not a feature saved for a top tier: just a number next to their name, so you know who to look after.
- Drip, prerequisites, and graded quizzes, free on every plan and enforced on the SERVER rather than hidden in the interface. Release a lesson a set number of days after someone joins, on a fixed date, or a set number of days after they finish what comes before it; gate whole modules and whole courses the same way; set the pass mark on a quiz yourself. A locked lesson's video, transcript, attachments, and body are refused by the routes that serve them, so there is no URL to guess your way past. Most platforms put course release controls on a paid tier, if they have them at all.
Drry vs beehiiv, questions
Is Drry a beehiiv alternative?
If what you want is a newsletter, beehiiv is excellent and we would not pretend otherwise. If what you want is a membership, where the writing sits beside courses, guides, audio, events, and a community feed people log into, that is what Drry is, and the broadcast email is included on every plan.
Does Drry take a cut of paid subscriptions?
No, and neither does beehiiv, so this one is a genuine tie. Drry takes 0% of member payments on every plan including free; only Stripe's standard processing fee applies, and the money lands in your own Stripe account.
Can I still run a private podcast on Drry?
Yes. The audio library is free on every plan, and Growth adds a private, revocable podcast feed per member so the same library plays in Apple Podcasts, Overcast, or Pocket Casts, downloaded for offline and listed in no directory. Because the web player stays primary, you also see which members listened and which finished.
Try Drry free. Bring your people.
Spin up your branded space in minutes, courses and community together, and keep 100% of what your members pay you.