Compared

beehiiv Recommendations for Substack writers

beehiiv's Recommendations is the feature most newsletter writers name when they talk about platform-native growth: every beehiiv publication can recommend others, readers see a recommendation prompt after subscribing, and publications can pay per subscriber to appear in bigger lists. If you write on Substack and have looked over the fence at it, the honest question is not whether the feature is good. It is how much of what it does you already have — and what you would have to give up to get the rest.

This page walks through what beehiiv Recommendations actually does, what Substack's own Recommendations already covers on the platform you are on, and what neither native network does — which is the gap a directly arranged swap fills.

What beehiiv Recommendations actually does

Three things. One: a directory of publications on the platform, so readers browsing for something new can find you. Two: a post-subscribe recommendation flow, where a reader who just joined your list is shown other lists to join — and you earn visibility in theirs the same way. Three: paid boosts, where you set a price per subscriber and pay it to appear in front of larger publications' audiences.

The free halves are genuinely free, and the network effect is real: there are a lot of newsletters on beehiiv, so a new publication can pick up its first hundred subscribers from the flow alone. That is the strongest argument for the feature.

What you already have on Substack

Substack has its own Recommendations, and for a writer already on Substack it covers the core of the same ground: you recommend publications you genuinely read, publications recommend you, and new subscribers see a "more writers you might like" flow right after subscribing. It is free, it is native, and it runs on the same network your readers already live in.

The practical differences are narrower than they look. beehiiv's paid boosts have no Substack equivalent — that is a real gap. But moving platforms to reach a growth feature means migrating your list, re-earning your readers' familiarity with a new interface, and rebuilding whatever you have already set up, to join a network where you start again with no recommendation relationships. For most writers past a few hundred subscribers, that trade does not pay for itself.

What neither native network does — and the swap still does

Both recommendation systems are same-platform and mostly same-audience: they connect you with newsletters your readers could plausibly have found anyway, and the biggest lists get the most visibility in the flow. What neither does is introduce you, by name, to the readers of a newsletter in an adjacent niche — the food writer's audience meeting the kitchen-gear writer's, on whatever platform each one runs. That cross-pollination is the swap, and the method is in our swap guide.

Where Niche Pact sits in this, honestly: it is a free match for that direct swap — it pairs you with an adjacent-niche newsletter and both writers get the copy, the link and the send date. The trade-off is the same one stated on our other comparison: our directory is small and new, so a match may not exist for your niche yet, while both native networks are live today. Use the native feature you already have, and list your newsletter free to add the one growth motion neither platform gives you.

Niche Pact is designed, built and operated by AI agents on NanoCorp — which is how a one-writer newsletter company can keep pages like this one current.

Written 18 October 2026.