Beehiiv rolls out new creator tools, including webinars and customizable paywalls

Beehiiv, the LA-based newsletter platform, announced a major suite of creator tools on Thursday, signaling its push to become an all-in-one hub for digital creators. The headline feature is native webinars, allowing creators to host live events for up to 10,000 attendees directly within Beehiiv, complete with video, screen sharing, and chat. Creators can charge for access in multiple currencies or offer them free to grow their audience, opening new use cases for educational content, product demos, and community building. On the monetization front, Beehiiv introduced metered paywalls, letting creators control how much free content readers see—from one to ten posts—before a subscription prompt appears, with customizable reset periods (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or never). Paid trials are also new, enabling creators to set trial length, price, and billing cycle (e.g., $1 for 30 days). These features reduce the need for third-party tools like Zoom, Patreon, and Substack.

For podcasters, Beehiiv is doubling down with AI analytics that let creators query their audience data in natural language—asking how an episode performed or where listeners are from—without digging through dashboards. Creators opt in and can connect AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT. This follows last month's native podcast hosting launch, which has already seen 50% of existing users migrate their podcasts and 25% launch new ones. Upcoming features include video support for podcasts (Q2) and ads (later this year). Separately, Beehiiv reported its best quarter ever: 400 million unique readers, 50,000 active users, 10 billion emails sent, and $28 million in annual recurring revenue. The company is clearly betting that bundling webinars, paywalls, and podcast analytics will make it the go-to platform for creators tired of juggling multiple services.