Medium, Substack, or Beehiiv: Which One Is Best for You?
The biggest difference isn't the format - it’s who owns the relationship with our readers.
Every few weeks, a writer asks me whether they should be on Medium, Substack, or Beehiiv (yes, it's spelled with two i's).
My answer is usually an annoying little truth bomb: “It depends.”
Not because I’m trying to be vague or difficult, but because each of these platforms is built for completely different goals. It’s a little like asking whether you should buy a bicycle, a pickup truck, or a boat, but before we can answer that, we need to know where you wanna go.
As authors, we tend to focus on writing. Understandable. We became writers because we ya know, like words and stuff. But after fifteen years of helping authors market books, I’ve learned that the bigger question isn’t where you publish your newsletter. It’s what happens after someone discovers you.
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Medium: The Busy Shopping Mall
Medium is like renting a kiosk in a busy shopping mall: thousands of people walk past every day. Some stop. Some browse. A few buy something. The good news is that the mall already has traffic. The bad news is that it’s still the mall’s traffic.
I wrote there regularly for several years. In my experience, it went downhill. Several factors you can read about here.
Medium’s biggest advantage is discovery. People can stumble across your work without ever hearing of you before, which is appealing when you’re starting from scratch.
“As of February 2025, Medium is one of the 520 most visited websites on the internet. It ranks 401 in the United States and has 105.4M monthly views worldwide. In the last three months, it has received 316.3M total views, with people spending about 2:16 minutes on the platform when they visit.
The United States is the top country sending desktop traffic to Medium.”
Medium’s biggest disadvantage is audience ownership. If someone reads your article, that’s great. If they “clap” for it (similar to liking it), even better. If they follow you, wonderful. But you don’t get a subscriber list. You can’t export those followers and take them somewhere else. Even when they’ve signed up with their email to receive your posts, you don’t own that email - Medium does.
In book marketing, visibility matters. But visibility without a way to stay connected is a little like handing out flyers in a parking lot; we might get attention today, but tomorrow those people are gone.
For journalists, essayists, and thought leaders, Medium can work very well (though most journalists have migrated over here). For authors trying to build a long-term readership, it has limitations.
Substack: The Weekly Coffee Date
Substack feels completely different because instead of borrowing someone else’s audience, you’re building your own. Every time someone subscribes, they’re joining your list. Not Substack’s. Yours.
Want to walk away tomorrow? You take your subscribers with you. See ya.
Books are rarely sold after a single interaction. Most readers discover us, forget about us, rediscover us, see another post six months later, subscribe, read for a while, and eventually buy a book.
Publishing is often less “love at first sight” and more “oh yes, I remember them.” Heard of the Rule of 7? Applies here.
And this is where Substack shines. Think of it as a weekly coffee date with readers. Some weeks, fifty people show up. Some weeks, ten thousand show up (hey, it could happen). The important part is everyone knows where to find you next week, and the week after that, and well, you get it.
When I started my own Substack in 2023, I already had years of audience-building behind me, 500K followers across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and a few others, yet fewer than 2K opt-in subscribers. Today, more than 13,800+ people subscribe because they chose to hear from me directly.
If Facebook, LinkedIn, or any other platform changes tomorrow, those relationships could disappear. Not so with your own newsletter subscriber list. For authors, this is incredibly valuable.
Beehiiv: The Marketing Department
Then there’s Beehiiv.
Beehiiv reminds me of buying a commercial kitchen just to make a grilled cheese sandwich. It’s powerful, impressive, and absolutely the right choice for some people, though honestly, it’s also more equipment than many authors need (full transparency: I have not used it, only researched).
If you’re running a media company, fantastic. If you’re writing historical fiction in your pajamas while your cat judges your life choices, it might be just a tad overkill.
The other, and more important consideration, is cost. Substack is free (if you’re charging for paid subscriptions, they take 10% - still free no matter how large your subscriber list grows). Medium is free to publish. Beehiiv has a free tier, but costs increase as your subscriber count grows. Why pay for features you may never use?
There’s nothing wrong with the model. You’re paying for sophisticated tools. The question is whether you need them.
How Big Are These Platforms?
This is where things get interesting, because bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better. Weird.
Medium is still the giant in terms of overall readership, with estimates ranging from roughly 100 to 170 million monthly readers. That’s one reason writers are attracted to it. If your goal is getting discovered by strangers, that’s a lot of potential eyeballs.
Substack is smaller, but growing rapidly. The platform now reports tens of millions of active subscriptions and millions of paid subscriptions. While the audience is smaller than Medium’s at the moment, the readers tend to be more intentional. They’re subscribing because they want an ongoing relationship with a specific writer. Good info here from Simon Owens:
Beehiiv is much smaller than either Medium or Substack, but that’s partly because it’s solving a different problem. Many Beehiiv users aren’t trying to build writing communities; they’re building newsletter businesses, media brands, and marketing funnels. This guy loves Beehiiv - read more.
As authors, we sometimes get dazzled by audience size because that’s how social media platforms have trained us - but it’s only one metric (and considered a vanity metric at that). What matters more is whether those people can find us again next month, next year, and when the next book comes out.
Social teaches us to scroll; books teach us to commit. - Julie Broad
And just for funsies, I looked up Beehiiv’s pricing for my 13,800+ subscribers - $150/month. Here? Free, though they do take 10% from every paid subscription, and Stripe takes their 3%, so… math (I have 42 paid subscribers). Moving on.
What About SEO?
Writers ask me about SEO all the time (even wrote a little 99c SEO ebook for you), and the good news is that all three platforms can potentially rank in Google and AI search.
Medium benefits from a large, established domain and a massive library of content, which can help articles get discovered. Substack posts are indexed by Google and are often surfaced by AI-powered search tools because newsletters tend to contain original, first-person content. Beehiiv content can rank as well.
Stop obsessing. The real question is whether you want discovery, audience ownership, or marketing tools. One solid article every week for a year will do more for your visibility than spending six months debating platforms.
The platform matters. Consistency matters more.
If You’re Still Unsure, Here’s My Answer
If you’re an author reading this article because you want me to tell you which platform to choose and you want to listen to one person, my answer is Substack. Not because it’s perfect. Not because Medium and Beehiiv don’t have advantages. And certainly not because they pay me (I wish).
For most of us, audience ownership matters more than audience size or fancy marketing features. I’d rather see you build a list of 1,000 people who chose to hear from you directly than attract 100,000 casual readers you can’t easily reach again or maybe ever.
Could you use Medium? Absolutely. Could you use Beehiiv? Sure. But if you’re starting today and have barely the energy to pick one (which, let’s face it, one is really all we need), I’d choose Substack — then I’d spend the rest of my time writing.
Resources
If you’d like to explore the platforms yourself, here are the official sites:
https://substack.com and https://badredheadmediallc.substack.com/p/substack-made-simple-the-complete
Final Thought
Years ago, authors were told:
Build a website! Start a blog! Post on Facebook (personal and page)! Tweet ten times a day! Learn Pinterest (it’s not Pin-Interest; it’s Interest with P in front of it)! Make videos! Oh, and somehow still find time to write books.
Thankfully, things are a little simpler now. If someone discovers you today, how do you make sure they can still find you six months from now? That’s the real difference between Medium, Substack, and Beehiiv.
Medium helps strangers discover your work.
Substack helps readers build a relationship with you.
Beehiiv gives you enough marketing tools to launch a small nation.
The best platform isn’t necessarily the one with the most features, which often makes it all the more confusing; it’s the one that helps you reach your goals.
What are your goals? Start with that.
Now I’m curious: which platform are you using today, and if you’ve tried more than one, what has your experience been? Did you stay, leave, or use a combination of platforms? Please share in the comments.
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The truth is simple. Most authors don’t fail because their writing isn’t good. They struggle because readers never get the chance to find them. Let’s fix that.
Over a month ago, a gentleman who is /was active on Medium described, in detail, all of its failings. He attributed most of these nuisances to the site's ownership. Thanks for your assessment as well, Rachel, and pointing out that Substack can help build an email list but Medium won't.
➡️ 📝 RE: "engaged" subscribers / followers. Some of my (ahem) "followers" also follow more than 900 Substacks. Those people cannot possibly be reading my content. I assume they are just doing it for a follow-back (um, sorry to disappoint you, Substack gamblers). 😉
Literally was just staring at settings and contemplating starting a Medium. Soon as I decided not to, I got the notification. First comment. Score! Just proves how relevant and important this post is.