Two newsletter suppliers against a manual baseline on one paid-access case

What to take away

Ghost(Pro) Publisher or beehiiv Scale: the conditional pick

Take beehiiv Scale if one or two people run the newsletter and you want paid subscriptions, referral rewards, Boosts and the Ad Network without building them. Take Ghost(Pro) Publisher if the newsletter is one part of a site you own, with memberships, archive and export under your own domain.

Stay on the manual baseline only below roughly 100 payers, where your sending tool already handles tags and Stripe links. The comparison case notes describe the England case and the evidence fields used here.

What each plan covers on the paid-access job

Ghost's pricing page places newsletters and paid subscriptions in the Publisher plan; beehiiv's support pages define Scale and price it by active-subscriber tier. Neither statement describes configured behaviour, which is why the test below matters.

Ghost's security record puts Ghost(Pro) servers in Amsterdam, so UK transfer terms need their own assessment. The ICO's GDPR guidance is where that assessment starts, and lawful basis stays with you either way.

Example: a twelve-month GBP cost at 500 payers

Assume 500 paying subscribers at GBP 5 a month, one card charge each, VAT excluded, at a conversion rate recorded on 6 September 2026. Stripe's published UK card rate is 1.5 per cent plus 20p.

On GBP 2,500 of monthly receipts, 1.5 per cent is GBP 37.50 and 500 charges at 20p add GBP 100.00. That is GBP 137.50 a month, or GBP 1,650 a year, on either platform.

Figures below are illustrative, dated 6 September 2026, in pounds and excluding VAT.

Convert at the rate printed on the invoice, keep one period and one VAT treatment, and never compare a monthly list price with an annual total.

Paid access behaves like any subscription business model: churn compounds and a refund is more than a reversed payment. The manual baseline note costs the no-purchase option on the same basis.

The synthetic test that settles the decision

Run the same nine cases on both suppliers and on the manual baseline:

Illustrative result: a refund on the manual baseline left paid access open for eleven days because a person cleared the tag by hand. Both platforms can clear it from a payment webhook, but only when subscription state and the access rule share one event.

The distance selling guidance on GOV.UK sets out the cancellation information an England paid offer must give before checkout.

What to check before you commit

Keep a running full-cost record so the total carries VAT, uncertainty and an exit figure, not the licence alone.

Common questions

Which supplier should I pick for a paid newsletter in England?

beehiiv Scale where paid access is the product and referral and advertising tools should work from day one. Ghost(Pro) Publisher where the newsletter belongs to a site you control.

Which is cheaper over twelve months?

On the illustrative figures above, Ghost(Pro) Publisher lands near GBP 5,990 and beehiiv Scale near GBP 6,930, against GBP 13,650 for the manual baseline.

Do both support Stripe paid access and subscriber export?

Yes. Ghost documents JSON and CSV exports, and beehiiv documents post and subscriber CSV exports. Neither page proves that suppression and accounting links survive a move, so rehearse the restore.

What must I test before committing?

The nine cases above, run identically on both suppliers. Hold the decision while any privacy, consent, consumer, accessibility, security or contract gate is unresolved.