Open source alternatives to beehiiv

By GitHub stars it is Ghost, with 55,810 stars and a commit on 13 Nov. Choose Ghost when you want your newsletter and paid memberships on MIT-licensed software you can host yourself, with no platform payment fees. Next come listmonk (24,288 stars) and Keila (2,266 stars).

Yes. The code of all 5 is public under MIT, AGPL 3.0 or AGPL 3.0 or later, so you can use them with no licence fee. Running one yourself costs the server and your time to look after it, and some makers also sell a hosted plan.

Start from the job you use beehiiv for. Choose Hyvor Post when you want a simple newsletter with an archive site and no open or click tracking of your readers. Choose Keila when you want a newsletter tool hosted in the EU that lets you switch reader tracking off completely.

4 of the 5: Ghost, listmonk, Keila and MailCheap. Each tool's page says what it needs to run.

All 5 we track had a commit in the last 30 days, among them Ghost, listmonk, Keila and MailCheap. A recent commit shows the project is kept up, not that it will stay that way.

AGPL 3.0 (3), MIT (1), AGPL 3.0 or later (1). MIT, BSD and Apache let you change and reuse the code freely. GPL and AGPL ask you to share your changes under the same licence when you give the software to others, and AGPL also counts letting people use it over a network.

The hosting. beehiiv's maker runs the servers for you; with an open source tool the updates, backups, security fixes and support are yours, unless you take the maker's hosted plan. Features differ too, so check what each one imports and exports before you move your data.