Beehiiv adds subscriber chat and AI Copilot

Beehiiv is widening its pitch beyond email publishing with a new Community feature that lets a creator’s subscribers talk to each other inside the platform, alongside a new AI Copilot aimed at audience growth and newsletter operations.

The move builds on a broader expansion over the past few months, as Beehiiv has added podcasts, webinars, and customizable paywalls. According to the company, some of that push is already working: 50% of podcast users migrated their shows from other platforms.

Community is effectively Beehiiv’s answer to the off-platform groups many creators run today on Discord, Slack, or Facebook. Creators can set up discussion forums directly within Beehiiv, create paid membership tiers for access to specific chatrooms, and moderate conversations themselves.

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“People following your content have a shared interest in what you’re creating, but they can’t communicate with each other. Whether that interest is in sports, the World Cup, or politics, being able to have a community where your audience can actually engage with one another is super valuable.”

Beehiiv is also adding programmatic ads, giving publishers another way to make money from newsletters by choosing ad slots that could deliver the strongest returns based on their audience, content, and performance. The company already offers metered paywalls, paid trials, and a sponsorship storefront for selling ad inventory in packages. Beehiiv said publishers on its platform already earn more than $1 million per month through its ad network.

On the AI side, the new Copilot assistant is designed to understand a publication’s content, audience, subscribers, and performance and then suggest ways to manage the newsletter and grow it. Beehiiv says it can analyze newsletter and podcast performance, draft outreach campaigns, and surface new revenue opportunities.

The company has been building out AI features for a while. Earlier this year, it launched a model context protocol (MCP) server, letting users connect Beehiiv to assistants such as ChatGPT and Claude for questions and insights. It is also working on AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) to help newsletters appear more often in AI assistant responses.

Beehiiv is shipping a redesigned editor too, with editing and preview modes side by side so creators can see how posts will look while writing. Denk told TechCrunch the company plans to spend the coming quarter educating users on these tools and showing how top newsletters are using them to grow.

That comes as competition is tightening. Riverside launched a newsletter publishing feature last month, while Substack rolled out a built-in recording studio product in March.