The short answer
Just above 41% average opens on beehiiv in 2025 — roughly in line with email overall. beehiiv's State of Newsletters report, covering 28 billion emails sent through the platform in 2025, puts average open rates above 41%. That's the honest surprise: it sits in the same band as general email marketing (MailerLite's all-industry median was 43.46% for 2025). The "creator newsletters get double the opens of business email" claim you see in guru threads isn't supported by the platform data — and every open-rate figure, newsletter or not, is inflated by Apple Mail Privacy Protection.
Benchmarks at a glance
| Metric | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Newsletter average (beehiiv) | 41%+ | 28B emails sent in 2025, all niches |
| General email average (MailerLite) | 43.46% | 3.6M campaigns, 2025 — for comparison |
| General email click rate | 2.09% | MailerLite, 2025 — opens minus MPP noise |
| Median time to first revenue | 66 days | New beehiiv newsletters launched in 2025 |
We haven't found trustworthy public open-rate breakdowns by newsletter niche — platforms publish network-wide averages, not audited per-niche tables. If you see a precise niche-by-niche table without a named dataset behind it, be suspicious.
Do creator newsletters really beat general email?
Less than the mythology says. A curated newsletter audience is pre-qualified — subscribers followed you on social first, read your content publicly, and chose to hear more. That shows up in loyalty, reply behavior, and monetization more than in the open-rate column, where MPP auto-opens flatten everyone toward similar reported numbers.
General business email sends to people who signed up for a lead magnet six months ago and don't remember doing it. Different list quality — but on reported opens, the platform-wide averages are closer than you'd expect. Judge your newsletter on clicks, replies, and retention instead.
Apple MPP still applies
Like all email, creator newsletter open rates are inflated by Apple Mail Privacy Protection, which automatically marks mail delivered to Apple Mail as opened. How much your reported rate is inflated depends on how much of your list reads in Apple Mail — treat opens as directional and lean on clicks and replies for truth.
What drives creator newsletter engagement
- Consistency. Newsletters published on a predictable schedule (weekly Tuesday 8 AM, for example) get dramatically better engagement than irregular sends. Readers train themselves to expect you.
- Personality over polish. Creator newsletters that sound like a letter from a friend consistently out-engage polished corporate newsletters. Keep your writer voice intact.
- First paragraph hook. Apple Mail and Gmail both show preview text + first sentence. Your hook has to earn the tap from the inbox.
- Clear single takeaway. Each newsletter should have one thing the reader remembers. Newsletters that try to cover everything get remembered for nothing.
- Discoverable archive. Newsletters with public archives (Substack defaults to this) get ongoing organic traffic that ESPs don't.
Substack vs traditional ESP
Substack's recommendation system brings in pre-engaged subscribers, its native app keeps readers inside a dedicated reading environment, and paid subscribers tend to be more engaged than free ones. Those are real structural advantages — but we haven't found a credible published head-to-head study of Substack vs ESP open rates for the same audience, so ignore anyone quoting a precise gap.
The tradeoff: Substack owns the relationship and takes a cut of paid revenue. ConvertKit/beehiiv give you full ownership but lower native discoverability. Most serious creators end up running both — Substack for discovery, ESP for transactional and long-term list ownership.
How Heist helps with newsletter content
Heist's Brain (Founder tier) generates newsletter drafts in your writer voice, keeps your newsletter voice consistent with your social presence, and optimizes subject lines using the same frameworks our subject line tester uses. It also keeps the "voice of the newsletter" tied to the same Brain that powers your social content — so readers who find you on social and subscribe to the newsletter feel like they're reading the same person.