Beehiiv added five new features to its Community product.
Updates include member directories, custom profiles, email notifications, mobile access, and Community Managers.
The update gives writers using Beehiiv more tools to build and manage communities around their newsletters.
Beehiiv wants publishers to build more than an email list.
The newsletter platform rolled out five new features for its Community product Thursday, adding custom profile fields, a member directory, email notifications, a mobile-first experience, and a new Community Manager role.
The update comes two months after Beehiiv launched Community in July, giving newsletter publishers a way to host conversations between readers alongside their newsletters. Community is currently available on Beehiiv's paid plans.
For writers building businesses around their audiences, the release is another sign of Beehiiv's broader ambitions as a publishing platform.
The Story
The new custom profile fields allow publishers to collect additional information when someone joins their community, including where they work and what they hope to get from the community.
That information becomes part of the subscriber record, allowing publishers to use it to create segments and automations elsewhere on Beehiiv.
Publishers can also turn on a member directory that allows members to find one another based on information including location, company, role, and custom profile fields. Members can opt out of appearing in the directory.
Beehiiv also added email notifications for direct messages, comments, replies, follows, and badges, while a new mobile experience lets members install a community on their phone without going through an app store. Beehiiv says members who install a community app have 2.5 times the engagement rate, based on its own data.
Finally, the new Community Manager role allows publishers to hand off day-to-day management without providing full administrative access. Community Managers can manage channels, members, moderators, and reported content.
The FWC Take
The individual features are useful, but the larger development is Beehiiv's continued expansion of what publishers can run from its platform.
Beehiiv has already moved into areas including podcasts, digital products, paid subscriptions, recommendations, and community. The company says more than 60,000 active creators and publishers use its platform.
Community adds another piece to that ecosystem. Publishers can build an audience, communicate with it, monetize it, collect more information about members, and give those members a place to interact.
The speed of development is also worth watching. Community launched in July, and Beehiiv is already adding tools around member discovery, engagement, data, and management.
What It Means for Writers
For writers building an audience, Community creates another potential business model around their work.
A writer could use a newsletter to attract readers, paid subscriptions to generate recurring revenue, and a community to provide additional value to members. It could be particularly useful for writers building around a specific profession, industry, or interest.
There's still an important question Beehiiv has to answer: Will people actively use these communities?
Features make communities easier to operate, but their value ultimately depends on members showing up and participating.
For writers considering building a paid audience of their own, that's the part worth watching.