Boosts are now paid recommendations
beehiiv merged Boosts into its recommendations system. Free and paid recommendations now sit together under Grow, Recommendations. The help center says CPA offers, verification, the Wallet, auto-accept, auto-pause and geolocation targeting did not change. What did change: email boosts and direct links can no longer be created, and auto-clean was removed in favor of verification tags.
If you read an older guide that describes Boosts, map the names using the table below. The subscriber attribution label in your dashboards also changed from boost to recommendations terminology, so older exports and newer reports will use different labels for the same channel.
| Old name | Current name |
|---|---|
| Boosts | Paid recommendations |
| Grow Boosts | Incoming recommendations |
| Monetize Boosts | Outgoing recommendations |
| Boosts Marketplace | Recommendations Marketplace |
| Auto-clean | Removed; replaced by verification tags |
Buying subscribers: incoming recommendations
You create one paid offer and set the CPA, the amount you pay for each verified subscriber a recommending publisher delivers. Each publication can have only one live paid offer at a time. Funds sit in your beehiiv Wallet; the minimum deposit is $20, and funds are consumed when an approved partner refers a subscriber who completes verification. If the balance gets too low, the offer pauses and disappears from the Marketplace. Auto-deposit can top it up when the balance drops below a threshold you set.
You can auto-approve publishers that match your conditions or review each application and accept or reject it. Eligible-country settings limit which subscribers you pay for by location. The feature is on paid plans only, and only a workspace Admin or Owner can manage it.
Earning per subscriber: outgoing recommendations
To earn, you must complete Stripe Identity verification and link a bank account. You apply to offers in the Marketplace. Offers set to auto-accept go live immediately; others are reviewed by the publication that created them. Earnings are managed in your beehiiv Wallet, and the overview shows how many subscribers you sent are still in verification.
beehiiv's incoming recommendations article says the price shown to recommending publications is 20 percent lower than the buyer's CPA. The outgoing recommendations article does not publish a payout schedule, so check your Wallet terms before counting the money. Every paid recommendation you run competes for the same reader attention as a free recommendation you might prefer.
Worked example: what a subscriber really costs
Assumptions, labeled as ours: you are a buyer with a $500 budget and a $2.50 CPA (beehiiv's own example rate). We assume three different shares of verified subscribers who go on to open your issues regularly: 20, 40 and 60 percent. These engagement shares are illustrations, not beehiiv data. Replace them with your own figures after the first month.
At $2.50 per verified subscriber, $500 buys up to 200 subscribers, and the recommenders receive $2.00 each, or $400 in total. The effective cost per engaged subscriber is the CPA divided by the engaged share. If you are on Free and upgrade to Lite only to buy growth, add the $49 monthly plan equivalent: in a month where you buy 200 subscribers, that adds about $0.25 per subscriber.
| Assumed engaged share | Verified subscribers from $500 | Engaged subscribers | Cost per engaged subscriber |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20% | 200 | 40 | $12.50 |
| 40% | 200 | 80 | $6.25 |
| 60% | 200 | 120 | $4.17 |
Quality controls beehiiv describes
Every subscriber from a paid recommendation gets one of three tags: 'Rec: Pending Verification', 'Rec: Verified' or 'Rec: Failed Verification'. beehiiv says you can filter by these tags in Segments and use them to trigger Automations. The help articles do not describe the verification checks in detail, so measure quality yourself rather than relying on the verified label alone.
- Build a segment of 'Rec: Failed Verification' subscribers and decide whether to keep emailing them.
- Compare 30-day open and click rates of 'Rec: Verified' subscribers with your organic signups.
- Use manual approval at first and accept only publications whose topic matches yours.
- Set eligible countries to the regions your content and sponsors serve.
- Pause the offer if the engaged share falls below the level your break-even calculation needs.
- As a seller, recommend only newsletters you would read; a weak recommendation reflects on your publication.
Who should use paid recommendations, and who should skip
Buying makes sense when you already monetize each engaged reader, through a paid tier, sponsorships or product sales, at more than the effective cost per engaged subscriber you measured. Selling makes sense when your signup flow has room for a relevant recommendation and the per-subscriber rate justifies sending readers elsewhere.
Skip buying if you have no monetization yet: you would be paying for growth you cannot recover. Skip selling if your audience is small and trust-sensitive, since a poor recommendation costs more goodwill than a few dollars earns. If you are on Free, free recommendations remain available on all plans and are the zero-cost way to test whether recommendation swaps bring engaged readers.
Questions before you decide
Do beehiiv Boosts still exist?
Under a new name. beehiiv's help center says Boosts became paid recommendations, Grow Boosts became incoming recommendations and Monetize Boosts became outgoing recommendations. New email boosts and new direct links can no longer be created.
Do I pay for subscribers who fail verification?
No. beehiiv says you are only charged for subscribers who pass verification. Those who fail now stay on your list with a 'Rec: Failed Verification' tag instead of being silently removed.
How much does beehiiv keep?
beehiiv's incoming recommendations article says the final price is 20 percent lower for the publications browsing your offer, a fee it says covers operational and Stripe costs. In its example, you pay $2.50 per subscriber and the recommending publication is paid $2.
Sources & verification
Product details and prices can change. Check the linked provider before buying.
- beehiiv: Boosts to paid recommendations, what changed Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- beehiiv: Growing your audience with paid incoming recommendations Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- beehiiv: Monetizing your newsletter with paid outgoing recommendations Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- beehiiv pricing Accessed 29 Oct 2026
Sources link directly to providers. Product buttons may use separately labeled affiliate links. Read our disclosure.