Dave Infante moved Fingers from Substack to Beehiiv in mid-December 2024. A Beehiiv engineer sat with him through the cutover. He says the process took about 90 minutes.
Most of a four-year archive came across. Most of about 7,000 subscribers came across too. All of the roughly 600 paid names moved. More than 2,000 free addresses did not.
In February 2025 he put the notes in one place for other publishers who asked.
If you are looking at the same route, start with the Substack → Beehiiv playbook. Dave’s post is the field report. The playbook is the longer checklist.
Why he left
He already wanted out before the Nazi controversy. He did not like Substack’s right-wing venture backers. He did not like the “marketplace of ideas” line the company used instead of platform moderation. He also thought it cost too much.
Substack takes 10% of gross revenue. Beehiiv charged him a flat annual fee. He put the Beehiiv bill at about $1,000 a year, against about $4,000 on Substack.
He said Substack’s tools are very good after four years of daily use. He also said they are not that good.
In late April 2024, Substack changed something in its recommendation engine. Through the end of June he saw about 1,000 new sign-ups. Almost none of them opened an email or used the site. A manual pass found about 200 obvious bot addresses.
Open rates had sat between 46% and 50% for years, even as the list grew. After April they slipped. Trailing 24 months sat at 46%. Trailing 12 months at 45%. Trailing 3 months at 39%. Trailing 1 month at 36%.
He already suspected the quality of Substack recommendation sign-ups. The open-rate drop confirmed it.
He also pointed at the late-2023 fight over Substack monetizing neo-Nazi publications. He sent readers to Ryan Broderick’s Garbage Day note as a primer.
He wrote that he did not trust Fingers’ future on Substack. So he moved.
How he moved
Beehiiv staff walked him through the cutover. The public post does not list every click.
The official importer is a few separate jobs. Free posts come from the publication URL. Paid posts need a Substack export zip. Free subscribers come in as a CSV. Paid subscribers are copied through Stripe, then recreated on a Beehiiv-connected Stripe account. After that you pause Substack billing, or readers get charged twice.
Dave described the paid side more simply. Substack sits on Stripe, so paid subscriptions should have transferred as-is. He told readers they could log in with the email that already received the boozeletter.
He moved every paid subscriber. Of about 6,500 free sign-ups, he and Beehiiv found more than 2,000 that had never paid, had arrived through Substack recommendations, and had not opened an email in six months. Those stayed behind.
The playbook already says to keep inactive and unproven contacts out of the active import. Dave used that three-part filter to do it.
What he gained
He wanted more customization and tools Substack did not have. He wanted a cheaper operating bill.
fingers.email is on Beehiiv today. The post about the move lives there.
He told readers the switch should change nothing for them. Free and paid mail would keep arriving. He expected the change on his side: more margin, and tools he did not have on Substack.
What he left behind
Comments stayed on Substack. He called that the biggest genuine loss. Beehiiv’s docs match him. Comments do not migrate.
Some image galleries broke. He called that cosmetic. Beehiiv lists photo galleries as unsupported. Video posts, podcast-type posts, and category structures stay behind too. Code blocks flatten to plain text.
Paywall placement does not travel. Imported paid posts start fully gated. You add a Paywall block by hand if you want a preview.
He left those 2,000-plus silent free addresses on purpose after watching open rates fall under that load.
What I would copy
Do not import the whole free list. Start with Dave’s cut: never paid, arrived through recommendations, no open in six months. Beehiiv also tells you to keep Substack activity-rating 0 out of the first two to four weeks of sends.
Move every paid subscriber, then pause Substack billing. The current Beehiiv docs are explicit about that pause. Skip it and Stripe can charge people twice.
Tell readers how to log in before you cut over. He used the email they already received.
Assume comments and galleries stay behind. Keep the Substack site up if you still want those threads. Rebuild galleries by hand.
The 90-minute cutover is what he got with a Beehiiv engineer in the room. If you are doing this without that help, run the Substack → Beehiiv playbook. Inventory, a pilot import, and a billing check still belong in the week, even if the importer itself is fast.