Beacons Alternative: Heartbeat vs. Beacons

Intro

Beacons is a creator’s home base. One account gives you a link in bio, a website, a store for digital products, a media kit for brand deals, affiliate links, email marketing, and Smart Reply, which sends an Instagram DM when someone comments a keyword. It starts free, and for a creator whose income comes from brand deals and the odd product, it covers a lot for very little.

Heartbeat is built around something different: members who talk to each other. A paid community is a room, not a storefront. Members meet in channels and live rooms, take courses together and show up to events, and they stay for the people they’ve met as much as for what you sell them.

Plenty of creators start with a Beacons store and find their audience wants more than a download link. They want to ask questions, meet each other, and come back every week. That’s when the gaps show: Beacons has no community at all, memberships start on the $30 Creator Plus plan and deliver up to six files, and the Free and $10 plans include one course with no video hosting.

Beacons costs less, and it does more for an audience that lives on Instagram and TikTok. The question is what happens when that audience wants somewhere to be together.

Where Heartbeat wins

Community

Beacons doesn’t have one. Its product list is a link in bio, websites, a store, email marketing, a media kit, Instagram DM automation and affiliate links, and its full plan comparison lists no channels, member chat, forum, events or member directory. A fan who buys from your Beacons store gets a success screen and an email with a download link that works for seven days. After that, there is nowhere on Beacons for them to go, and nowhere for them to meet the other people who bought.

On Heartbeat, the community is the product. Everything below is on all tiers, including the 14-day free trial, which you can start today with no credit card.

Your Beacons page and your Heartbeat community can work together. Keep the link in bio, put your community’s signup link on it, and the people who tap through land somewhere they can stay.

Automated groups re-evaluate themselves every hour against filters you set: post count, last login, location, events attended, reactions received. A member entering or leaving a group can trigger a workflow, so you can catch someone going quiet in their first month and reach out before they cancel.

Match-ups pair members for introductions on a schedule you choose. It’s the cheapest engagement mechanic there is, and it runs without you.

Courses

Beacons sells multi-module courses as a product in your store. On the Free and $10 Creator plans you get one course, with no video hosting, so videos live on YouTube or Vimeo as unlisted links. Creator Plus ($30/mo) and Max ($100/mo) include unlimited courses with video hosting.

“Not listed” means Beacons doesn’t mention the feature on its pricing page or in its help center. In Heartbeat, every cohort is its own instance of the course with its own modules, lessons, assignments, pricing and settings. When cohort 4 opens, cohort 3 stays live and intact. Public assignments post to a discussion channel, so members learn from each other’s work.

Heartbeat’s video hosting is a $19/month add-on on Build. Every plan includes three native video uploads, and you can embed YouTube or Vimeo anywhere.

Memberships

Beacons memberships are a store product with recurring billing: weekly, monthly or yearly. They’re a Creator Plus feature, each membership holds up to six documents or files, and once someone buys, the price and billing frequency can’t be changed. Members who pay by PayPal need you to have a PayPal Business account.

When you change a tier’s price on Heartbeat, you choose whether existing members keep the price they joined at or move to the new one. New signups always see the new price. The membership pricing calculator covers how to raise a price without losing members.

Events

Beacons sells one-on-one Appointments that sync with Google Calendar, and it can embed tour dates from Bandsintown and Seated. It doesn’t host group events, RSVPs or live rooms.

Tiered ticket pricing is the row worth stopping on. Members pay $10, non-members pay $25, your top tier pays nothing, all for the same event, priced by which group someone is in. That turns an event into a way to find new members instead of a perk for the ones you have.

AI

Beacons puts AI at the center of its pitch. Its assistant, Beam, works on the creator side of the business. You can chat with Beam about your content, audience, analytics or brand deal strategy, have it write outreach emails to brands, or turn a promotion link into an email to your list. It runs on daily credits: 30 a day on Free, 300 on Creator and unlimited from Creator Plus, with each chat exchange costing 3 credits.

Pulse is built into Heartbeat, and it can build, update and monitor every part of your community. Drop in a workshop transcript and Pulse builds the course. Ask it for a paid offer, a landing page, an automated group or an onboarding flow, and it builds those too. It’s on every plan, including the $49/month Build tier and the free trial, and nothing it does is metered.

The two do different jobs. Beam helps you grow and sell to an audience; Pulse builds the place where that audience becomes a community.

Where Beacons wins

It costs less. Beacons is free to start and $10 a month for a custom domain. From $30 a month, Beacons takes no fee on what you sell.

It’s your link in bio. Beacons gives you the page your social profiles point to, plus a website. Heartbeat is where a community lives, not the page that links to everything you do.

Brand deal tools. A media kit that updates itself daily, brand collaboration tools, and affiliate links to thousands of brands. Heartbeat has none of these.

Instagram automation. Smart Reply sends DMs when someone comments a keyword on a reel, post or story, follows up, and collects emails, on every plan.

Email marketing is built in. Every plan includes email sends to your list (50 a month free, 500 on Creator, unlimited from Creator Plus), signup forms and automated sequences.

Full feature comparison

Which should you choose?

Choose Beacons if you need one link that holds everything: your socials, your brand deals, a few products and an email list. Most of your income comes from sponsorships and affiliate links, you sell downloads rather than access, and your followers don’t need to talk to each other.

Choose Heartbeat if your audience wants a place to meet. Your comments are full of people answering each other, you keep getting asked for a group chat, or you want people paying every month because the people are there. You want to teach courses with lessons and cohorts, run events with tickets priced by tier, and have members who show up every week. You’d rather describe what you want and have Pulse build it than assemble it from integrations. You want to try all of it free with zero commitment.

Frequently asked questions

Can you migrate from Beacons to Heartbeat?

Yes. Beacons pays you through your own Stripe or PayPal account. If your members pay through Stripe, ask Heartbeat’s team about importing the subscriptions so members keep their renewal dates. Members who pay by PayPal re-subscribe: build your Heartbeat community, then email them a signup link, with a promo code if you want to cover the overlap, and cancel their Beacons memberships from your Sales page. You can export your audience from Beacons to invite everyone else. Heartbeat’s team helps with the move on every plan, and the Scale plan adds a dedicated onboarding rep who runs the migration for you.

How much does Beacons take from creators?

Beacons takes 9% of each sale on its Free plan and its $10/month Creator plan. Creator Plus ($30/month, or $300/year) and Creator Max ($100/month, or $900/year) take 0%. Card processing is on top: 2.9% + $0.30 through Stripe, or 3.49% plus a fixed fee through PayPal. Heartbeat’s fee is 5% on Build, 2.5% on Grow and 1.25% on Scale, plus Stripe’s processing.

Does Beacons have a community feature?

No. Beacons has a link in bio, website, store, email marketing, media kit, Instagram DM automation and affiliate links, but no channels, member chat, forum, events or member directory. Heartbeat includes discussion channels, chat, member-to-member direct messages, a member directory, and voice and video rooms for up to 256 people on every plan, starting at $49 a month with a 14-day free trial.

Does Beacons have courses?

Yes. Beacons sells multi-module courses from your store. The Free and $10 Creator plans include one course with no video hosting; Creator Plus and Max include unlimited courses with video hosting. Heartbeat includes evergreen, drip and cohort courses on every plan, with quizzes and assignments, and Pulse can build a course from a transcript or a file you already have.

Can I use Beacons and Heartbeat together?

Yes, and plenty of creators should. Keep Beacons as your link in bio and media kit, and put your Heartbeat community’s signup link on it. Your followers find you on Beacons, and your members meet each other on Heartbeat.