Connecting Any Newsletter Platform

HeyNews can learn your writing voice from newsletters on any platform, not just beehiiv or Kit. Paste your public archive URL and HeyNews imports your past issues, learns your style, and starts generating content that sounds like you. No API key or login needed.

Which platforms does this work with?

Any newsletter platform that publishes a public archive, including:

  • Substack
  • Ghost
  • Mailchimp (public archive pages)
  • Medium
  • Campaign Monitor
  • ConvertKit (public broadcast pages)
  • Any custom-hosted newsletter site

Connecting your archive

  1. Go to Settings in the sidebar
  2. Open the Connections tab
  3. Scroll to Other Newsletter Platforms
  4. Click Connect Newsletter Archive
  5. Paste your newsletter archive URL or RSS feed URL (e.g., yourname.substack.com or yourblog.ghost.io)
  6. Click Check URL and wait a moment while HeyNews locates your issues
  7. If found, you'll see a preview: the newsletter name and how many issues were found
  8. Optionally enter a label so you can identify this connection later (e.g., "My Mailchimp Newsletter")
  9. Click Connect Newsletter

HeyNews will import up to 50 of your most recent issues automatically.

If your current publication already has a connected newsletter, HeyNews creates a new publication automatically for this archive so every newsletter connection stays separate.

What HeyNews does with your archive

Once connected, HeyNews:

  1. Imports your past issues and extracts the content
  2. Feeds those issues into your AI Writer so it can learn your voice
  3. Checks for new issues every hour and imports them automatically

Your archive connection shows up on the Connections page with the number of issues imported and when HeyNews last synced.

How HeyNews finds your content

HeyNews tries four methods, in this order:

  1. RSS feed: For Substack, Ghost, and most blog platforms, HeyNews finds the RSS feed directly. If you paste an archive page URL instead of the feed, it scans the page source for a feed link.
  2. Sitemap: If no feed is found, HeyNews checks the site's XML sitemap to pull out individual post URLs.
  3. Page map: If both RSS and sitemap fail, HeyNews maps links on the archive page to locate issues.
  4. Direct page scrape: For archives that load content dynamically (including some beehiiv public archives), HeyNews scrapes the archive page directly to find issue links.

If you pasted a sub-page URL like yoursite.com/archive and all four stages fail, HeyNews retries against the host root (yoursite.com) before giving up. This keeps subdomains intact, so yoursite.substack.com/archive retries as yoursite.substack.com, not substack.com.

Still can't find issues?

If auto-discovery fails on every stage, HeyNews offers a manual connection option. This connects your archive with zero imported issues and starts watching for new content going forward. HeyNews starts learning your voice as soon as it picks up its first few issues.

The RSS path works for the vast majority of platforms. The later stages are there as fallbacks for less cooperative archives.

What's not supported

  • Private or paywalled archives: HeyNews can only read content that's publicly visible without logging in.
  • Adaptive Optimization: this requires open rate and click data, which public archives don't provide. Adaptive Optimization is only available with a beehiiv or Kit connection.

Removing a connection

  1. Go to Settings > Connections
  2. Find the newsletter archive connection
  3. Click Remove

Removing the connection stops future syncs. The issues already imported and used for your voice profile remain in your account.

Troubleshooting

"We couldn't find newsletter issues at that URL"

Try pasting a more specific URL, such as your RSS feed URL directly (e.g., yourname.substack.com/feed or yourblog.ghost.io/rss). Some archives don't expose a standard feed link on their homepage. If discovery still fails, use the manual connection option to connect with zero issues and have HeyNews watch for new ones.

Issues imported but writing style doesn't seem right

Voice matching improves with more examples. If fewer than 10 issues were imported, try adding more issues by connecting a different URL or checking whether your archive has more publicly visible content.

New issues aren't showing up

HeyNews syncs every hour. If a new issue isn't showing, check the connection card on the Connections page for a "last sync" timestamp. If the last sync shows an error, try removing and re-adding the connection.