Data Hive: The story of beehiiv’s journey from Postgres to ClickHouse

Beehiiv, a newsletter platform founded by three Morning Brew engineers, has transitioned its data operations from Postgres to ClickHouse Cloud, resulting in significant improvements in efficiency, scalability, and overall system reliability. The move was driven by the need for a more scalable solution as the platform grew, with occasional performance issues and increasing engineering resources required for managing data demands on Postgres. ClickHouse emerged as the ideal choice due to its unmatched performance as an OLAP database, excelling at handling billions of rows with lightning-fast query speeds. The new architecture is built around a distributed, microservices-based approach focused on scalability and efficiency, leveraging Kafka for data flow management in real-time. The transition has brought benefits across the organization, allowing engineers to focus on feature development rather than managing scalability issues, while business leaders and product managers now have direct access to raw data for generating their own metrics without depending on engineers. The shift has also laid the groundwork for future machine learning initiatives such as fraud detection, spam filtering, and ad network optimization. With ClickHouse at its core, beehiiv is well-positioned to lead in the newsletter industry, providing creators with advanced analytics capabilities and empowering them to build and monetize their email audiences effectively.