Over two years earlier, I was reading one of my favored e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantly began wrecking Simplified AI Beehiiv.
I had not been certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time designer is tough. I’m typically getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last six months trying different e-mail and newsletter systems to help construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent choices for writing e-newsletters. But I could not find one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The concern with several existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my newsletter designs, makes it incredibly very easy to write and send out e-mails, and provides me devices that assist me evaluate metrics and get more customers.
I assume I’ve ultimately discovered the ideal device.
However, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it very easy to style, create, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the well-known newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly choose it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a modern-day newsletter platform for rather a long time now. I’ve postponed hard when it involved finally launching my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make certain several newsletter developers appreciate preferred e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have wonderful content, lots of clients, and a clever referral program that allows them to get even a lot more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to determine exactly how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they create an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device actually comprehend newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the very first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Since, any type of designer understands, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the ideal e-newsletter pile (that ranges) often suggests using numerous different devices to assist attain one goal– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up references. It can get pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was complimentary to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that wants a system that allows them to send custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or material creator, you need to seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to begin and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you actually wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indication that people like reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is an excellent platform utilized by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your own internet site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also gives you a web site similar to Substack. However, if you have your own site already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your site clients directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow individuals to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to utilize various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack choice.
How to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software application.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, external embed types, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply starting (or for those looking for a new system to move to).
Onboarding Simplified AI Beehiiv
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll then produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand name design and colors to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin creating,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the very lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Start writing is where you produce and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and break them down right into sectors), Grow is where you have access to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with ads, Design is where you create your newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you wish to blog about, I recommend just going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Start creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and user-friendly interface for writing.
When you start writing, you can maximize headings, include links, and style your web content just how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of options for different types of content like video clips, links, images, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is also frequently launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a great deal a lot more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to create your email template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, picture layouts, and extra. I’m not going to go through ever solitary point you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Just experiment with the platform completely free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it a wonderful posting system for any e-newsletter designer.
Below are several of the necessary features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it super simple to write and send e-mails. I mentioned over several of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) reside on a website. Think of it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, give you a web site. However, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a customized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is essential. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and want individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different alternatives– a complete size, a fixed width, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to forward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
However, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the team is servicing updates for these, but I stated a few issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your list to ahead your emails to close friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to register for your list, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever type you want. I’ve seem lots of newsletter firms give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional method for growing your e-mail list.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this article.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration revenue is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be really profitable relying on what your e-newsletter has to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that creates millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the things I like regarding beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count Simplified AI Beehiiv.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you whatever you need to get going and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the very same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit choice for numerous users.
I’m not sure just how the device business economics work with this, yet beehiiv is definitely cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are a few of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to establish and begin sending e-newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and modern customer analytics.
Lots of adaptability with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce costs options to monetize.
Polls.
To be honest, I haven’t seen another newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
However naturally, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are several of the cons I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my web site structure system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive detail why I like Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow review if you want to find out more.
Today, there really is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not like utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to reduce my site a little bit. Each time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s very noticeable when you get on a sluggish internet link. However I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t use a routine Webflow form (which I like using). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply add additional prices that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I assumed I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the cons right here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will eventually develop a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful service for any person seeking to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system much exceeds several that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively cheap of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose testimonial posts frequently. I just do when I actually use the tool myself and would advise it to a good friend.
I hope you discovered some quality on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.