Over 2 years back, I read one of my favored email 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 quickly started wrecking The Rabbit Hole Beehiiv.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched various devices and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I invested the last 6 months trying different email and newsletter platforms to help develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great choices for composing newsletters. However I could not discover one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it super simple to create and send out emails, and offers me devices that help me assess metrics and get more clients.
I think I have actually lastly located the best device.
But, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to style, compose, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the popular e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m going to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally go with it as my newsletter system of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter platform for quite a long time now. I have actually postponed hard when it involved finally launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure many e-newsletter designers look up to preferred newsletters with millions of subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have great web content, lots of clients, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I went on a search to determine just how these huge newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device really understand e-newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Due to the fact that, any creator understands, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the appropriate newsletter stack (that ranges) usually indicates using multiple various tools to help accomplish one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that wants a platform that enables them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, startup, or material designer, you ought to seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s totally free to get going and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you really end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indicator that individuals love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic system used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own internet site and utilize the system as your all-in-one option for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv also provides you a web site similar to Substack. But, if you have your own web site currently, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your site customers straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow individuals to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to leverage different marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
Exactly how to begin using beehiiv email marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you accessibility to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, external embed types, and a lot more. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply beginning (or for those searching for a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding The Rabbit Hole Beehiiv
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and much more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand name design and colors to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin creating,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot over), Beginning composing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your customers are (and damage them down into sectors), Grow is where you have accessibility 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, Style is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you wish to discuss, I advise just going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Start composing”.
You can modify your template and designing later– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and easy to use user interface for creating.
Once you begin composing, you can enhance headings, add links, and design your material how you like.
beehiiv offers you lots of options for different types of web content like videos, web links, images, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise frequently launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a great deal a lot more material features relying on when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your email template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a description, add your logo, activate or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image styles, and more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the system absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a great posting platform for any kind of e-newsletter designer.
Here are some of the essential features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it very simple to compose and send e-mails. I mentioned over a few of the important things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the far better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) live on a site. Think of it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a place where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, give you an internet site. However, the free plan areas your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is very important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv web site or through embed forms.
If you already have an internet site, and want individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed type. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 various options– a complete size, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution tracking if you want to onward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is dealing with updates for these, yet I stated a few worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your listing to forward your emails to close friends and associates and if they get other people to register for your list, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I’ve seem lots of e-newsletter business give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you another avenue for expanding your e-mail listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this short article.
Costs memberships
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration revenue is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be really lucrative relying on what your newsletter needs to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that produces millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of the important things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is just how tidy and easy the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count The Rabbit Hole Beehiiv.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you whatever you need to get going and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for several users.
I’m not exactly sure how the system business economics work on this, however beehiiv is absolutely less costly (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are a few of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to establish and start sending out newsletters totally free.
Tidy and modern-day customer analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce costs alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen another newsletter platform that has had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But naturally, I do not wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to point out some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the cons I have actually located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized font styles.
I use Webflow as my internet site building platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow evaluation if you would love to find out more.
Now, there truly is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t like making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to slow down my web site a bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s very recognizable when you get on a sluggish internet link. But I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t use a normal Webflow kind (which I love utilizing). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier but that would certainly just include extra prices that I do not require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I assumed I would state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a much better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is a great service for anyone wanting to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system far surpasses numerous that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly cheap of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not write review posts typically. I only do when I in fact make use of the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a buddy.
I wish you discovered some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.