Over two years earlier, I read one of my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and quickly began tearing up The Stories Beehiiv.
I wasn’t certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full time creator is difficult. I’m frequently getting pitched different devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological since I spent the last 6 months trying out different e-mail and newsletter platforms to help develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent options for creating e-newsletters. But I could not locate one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The concern with several existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me totally customize my newsletter styles, makes it super very easy to create and send e-mails, and gives me devices that help me evaluate metrics and obtain more customers.
I believe I have actually ultimately located the best device.
However, I understand beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to design, compose, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former workers at the famous e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly go with it as my e-newsletter system of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern newsletter system for quite a long time currently. I’ve postponed hard when it involved ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain lots of e-newsletter developers look up to popular e-newsletters with millions of customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have fantastic web content, tons of customers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even a lot more customers.
So, I went on a hunt to determine exactly how these huge newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device actually comprehend newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on creator development.
Due to the fact that, any developer knows, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate e-newsletter pile (that scales) frequently means utilizing multiple various devices to help accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to set up referrals. It can obtain expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was totally free to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content maker that desires a system that enables them to send custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or material maker, you ought to seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to get started and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you actually end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great indication that people love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific system made use of by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your own web site and utilize the system as your all-in-one option for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally provides you an internet site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site subscribers straight to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to leverage different marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, outside embed types, and extra. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those trying to find a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding The Stories Beehiiv
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand name colors and design to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed details on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin writing,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot over), Start creating is where you create and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and break them down right into sections), Grow is where you have access to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you wish to cover, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Begin composing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and easy to use interface for writing.
As soon as you begin composing, you can enhance headings, include links, and style your material exactly how you like.
beehiiv offers you lots of options for different kinds of material like video clips, web links, photos, and more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise continuously releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a whole lot more content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and change some setups.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo, activate or off a welcome email to first time customers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history colors, borders, spacing, font styles, image formats, and much more. I’m not going to experience ever solitary thing you can optimize with your email template since it’s a great deal. Just try the system completely free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a fantastic posting system for any kind of e-newsletter developer.
Right here are a few of the important features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send emails. I mentioned above a few of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) live on a website. Consider it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, offer you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a personalized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is important. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or through embed forms.
If you currently have a website, and want people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed kind. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different options– a full size, a repaired width, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution monitoring if you intend to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make sure the group is dealing with updates for these, yet I discussed a few concerns 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 e-newsletter system, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your listing to forward your emails to good friends and associates and if they get other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve seem numerous e-newsletter firms give incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you another avenue for expanding your email list.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this short article.
Costs subscriptions
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription profits is certainly a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” issues of your newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be extremely profitable relying on what your e-newsletter has to use. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is how tidy and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter The Stories Beehiiv.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer count go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you everything you require to start and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain, polls, and accessibility to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit choice for numerous individuals.
I’m not sure just how the device business economics service this, however beehiiv is certainly less costly (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are several of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters totally free.
Tidy and modern customer analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Develop costs options to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I have not seen another newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
Yet obviously, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my website structure platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow review if you wish to find out more.
Now, there really is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site besides using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as utilizing iframe’s since they tend to slow down my internet site a little bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s extremely noticeable when you get on a slow-moving net link. Yet I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow form (which I enjoy making use of). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier but that would certainly just include additional expenses that I do not require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I assumed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will ultimately create a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a fantastic solution for anybody looking to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform much surpasses numerous that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather affordable wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not write review posts typically. I just do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a friend.
I hope you located some quality on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.