Over two years ago, I was reading one of my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and instantly began tearing up Top Beehiiv Newsletters.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time maker is difficult. I’m typically obtaining pitched different devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months trying out various email and newsletter systems to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent choices for writing e-newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely customize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly simple to create and send e-mails, and offers me tools that assist me assess metrics and obtain more clients.
I assume I’ve lastly located the right device.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to style, compose, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the well-known e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly opt for it as my e-newsletter system of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter system for quite time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it pertained to ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure many e-newsletter creators respect preferred e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have great content, lots of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get back at much more subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to determine how these huge newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device actually recognize e-newsletter development and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I understood this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker development.
Since, any designer recognizes, you need development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the best newsletter pile (that scales) often suggests using multiple various tools to assist accomplish one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to establish recommendations. It can get costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was free to start making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that desires a system that enables them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or material maker, you ought to seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to start and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indication that individuals like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a terrific platform made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own website and utilize the platform as your all-in-one option for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a website comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own website already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site customers directly to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit people to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to leverage various marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, external embed types, and a lot more. It’s a very charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those looking for a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding Top Beehiiv Newsletters
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise choose your brand name colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have outlined details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin creating,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Beginning creating is where you create and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your clients are (and break them down into sectors), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you develop your newsletter landing page and message template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you want to discuss, I advise simply going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and easy to use interface for creating.
As soon as you begin composing, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your material just how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for different sorts of web content like video clips, web links, photos, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is also regularly launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a great deal more material features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to create your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a description, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, image layouts, and a lot more. I’m not going to undergo ever single point you can optimize with your email template since it’s a great deal. Just try out the platform totally free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a terrific publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter maker.
Below are a few of the essential features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely very easy to write and send out e-mails. I mentioned above several of the things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on an internet site. Consider it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you a website. However, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom-made domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is necessary. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or through embed forms.
If you currently have a website, and desire people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different alternatives– a complete size, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution monitoring if you want to onward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– rather cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the team is dealing with updates for these, yet I mentioned a few worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your list to onward your emails to good friends and coworkers and if they obtain other people to register for your checklist, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem numerous newsletter firms give rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional method for growing your e-mail list.
However, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this post.
Costs memberships
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration income is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” problems of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying clients. This can be really profitable depending on what your e-newsletter needs to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that produces millions in profits a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among things I like concerning beehiiv is exactly how tidy and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count Top Beehiiv Newsletters.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client count go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you require to begin and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for many users.
I’m not sure exactly how the system business economics deal with this, however beehiiv is certainly cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Below are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters totally free.
Tidy and contemporary client analytics.
Great deals of versatility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce premium options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I have not seen an additional newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
However certainly, I do not wish to be biased so I’m going to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the disadvantages I have actually located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made typefaces.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site structure system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much detail why I like Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow review if you ‘d like to find out more.
Today, there truly is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t like making use of iframe’s since they often tend to slow down my web site a little bit. Every single time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s extremely recognizable when you get on a sluggish net connection. But I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a routine Webflow kind (which I like utilizing). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would just add extra expenses that I don’t require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I thought I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the disadvantages below. I’m also confident that Webflow will ultimately develop a much better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is a terrific solution for anybody seeking to dive into the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system far outweighs lots of that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively affordable for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing 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 right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create testimonial posts commonly. I only do when I really utilize the device myself and would suggest it to a friend.
I wish you discovered some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.