Over 2 years ago, 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 on it and instantly began tearing up What Is link.mail.beehiiv.com.
I had not been certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time maker is tough. I’m often obtaining pitched various tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological because I invested the last 6 months checking out various e-mail and newsletter platforms to aid build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific options for composing newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The concern with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me fully customize my newsletter styles, makes it extremely very easy to compose and send e-mails, and offers me tools that aid me evaluate metrics and obtain more customers.
I assume I’ve finally located the best device.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to style, write, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the renowned newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally opt for it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for quite some time now. I’ve put things off hard when it pertained to finally launching my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of newsletter makers appreciate prominent e-newsletters with countless customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have terrific content, tons of customers, and a creative referral program that allows them to get even much more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to determine exactly how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they create a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool actually understand e-newsletter creation and development.” I examined 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 growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s focused on developer development.
Since, any kind of maker understands, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the best newsletter pile (that ranges) usually indicates making use of multiple various tools to assist accomplish one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to establish referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one system, 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 web content creator that wants a system that allows them to send customized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or content developer, you need to seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s completely free to start and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you actually end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indicator that people love reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific system made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own web site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you an internet site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own website currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site customers right to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to utilize various marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
How to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you accessibility to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, external embed forms, and extra. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those trying to find a new system to move to).
Onboarding What Is link.mail.beehiiv.com
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally pick your brand name colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed information on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning writing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see 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 ads, Style is where you develop your newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you wish to write about, I suggest simply going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and straightforward user interface for composing.
When you begin composing, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your material just how you like.
beehiiv offers you lots of alternatives for different types of content like videos, web links, photos, and more.
The group at beehiiv is also regularly releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a great deal more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your email template and adjust some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, image layouts, and more. I’m not going to go through ever solitary thing you can enhance with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Just experiment with the system free of cost and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a terrific posting system for any e-newsletter creator.
Below are some of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely easy to write and send e-mails. I stated above a few of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some added analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely one of the better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive a site. Think about it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a place where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, provide you a website. However, the free plan areas your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is very important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv web site or via embed forms.
If you already have a website, and desire people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different options– a complete size, a repaired width, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to ahead UTM criteria for tracking functions– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is servicing updates for these, but I pointed out a couple of problems I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your listing to forward your emails to friends and coworkers and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your listing, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually appear lots of e-newsletter business provide rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you another opportunity for growing your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium registrations
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription income is certainly a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be extremely lucrative depending on what your e-newsletter needs to provide. For example, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that produces millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among things I like about beehiiv is how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count What Is link.mail.beehiiv.com.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you everything you need to get going and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs 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 assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the very same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for lots of individuals.
I’m unsure exactly how the system economics service this, yet beehiiv is certainly cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are some of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
Easy to set up and begin sending out newsletters for free.
Clean and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce costs options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I have not seen an additional newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
However certainly, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m going to point out some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I have actually located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my site structure platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much information why I like Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow review if you ‘d like to find out more.
Now, there actually is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not such as utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to slow down my site a little bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s really noticeable when you get on a sluggish internet link. Yet I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can not use a routine Webflow kind (which I like utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would certainly simply add additional expenses that I do not require. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will eventually create a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is an excellent service for any individual aiming to dive into the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter platform far exceeds numerous that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather affordable for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not compose testimonial messages typically. I just do when I actually make use of the device myself and would advise it to a close friend.
I wish you discovered some quality on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.