Over two years back, I read one of my favored e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and promptly started wrecking Which Is Better, Beehiiv or ConvertKit.
I had not been certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time developer is tough. I’m usually getting pitched various tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I invested the last 6 months trying out various email and newsletter systems to aid build my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific alternatives for writing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t locate one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me totally customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it very easy to create and send out e-mails, and offers me devices that assist me analyze metrics and get more clients.
I assume I’ve finally discovered the ideal device.
However, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to design, write, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous workers at the renowned e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately choose it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a modern e-newsletter platform for fairly some time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it involved ultimately launching my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure several e-newsletter makers respect popular newsletters with countless customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have great material, lots of subscribers, and a creative referral program that enables them to get even more clients.
So, I took place a hunt to figure out exactly how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? 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 questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool really recognize e-newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the very first marketing and development employees 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 developer development.
Since, any kind of developer recognizes, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the ideal e-newsletter pile (that ranges) typically implies using multiple various devices to assist attain one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material maker that desires a system that permits them to send customized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or web content developer, you must seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to begin and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you actually wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good sign that people like reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful platform made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own website and utilize the system as your all-in-one service for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also offers you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own website already, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your website subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to leverage various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Exactly how to start using beehiiv email marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, outside embed types, and more. It’s a really generous offering for those just beginning (or for those looking for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Which Is Better, Beehiiv or ConvertKit
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand name colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start composing,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Examine.” And at the very lower you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down right into segments), Expand 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 ads, Style is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you want to cover, I recommend just going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin composing”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly user interface for composing.
Once you begin composing, you can enhance headings, include web links, and style your web content how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for different sorts of material like video clips, web links, pictures, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally frequently launching item feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a whole lot much more material features relying on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to design your e-mail template and change some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background shades, borders, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever solitary thing you can optimize with your email template because it’s a whole lot. Just try the platform completely free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a fantastic posting system for any kind of newsletter designer.
Below are some of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely easy to create and send out e-mails. I pointed out above several of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some added reading.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on a website. Think about it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, give you a site. However, the free plan areas your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed type. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three various options– a full size, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s also an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to ahead UTM parameters for tracking functions– pretty neat.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the group is working with updates for these, but I stated a couple of issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is an option for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your list to ahead your emails to close friends and associates and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your listing, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem several newsletter firms offer incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you one more opportunity for expanding your email listing.
However, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this article.
Costs registrations
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Subscription earnings is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re searching for 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 extremely profitable relying on what your e-newsletter needs to supply. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the things I like concerning beehiiv is just how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter Which Is Better, Beehiiv or ConvertKit.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer count increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to get started and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit option for many individuals.
I’m unsure exactly how the device business economics work with this, however beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are some of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and start sending out e-newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and modern customer analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce premium alternatives to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet obviously, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized typefaces.
I use Webflow as my site structure platform of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much information why I love Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow evaluation if you would love to discover more.
Now, there actually is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to reduce my website a little bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s really visible when you get on a slow-moving net connection. But I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow kind (which I love utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would certainly simply include added costs that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I thought I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the disadvantages here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will ultimately create a far better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful service for any individual aiming to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far outweighs many that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly inexpensive for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation blog posts often. I only do when I actually make use of the tool myself and would advise it to a buddy.
I hope you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.