Over two years back, I was reading one of my favored e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and quickly started tearing up Boardbit Beehiiv.
I had not been certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full time developer is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched various devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months trying various e-mail and newsletter systems to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent choices for creating e-newsletters. However I couldn’t locate one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my newsletter styles, makes it incredibly easy to compose and send out e-mails, and provides me devices that help me examine metrics and get even more customers.
I think I’ve ultimately located the best tool.
However, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to layout, write, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former workers at the famous newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid designers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally opt for it as my newsletter system of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for rather a long time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it concerned finally releasing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make certain numerous newsletter designers appreciate preferred e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have terrific content, tons of subscribers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even much more clients.
So, I took place a hunt to identify how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this device really comprehend newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on designer development.
Since, any type of creator understands, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the appropriate newsletter pile (that scales) usually indicates making use of multiple various tools to aid achieve one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to set up references. It can obtain pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was totally free to start using, 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 allows them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or web content developer, you need to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to start and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you in fact wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent indication that people love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great system utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own site and utilize the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv also gives you a website similar to Substack. However, if you have your own web site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site clients directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow individuals to register for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to leverage various marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
How to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you access to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and much more. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those looking for a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Boardbit Beehiiv
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand colors and design to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin creating,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning writing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and damage them down into sections), Expand is where you have access 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, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you intend to blog about, I advise just mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and straightforward interface for writing.
Once you start creating, you can optimize headings, include links, and design your web content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of options for different types of content like video clips, web links, images, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is also regularly launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot more content features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo layouts, and more. I’m not going to undergo ever single thing you can maximize with your e-mail template since it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it an excellent publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter designer.
Below are a few of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very very easy to compose and send out emails. I pointed out over some of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the far better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a web site. Think about it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, provide you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a customized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is necessary. Besides, 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 already have a website, and want people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed type. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various choices– a full width, a dealt with size, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s also a choice for attribution tracking if you want to onward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the group is dealing with updates for these, yet I discussed a couple of 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 e-newsletter platform, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your listing to ahead your emails to buddies and associates and if they obtain other individuals to register for your list, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve seem numerous e-newsletter firms offer incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn 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 accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this write-up.
Costs registrations
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription revenue is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be very profitable depending on what your newsletter has to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is exactly how tidy and easy the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter Boardbit Beehiiv.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber count increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you every little thing 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 enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain, polls, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit choice for many customers.
I’m not exactly sure just how the unit business economics work on this, but beehiiv is absolutely less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to establish and begin sending newsletters completely free.
Tidy and contemporary client analytics.
Lots of adaptability with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce premium choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be honest, I haven’t seen another newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet obviously, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to point out some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my internet site structure system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much information why I love Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you want to discover more.
Right now, there really is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not such as making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to reduce my website a bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s really visible when you get on a slow-moving net link. But I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow type (which I enjoy making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would simply include extra costs that I do not need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will eventually develop a much better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a great option for anybody aiming to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform much outweighs numerous that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather cheap wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t create review blog posts typically. I just do when I really utilize the tool myself and would advise it to a good friend.
I wish you located some clarity on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.