Over 2 years earlier, I read one of my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and promptly started destroying Bright Leads Media Beehiiv.
I had not been certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched various tools and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I spent the last 6 months trying out different e-mail and newsletter systems to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful options for creating newsletters. However I couldn’t locate one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my newsletter layouts, makes it very easy to compose and send e-mails, and gives me tools that help me analyze metrics and get more subscribers.
I assume I have actually ultimately located the ideal device.
But, I understand beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to design, create, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former employees at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately select it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve watched for a modern newsletter system for fairly a long time now. I have actually postponed hard when it concerned lastly releasing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make certain lots of newsletter makers appreciate preferred e-newsletters with countless customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have excellent content, lots of customers, and a clever referral program that permits them to get back at a lot more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to determine exactly how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they create an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this device really recognize newsletter production and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Due to the fact that, any type of creator recognizes, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the ideal newsletter pile (that scales) often means utilizing several different tools to assist accomplish one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can get pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, 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 content designer that wants a platform that permits them to send customized newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most successful newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or material designer, you need to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s totally free to start and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent 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 platform made use of by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your very own internet site and utilize the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own web site currently, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your website clients directly to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow individuals to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to leverage various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack option.
Just how to begin using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, external embed types, and extra. It’s a really generous offering for those just beginning (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Bright Leads Media Beehiiv
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed details on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start composing,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Examine.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the settings alternative.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and break them down right into sectors), Expand is where you have accessibility 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 e-newsletter with ads, Design is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you want to write about, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Begin writing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– focus on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use interface for creating.
When you start creating, you can maximize headings, add links, and design your material how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of alternatives for different sorts of material like videos, links, images, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally frequently releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot more material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to create your e-mail template and change some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and more. I’m not going to experience ever single thing you can maximize with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Just check out the system totally free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a fantastic posting platform for any newsletter creator.
Here are a few of the crucial features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely simple to write and send out e-mails. I pointed out above a few of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a site. Think about it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where people can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, give you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is important. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or through embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and desire people to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I use on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various options– a complete size, a fixed width, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise a choice for attribution monitoring if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking functions– pretty neat.
However, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working with updates for these, but I stated a few concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages 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 urge existing clients on your list to onward your emails to close friends and coworkers and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your list, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I have actually seem many e-newsletter business provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional avenue for expanding your e-mail listing.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this short article.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration earnings is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be extremely lucrative depending upon what your e-newsletter has to offer. For example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that creates millions in income a year just by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the things I like concerning beehiiv is how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count Bright Leads Media Beehiiv.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count go up 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 gives you everything you require to get going and grow your 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, polls, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for numerous customers.
I’m not exactly sure exactly how the device business economics work on this, however beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are several of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
Easy to establish and start sending out newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Create premium choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I have not seen an additional newsletter system that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
However obviously, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the cons I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my site structure system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much detail why I enjoy Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow testimonial if you wish to find out more.
Today, there actually is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not like using iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my website a little bit. Each time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s extremely obvious when you’re on a sluggish web connection. But I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t use a routine Webflow type (which I enjoy making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would simply include added costs that I don’t require. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the cons right here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will eventually produce a much better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for any person seeking to dive into the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform far outweighs many 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 relatively low-cost of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not compose review posts commonly. I just do when I in fact make use of the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a good friend.
I hope you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.