Over 2 years back, I read one of my favorite email e-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 instantaneously began wrecking Inbox Collective Beehiiv.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent creator is difficult. I’m typically getting pitched various tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional since I invested the last 6 months trying out various email and e-newsletter platforms to help build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic options for composing e-newsletters. However I could not find one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me fully tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it very easy to compose and send emails, and offers me tools that assist me assess metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I assume I’ve ultimately discovered the ideal device.
Yet, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it very easy to layout, compose, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the popular newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly opt for it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually watched for a modern-day newsletter system for fairly some time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it involved finally introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make sure many newsletter developers respect popular newsletters with millions of clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have great content, lots of subscribers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at a lot more subscribers.
So, I took place a hunt to figure out how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device truly comprehend newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the very first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Due to the fact that, any kind of maker knows, you need growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the best e-newsletter pile (that ranges) usually suggests using several various devices to help achieve one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was free to begin utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content maker that desires a platform that permits them to send customized newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or web content developer, you need to seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to start and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you actually end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indicator that people enjoy reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is an excellent platform utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain 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 problems).
What collections 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, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a website similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own internet site already, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) 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 Performance to allow individuals to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to leverage different marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
Exactly how to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, external embed forms, and more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those trying to find a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Inbox Collective Beehiiv
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have described details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning creating,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Evaluate.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot over), Start creating is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and break them down right into segments), Grow 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 advertisements, Layout is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you intend to cover, I advise just mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Begin composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly user interface for writing.
When you begin creating, you can enhance headings, include web links, and style your web content how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for various sorts of content like video clips, web links, images, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise continuously releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a great deal extra content features relying on when you read this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to design your email template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to first time customers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, picture styles, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever solitary thing you can enhance with your email template since it’s a lot. Just try the system totally free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it a wonderful publishing platform for any e-newsletter developer.
Here are a few of the essential features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it super easy to create and send emails. I pointed out above a few of things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll save you some extra reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a web site. Think of it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and an area where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, provide you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is important. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or through embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and want people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed form. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various alternatives– a complete width, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for attribution monitoring if you intend to ahead UTM parameters for tracking functions– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the group is servicing updates for these, but I pointed out a few concerns I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your listing to onward your emails to buddies and associates and if they obtain other individuals to register for your list, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve appear several e-newsletter companies offer benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you one more avenue for growing your email checklist.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this post.
Costs memberships
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration earnings is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying clients. This can be extremely profitable relying on what your newsletter has to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that produces millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among things I enjoy about beehiiv is how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter Inbox Collective Beehiiv.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you require to get going and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for numerous users.
I’m not sure exactly how the device business economics service this, but beehiiv is absolutely cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Naturally, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and contemporary customer analytics.
Lots of flexibility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Develop premium alternatives to generate income from.
Polls.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen one more newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet obviously, I do not wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I’ve found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized font styles.
I use Webflow as my internet site building system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much detail why I love Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow review if you want to learn more.
Today, there really is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site other than using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as making use of iframe’s because they have a tendency to slow down my internet site a little bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s extremely visible when you get on a sluggish web connection. However I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow kind (which I like making use of). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would simply add added costs that I don’t require. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I assumed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the disadvantages right here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will eventually create a much better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is a wonderful option for any individual looking to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system much exceeds lots of that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively affordable for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write review blog posts frequently. I just do when I really make use of the tool myself and would suggest it to a good friend.
I hope you discovered some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.