Over two years back, I was reading one of my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and instantaneously started tearing up Beehiiv 101.
I had not been certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a permanent maker is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched different devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional since I invested the last 6 months experimenting with different email and newsletter platforms to help develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic options for creating newsletters. Yet I couldn’t discover one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The concern with several existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it extremely simple to compose and send emails, and gives me tools that assist me examine metrics and obtain more clients.
I assume I have actually ultimately discovered the ideal device.
However, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it easy to style, compose, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the renowned newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally choose it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for quite a long time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it pertained to finally releasing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure several e-newsletter creators appreciate preferred newsletters with millions of clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have wonderful web content, lots of subscribers, and a creative referral program that permits them to get back at more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to identify how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more customers? How do they develop a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device really recognize newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Due to the fact that, any kind of maker knows, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the best e-newsletter pile (that ranges) frequently implies making use of multiple various devices to assist attain one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to set up references. It can obtain costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to start using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content maker that desires a platform that enables them to send custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
The most effective newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or material designer, you ought to seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to get going and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you actually wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indicator that people enjoy reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a fantastic system used by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv also gives you a website similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own web site already, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your site subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow people to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
Exactly how to begin using beehiiv email marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, external embed kinds, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting (or for those looking for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv 101
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise choose your brand name colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined details on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start composing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Begin composing is where you develop and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and break them down into segments), 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 advertisements, Design is where you develop your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin stuff.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you intend to blog about, I suggest just mosting likely to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can modify your template and designing later– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and user-friendly interface for creating.
As soon as you begin writing, you can optimize headings, include links, and design your content just how you like.
beehiiv offers you lots of alternatives for various sorts of content like videos, web links, photos, and more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally frequently launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a lot extra content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, 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 styles, and more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before solitary thing you can optimize with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Simply try out the platform for free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of impressive features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any type of e-newsletter creator.
Here are a few of the essential features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely simple to create and send out emails. I stated above several of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the much better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a website. Think about it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a place where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, give you a site. However, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv website or through embed forms.
If you already have a web site, and desire people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various alternatives– a complete size, a dealt with size, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to forward UTM specifications for tracking functions– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is servicing updates for these, however I mentioned a few problems I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your checklist to forward your e-mails to friends and associates and if they get other people to register for your checklist, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually seem several newsletter firms offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you another opportunity for growing your email listing.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this article.
Premium registrations
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription income is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” problems of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying subscribers. This can be extremely financially rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that produces millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the important things I like regarding beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber matter Beehiiv 101.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on just how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer count increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you whatever you need to begin and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit option for numerous customers.
I’m uncertain exactly how the unit economics service this, however beehiiv is certainly less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
Easy to set up and start sending newsletters absolutely free.
Tidy and modern customer analytics.
Lots of versatility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Develop costs choices to generate income from.
Polls.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter system that has had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet certainly, I do not wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my site structure system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much detail why I like Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow evaluation if you want to find out more.
Now, there truly is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than using an iframe embed. I personally do not such as using iframe’s because they often tend to reduce my internet site a bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s extremely recognizable when you get on a slow-moving web connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not utilize a regular Webflow type (which I enjoy utilizing). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would just add extra prices that I do not require. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the cons right here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will at some point produce a better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is an excellent option for anyone seeking to dive into the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform far surpasses lots of that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly inexpensive wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t create evaluation messages often. I just do when I in fact use the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a friend.
I hope you found some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.