Over 2 years back, I read one of my preferred email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and instantaneously began destroying Beehiiv Ad Network.
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m frequently obtaining pitched various devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I spent the last six months experimenting with different email and e-newsletter systems to help construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful alternatives for creating newsletters. Yet I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly simple to compose and send e-mails, and gives me tools that help me evaluate metrics and get even more customers.
I assume I’ve finally located the best tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to design, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the popular newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly choose it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a contemporary e-newsletter system for quite time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it concerned finally introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain lots of newsletter creators admire popular e-newsletters with millions of customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have great content, lots of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get even more subscribers.
So, I went on a hunt to determine just how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this device truly recognize e-newsletter production and growth.” I examined 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 growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Because, any kind of designer recognizes, you need growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the appropriate newsletter stack (that ranges) usually suggests using numerous different devices to assist achieve one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish references. It can get expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content designer that desires a platform that permits them to send custom-made e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or material developer, you need to seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indicator that people like reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is an excellent platform utilized by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and make use of the system as your all-in-one option for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a website similar to Substack. However, if you have your own internet site currently, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your website subscribers directly to your beehiiv email list. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
Exactly how to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, outside embed forms, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting out (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Ad Network
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also select your brand design and colors to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined details on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start creating,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Analyze.” And at the very lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot over), Begin writing is where you create and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can watch who your clients are (and break them down right into sectors), 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 ads, Layout is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you want to blog about, I advise simply going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin creating”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and user-friendly user interface for composing.
When you begin writing, you can maximize headings, include web links, and design your web content how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of alternatives for various kinds of content like video clips, web links, photos, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally regularly launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a great deal a lot more content features depending upon when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and change some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, add your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, font styles, image styles, and a lot more. I’m not going to go through ever single point you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a whole lot. Just try out the platform for free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a fantastic publishing system for any e-newsletter maker.
Below are several of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly easy to create and send out emails. I mentioned above some of the important things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll save you some added reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on a web site. Consider it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, give 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 eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is very important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or with embed types.
If you already have a site, and desire people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed type. This is what I utilize on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 different alternatives– a full width, a fixed width, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also a choice for attribution monitoring if you want to forward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nevertheless, 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, however I mentioned a couple of concerns I had in the pros and cons 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 motivate existing clients on your list to ahead your e-mails to buddies and associates and if they get other people to sign up for your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve seem numerous newsletter firms offer rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you another opportunity for expanding your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this post.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription earnings is definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be really profitable depending upon what your newsletter has to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that creates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter Beehiiv Ad Network.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you whatever you require to begin and grow your newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, surveys, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for numerous users.
I’m uncertain how the unit economics work with this, however beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to establish and start sending out newsletters completely free.
Tidy and modern-day customer analytics.
Lots of versatility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Produce costs choices to generate income from.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
However naturally, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m going to state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I’ve found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my site building system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive detail why I like Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow review if you wish to discover more.
Right now, there really is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from using an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as utilizing iframe’s since they tend to reduce my web site a little bit. Each time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s very recognizable when you’re on a slow web link. However I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not utilize a normal Webflow form (which I like using). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just include added prices that I do not need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I thought I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the cons below. I’m also confident that Webflow will eventually develop a far better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a fantastic solution for any person wanting to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system much exceeds numerous that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly economical wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not create review posts commonly. I only do when I in fact make use of the tool myself and would advise it to a close friend.
I hope you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.