Over 2 years earlier, I read one of my favored email 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 immediately began destroying Beehiiv Advanced Email Capture.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent maker is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched various devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological since I invested the last six months trying out different e-mail and newsletter systems to aid develop my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic alternatives for composing e-newsletters. Yet I could not find one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me totally customize my newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly simple to write and send e-mails, and provides me devices that assist me evaluate metrics and obtain even more clients.
I assume I’ve ultimately located the appropriate tool.
However, I know beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to design, write, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous staff members at the well-known e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist developers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m going to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly choose it as my newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a modern-day newsletter system for quite some time now. I have actually put things off hard when it came to lastly launching my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous e-newsletter makers appreciate popular e-newsletters with numerous clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have fantastic content, lots of clients, and a clever referral program that allows them to get back at extra customers.
So, I went on a quest to identify how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this device truly understand e-newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the initial marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer growth.
Because, any developer understands, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the ideal newsletter pile (that scales) often implies making use of numerous different devices to aid attain one goal– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to establish recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was cost-free to start utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that wants a system that permits them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most successful newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or material designer, you should seriously thinking about trying out beehiiv. It’s totally free to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you in fact wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indication that individuals love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a wonderful platform utilized by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your own web site and make use of the system as your all-in-one option for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a web site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own site currently, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site customers straight to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow individuals to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to utilize various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail 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 “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you access to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting (or for those seeking a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Advanced Email Capture
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise select your brand colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start writing,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Analyze.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Begin composing is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your clients are (and break them down right into sections), Expand is where you have access to a referral program (and growth 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 blog post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you intend to blog about, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and straightforward interface for composing.
When you begin composing, you can maximize headings, include web links, and design your material how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for various kinds of web content like video clips, links, photos, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally regularly launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot extra content features depending upon when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your email template and adjust some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, fonts, picture formats, and extra. I’m not going to experience ever single thing you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Simply experiment with the system completely free and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a wonderful posting system for any type of e-newsletter creator.
Right here are some of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it very very easy to write and send out emails. I mentioned above several of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a website. Think of it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can sign up for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, provide you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a customized domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or via embed kinds.
If you already have an internet site, and desire individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have 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 column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various options– a full width, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also a choice for attribution monitoring if you want to ahead UTM specifications for tracking functions– rather cool.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the team is servicing updates for these, yet I discussed a few issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your list to ahead your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they get other people to register for your listing, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually appear numerous e-newsletter firms give rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you one more opportunity for expanding your email listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra superior plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this short article.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription income is absolutely a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” problems of your newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be very rewarding depending on what your newsletter has to provide. For example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among things I love about beehiiv is how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count Beehiiv Advanced Email Capture.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you everything you need to get started and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain, surveys, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit option for several customers.
I’m not sure just how the system business economics service this, but beehiiv is certainly more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are some of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to set up and begin sending e-newsletters for free.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce costs alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter system that has had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
However of course, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I have actually found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom font styles.
I use Webflow as my website structure platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to find out more.
Now, there truly is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not such as utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to slow down my site a little bit. Every time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s very noticeable when you’re on a slow internet link. However I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not make use of a regular Webflow form (which I enjoy making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would just add extra costs that I do not need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the disadvantages below. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually create a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent option for anybody wanting to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system far exceeds numerous that are presently 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 inexpensive of 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 right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not create evaluation messages often. I just do when I really utilize the tool myself and would suggest it to a pal.
I wish you discovered some quality on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.