Over 2 years ago, I was reading among my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and promptly started tearing up Beehiiv AI Tool Report.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time creator is difficult. I’m frequently getting pitched different tools and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional since I invested the last 6 months trying out various email and newsletter systems to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great alternatives for composing newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me offer a definite “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully customize my newsletter styles, makes it very easy to create and send emails, and gives me devices that aid me examine metrics and obtain even more clients.
I think I’ve finally discovered the ideal tool.
But, I understand beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to layout, create, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former workers at the popular e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly opt for it as my newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for quite some time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it involved ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain lots of newsletter designers appreciate prominent e-newsletters with millions of subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have wonderful material, tons of clients, and a creative referral program that enables them to get even a lot more customers.
So, I went on a quest to identify how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get 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 answer all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool truly understand e-newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer growth.
Due to the fact that, any maker recognizes, you need growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the ideal e-newsletter stack (that ranges) frequently suggests using numerous different devices to aid accomplish one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was cost-free to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that wants a system that enables them to send out custom newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
The most effective newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or material maker, you must seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s entirely free to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you in fact wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indicator that individuals love reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a terrific system made use of by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own site and use the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv also offers you a web site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site currently, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your website subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to utilize various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
Exactly how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you accessibility to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, external embed forms, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those seeking a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv AI Tool Report
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll then produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand name design and colors to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have described info on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start creating,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Analyze.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot over), Beginning creating is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your clients are (and break them down into sections), Grow is where you have access to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Layout is where you develop your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you want to write about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and straightforward user interface for writing.
When you start creating, you can maximize headings, add web links, and design your content how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of choices for different types of content like video clips, links, images, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is also continuously launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a lot more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo, activate or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, photo layouts, and more. I’m not going to go through ever solitary point you can optimize with your e-mail template because it’s a lot. Simply check out the platform free of cost and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it a great publishing system for any e-newsletter creator.
Below are a few of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it super simple to write and send emails. I discussed above a few of things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) live on an internet site. Think of it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, give you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a personalized domain to remove 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, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or through embed forms.
If you already have a website, and want people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed type. This is what I use on this 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 3 various choices– a full width, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution monitoring if you intend to forward UTM parameters for tracking functions– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the group is working on updates for these, but I mentioned a couple of concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your checklist to onward your emails to close friends and colleagues and if they get other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever type you want. I have actually appear several newsletter firms provide incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional avenue for growing your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this article.
Premium memberships
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration income is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be very profitable relying on what your newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that creates millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
One of the important things I like concerning beehiiv is how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter Beehiiv AI Tool Report.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client count go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you require to get going and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for several customers.
I’m not exactly sure how the system business economics work on this, but beehiiv is absolutely less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of option:
Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters free of charge.
Clean and modern client analytics.
Lots of flexibility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce premium choices to monetize.
Polls.
To be truthful, I have not seen an additional newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But naturally, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my web site building system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much detail why I love Webflow so much yet you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to discover more.
Right now, there really is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides using an iframe embed. I personally don’t like using iframe’s since they tend to reduce my site a little bit. Each time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s very obvious when you’re on a sluggish web link. Yet I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow form (which I like utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would certainly simply add extra expenses that I do not require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the cons here. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually produce a much better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent solution for any person looking to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far outweighs many that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly inexpensive for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t create review blog posts usually. I only do when I really make use of the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a buddy.
I wish you discovered some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.