Over 2 years back, I was reading among my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and promptly started destroying Beehiiv Audio Newsletter.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time designer is difficult. I’m frequently getting pitched different devices and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I spent the last 6 months trying various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to aid construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic options for creating e-newsletters. Yet I could not discover one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me fully customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it very simple to compose and send out emails, and gives me tools that aid me assess metrics and obtain even more clients.
I think I’ve finally discovered the right device.
But, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to layout, write, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former workers at the well-known newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid developers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short article, I’m going to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly select it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter platform for fairly some time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it pertained to ultimately introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure several e-newsletter makers look up to prominent e-newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have terrific content, tons of customers, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get even much more clients.
So, I went on a search to determine just how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they create a newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to answer all of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device actually understand newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the very first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I knew this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer growth.
Since, any kind of designer understands, you need growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the best e-newsletter stack (that ranges) commonly indicates making use of numerous various tools to help attain one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain expensive.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was cost-free to start making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content maker that desires a system that enables them to send personalized newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or web content maker, you need to seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to get started and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you actually end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a good indication that people enjoy reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great platform used by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your own web site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one option for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv also offers you an internet site similar to Substack. However, if you have your own site currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your website clients right to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow people to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
How to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, external embed kinds, and more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Audio Newsletter
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise choose your brand name colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed info on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start creating,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings alternative.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down into sections), Expand is where you have accessibility 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, Design is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you wish to write about, I advise just mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and user-friendly user interface for composing.
Once you start writing, you can maximize headings, add links, and design your content just how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for various types of content like videos, web links, images, and more.
The group at beehiiv is also continuously launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot extra content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to create your email template and readjust some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, picture layouts, and a lot more. I’m not going to go through ever single thing you can optimize with your email template since it’s a lot. Just try the system absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of impressive features that make it a fantastic posting platform for any e-newsletter developer.
Below are some of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it very simple to create and send out emails. I stated above a few of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) live on a site. Consider it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can register for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, offer you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a personalized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or through embed kinds.
If you currently have a site, and want people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various alternatives– a full size, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to forward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– quite neat.
However, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the group is working on updates for these, but I pointed out a couple of worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your checklist to ahead your emails to pals and associates and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your checklist, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I have actually appear many newsletter business give incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you an additional avenue for expanding your email list.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this short article.
Premium registrations
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership profits is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” issues of your newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be very profitable depending on what your e-newsletter has to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
One of things I love regarding beehiiv is exactly how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count Beehiiv Audio Newsletter.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on just how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber count rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you everything you need to begin and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and access to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for lots of customers.
I’m not sure exactly how the system business economics work on this, however beehiiv is definitely less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and contemporary customer analytics.
Lots of flexibility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce costs options to generate income from.
Polls.
To be honest, I haven’t seen one more newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
However naturally, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are some of the disadvantages I have actually located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my web site building system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive information why I like Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow review if you would love to find out more.
Today, there actually is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than using an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to slow down my internet site a bit. Each time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s really noticeable when you get on a slow-moving net link. However I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can not utilize a regular Webflow form (which I enjoy using). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly just add added costs that I don’t require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point develop a much better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
In general, beehiiv is a wonderful remedy for any individual seeking to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform far surpasses many that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly affordable for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t compose testimonial blog posts usually. I just do when I actually use the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a buddy.
I hope you discovered some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.