Over 2 years back, I read one of my preferred e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and promptly began tearing up Beehiiv Boost Marketplace.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m often getting pitched different tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological because I invested the last 6 months trying different e-mail and newsletter systems to help build my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific options for writing newsletters. Yet I could not find one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me completely personalize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly very easy to create and send e-mails, and provides me tools that assist me evaluate metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I assume I have actually lastly discovered the right device.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it very easy to design, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the popular e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist makers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally go with it as my newsletter system of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a contemporary newsletter platform for rather a long time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it involved finally launching my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain lots of newsletter designers appreciate preferred e-newsletters with countless customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have fantastic web content, lots of customers, and a clever referral program that allows them to get even much more clients.
So, I took place a quest to find out how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more subscribers? How do they create a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device really recognize newsletter production and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I understood this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Since, any kind of developer knows, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the appropriate e-newsletter pile (that scales) frequently implies using multiple various tools to aid accomplish one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to set up recommendations. It can get costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was complimentary to begin utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material maker that wants a system that permits them to send personalized newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or web content designer, you need to seriously thinking about trying out beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you in fact end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indicator that people like reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic system made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and use the system as your all-in-one option for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv additionally provides you an internet site similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own internet site already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site customers straight to your beehiiv email list. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to leverage different marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack alternative.
Exactly how to begin making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Register 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 internet site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and much more. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those seeking a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Boost Marketplace
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also choose your brand colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have outlined information on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning composing,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Analyze.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Begin writing is where you create and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your clients are (and damage them down right into segments), Expand is where you have access to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you wish to discuss, I recommend simply going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Begin writing”.
You can modify your template and designing later– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and straightforward user interface for writing.
As soon as you start writing, you can optimize headings, include links, and design your content how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of alternatives for various kinds of content like videos, links, pictures, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is also continuously launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a whole lot much more content features depending on when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your email template and change some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a description, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time clients, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, image styles, and a lot more. I’m not going to experience ever before single thing you can enhance with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Simply check out the platform totally free and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it an excellent posting system for any kind of e-newsletter maker.
Here are several of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely easy to write and send out e-mails. I pointed out over a few of the things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll save you some additional reading.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the far better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive a website. Think of it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, provide you a website. However, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish 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
Getting clients is very important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or with embed forms.
If you already have an internet site, and want individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed type. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different options– a full size, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM specifications for tracking functions– quite cool.
However, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make sure the group is working with updates for these, but I stated a few worries I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your listing to forward your e-mails to close friends and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your list, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever type you want. I have actually seem numerous e-newsletter business offer rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you one more opportunity for growing your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium registrations
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription profits is definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” problems of your newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be extremely profitable depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of things I enjoy about beehiiv is how clean and easy the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Beehiiv Boost Marketplace.
You get access 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 count rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you everything you require to get going and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the very same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for lots of users.
I’m unsure exactly how the unit economics service this, but beehiiv is definitely cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Naturally, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to establish and start sending out newsletters absolutely free.
Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Develop premium options to generate income from.
Polls.
To be honest, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
But of course, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to mention some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom typefaces.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site building platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive detail why I love Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you want to find out more.
Today, there actually is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not such as making use of iframe’s because they tend to decrease my website a bit. Each time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s really obvious when you’re on a slow-moving internet connection. But I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t use a routine Webflow type (which I like using). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would just include additional prices that I do not need. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the cons below. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is a terrific solution for any individual wanting to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system far outweighs many that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively affordable of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list 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 each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose evaluation articles usually. I just do when I really make use of the tool myself and would suggest it to a friend.
I wish you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.