Over 2 years earlier, I was reading one of my favored 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 on it and immediately started tearing up Beehiiv Bootstrapped Giants.
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent developer is difficult. I’m frequently getting pitched different devices and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological since I spent the last six months trying out different e-mail and newsletter platforms to assist develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific options for writing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me totally tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it very easy to write and send out e-mails, and offers me tools that assist me examine metrics and obtain more customers.
I assume I’ve lastly found the appropriate tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it very easy to design, compose, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former workers at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots 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 enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately select it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter system for rather a long time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it concerned finally releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure lots of newsletter makers appreciate preferred newsletters with countless clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have excellent material, tons of subscribers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get even much more clients.
So, I went on a quest to find out just how these big e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they develop a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool truly understand e-newsletter production and development.” I examined 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 brain blew up.
I knew this was going to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator development.
Because, any maker recognizes, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the right e-newsletter pile (that scales) typically implies using numerous different tools to assist achieve one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish referrals. It can get expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was cost-free to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content creator that desires a system that enables them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or web content developer, you need to seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you actually wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indication that individuals 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 made use of by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own site and make use of the system as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own internet site already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your site clients directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow people to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to leverage various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
Just how to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those just starting out (or for those searching for a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Bootstrapped Giants
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that develop 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 “Baking Cakes,” your site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand name design and colors to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have described info on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start composing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your subscribers are (and damage them down into segments), Grow 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 newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you want to cover, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin creating”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– focus on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and straightforward user interface for writing.
Once you start composing, you can enhance headings, include links, and style your web content how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of alternatives for different sorts of content like video clips, links, photos, and more.
The group at beehiiv is also regularly releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a lot a lot more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to create your email template and change some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo, 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 layout.
You can modify background shades, borders, spacing, font styles, photo styles, and more. I’m not going to experience ever before single thing you can enhance with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Simply experiment with the platform absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a great publishing platform for any newsletter creator.
Below are a few of the crucial features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it very simple to write and send out emails. I stated above a few of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll save you some extra reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely one of the far better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a site. Think about it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, give you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a personalized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or with embed forms.
If you currently have a web site, and desire people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of 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 kinds, you have three different alternatives– a complete width, a fixed width, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise a choice for attribution tracking if you want to forward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working on updates for these, however I pointed out a couple of issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your listing to forward your e-mails to buddies and associates and if they get other individuals to sign up for your list, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve appear lots of e-newsletter firms provide benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you an additional avenue for expanding your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs registrations
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership profits is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be really lucrative depending upon what your newsletter needs to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that creates millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the important things I enjoy about beehiiv is exactly how clean and easy the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber matter Beehiiv Bootstrapped Giants.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer matter increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you everything you require to get started and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and access to costs 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 top priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit choice for numerous users.
I’m not exactly sure just how the system business economics service this, yet beehiiv is definitely less costly (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and begin sending out newsletters free of cost.
Clean and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce costs choices to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be honest, I haven’t seen one more newsletter system that has had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
However naturally, I do not wish to be biased so I’m going to mention some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I have actually discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my website structure platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive information why I like Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you want to learn more.
Now, there truly is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site besides utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t like using iframe’s because they tend to slow down my web site a little bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s extremely noticeable when you get on a sluggish web link. Yet I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a regular Webflow kind (which I enjoy utilizing). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply include added costs that I do not require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I assumed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the disadvantages below. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will ultimately produce a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a fantastic solution for any person wanting to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system far exceeds many that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather cheap for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t write testimonial blog posts frequently. I just do when I really utilize the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a friend.
I hope you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.