Over two years back, I read one of my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and promptly started tearing up Beehiiv Bronze Tier.
I had not been certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched different devices and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological since I invested the last 6 months checking out different email and e-newsletter platforms to assist develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic options for composing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t discover one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me totally tailor my e-newsletter layouts, makes it super simple to compose and send emails, and offers me devices that assist me examine metrics and obtain more clients.
I believe I’ve lastly located the appropriate tool.
However, I understand beehiiv may 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 e-newsletter system that makes it simple to style, compose, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the renowned e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help developers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly select it as my newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter platform for fairly time now. I’ve postponed hard when it concerned finally releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure lots of e-newsletter makers respect preferred newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have fantastic material, tons of subscribers, and a clever referral program that allows them to get even a lot more clients.
So, I took place a quest to identify just how these big newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool actually recognize e-newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker growth.
Since, any kind of creator knows, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the ideal e-newsletter pile (that ranges) commonly implies making use of several different devices to assist accomplish one goal– one system for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to set up references. It can get pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was cost-free to begin making use of, 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 platform that permits them to send custom-made e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or content creator, you should seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you actually wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent sign that individuals enjoy reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a fantastic platform utilized by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your own internet site and utilize the system as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv also offers you a site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own site currently, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your website subscribers straight to your beehiiv email checklist. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to leverage different marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, external embed types, and extra. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those seeking a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Bronze Tier
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly reside 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 additionally select your brand name colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning writing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Start writing is where you create and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and break them down into sectors), Grow 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 advertisements, Design is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you want to write about, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning writing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and straightforward interface for composing.
Once you start composing, you can enhance headings, add links, and design your material how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of alternatives for various sorts of web content like videos, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is also regularly launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a whole lot extra material features depending upon when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your email template and readjust some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo, activate or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, font styles, picture layouts, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before solitary point you can enhance with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Simply try the system for free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it a wonderful posting system for any kind of newsletter designer.
Here are several of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it extremely very easy to write and send out emails. I stated above some of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some added reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely among the much better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) survive on a web site. Consider it as an internet 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 e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, offer you a web site. However, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a personalized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is very important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or via embed kinds.
If you already have a website, and desire people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I use 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 types, you have 3 various alternatives– a complete width, a fixed width, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s also an alternative for attribution tracking if you want to ahead UTM specifications for tracking objectives– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working with updates for these, but I discussed a couple of problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your list to onward your emails to pals and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to register for your list, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually seem lots of e-newsletter firms offer incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional opportunity for growing your email listing.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this article.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration profits is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying clients. This can be very profitable depending on what your e-newsletter needs to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that produces millions in income a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among things I love regarding beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber matter Beehiiv Bronze Tier.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you everything you need to get going and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of 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 per month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for numerous users.
I’m not exactly sure how the unit business economics work on this, yet beehiiv is certainly cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve 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 choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending e-newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce premium choices to monetize.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
However naturally, I don’t want to be biased so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I’ve located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site structure platform of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to find out more.
Now, there really is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as utilizing iframe’s because they tend to slow down my site a bit. Every single time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s very recognizable when you’re on a slow internet link. However I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a normal Webflow form (which I love using). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just include added costs that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I thought I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the disadvantages below. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually produce a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for any individual seeking to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far exceeds many that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather inexpensive for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose testimonial blog posts usually. I only do when I really make use of the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a buddy.
I wish you located some quality on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.