Over 2 years ago, I was reading among my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and immediately started tearing up Beehiiv Calculator.
I had not been sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a permanent maker is difficult. I’m often obtaining pitched different tools and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months checking out various e-mail and newsletter systems to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent options for writing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a precise “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me completely personalize my newsletter designs, makes it extremely simple to write and send out e-mails, and offers me devices that assist me assess metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I assume I have actually lastly found the ideal device.
However, I understand beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it simple to layout, write, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the popular e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly opt for it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern newsletter platform for fairly time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it involved ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure lots of newsletter developers admire popular e-newsletters with millions of customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have fantastic web content, tons of customers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at a lot more subscribers.
So, I went on a hunt to find out how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool really understand e-newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Since, any type of maker knows, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the right e-newsletter stack (that ranges) usually indicates making use of several different devices to help attain one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to establish referrals. It can get expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that desires a platform that enables them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or material maker, you ought to seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s completely free to get started and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you actually end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indication that people love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a fantastic system utilized by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own website and make use of the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a website similar to Substack. However, if you have your own site already, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site clients right to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow people to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to leverage different marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack choice.
Just how to start using beehiiv email marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you accessibility to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and much more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Calculator
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand design and colors to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined info on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin creating,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the really lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot over), Begin writing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and break them down right into sectors), Grow is where you have access to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you design your newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze 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 easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you intend to blog about, I recommend simply going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can modify your template and styling later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and user-friendly user interface for creating.
As soon as you start creating, you can optimize headings, add web links, and style your web content just how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of alternatives for different types of content like video clips, web links, images, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is also regularly releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot a lot more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
Once you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to design your e-mail template and change some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, photo styles, and more. I’m not going to go through ever solitary thing you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just experiment with the system for free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of impressive features that make it a terrific posting platform for any kind of newsletter maker.
Below are a few of the crucial features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely very easy to compose and send emails. I mentioned over several of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) reside on a site. 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 location where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, provide you a web site. However, the free plan areas your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a personalized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or through embed forms.
If you currently have an internet site, and want people to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different options– a complete width, a fixed size, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also a choice for attribution monitoring if you intend to onward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the group is working with updates for these, yet I mentioned a few concerns I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your checklist to forward your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they obtain other people to sign up for your checklist, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually appear numerous e-newsletter companies offer incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you another avenue for expanding your e-mail listing.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this article.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership profits is definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying clients. This can be very lucrative depending upon what your newsletter has to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that generates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among the important things I like regarding beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count Beehiiv Calculator.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you everything you need to start and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom domain name, polls, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for several customers.
I’m uncertain how the device business economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending newsletters completely free.
Clean and modern subscriber analytics.
Lots of adaptability with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop costs choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I have not seen another e-newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features together so well.
But obviously, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the disadvantages I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my website structure platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much detail why I love Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow testimonial if you wish to discover more.
Now, there really is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from using an iframe embed. I directly do not like utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to slow down my site a bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s extremely obvious when you’re on a slow-moving net link. But I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not utilize a normal Webflow form (which I love making use of). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier however that would just include added expenses that I do not require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will eventually produce a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
In general, beehiiv is a great solution for anyone looking to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system much outweighs numerous that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather low-cost of 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 right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not write testimonial articles typically. I just do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a friend.
I hope you located some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.