Over two years back, I read one of my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and instantly began destroying Beehiiv Case Studies.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time developer is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched different tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I invested the last 6 months trying out different e-mail and newsletter platforms to assist develop my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great options for creating e-newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The issue with several existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me totally customize my newsletter styles, makes it incredibly very easy to write and send e-mails, and provides me tools that help me analyze metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I think I’ve ultimately found the ideal tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everybody. 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 e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to layout, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former staff members at the renowned e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid makers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally choose it as my e-newsletter system of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter platform for quite a long time now. I’ve procrastinated hard when it involved lastly releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous newsletter creators respect preferred newsletters with numerous subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have fantastic material, tons of customers, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to figure out exactly how these big 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 an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool actually comprehend e-newsletter creation and development.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the very first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Since, any developer understands, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the best newsletter stack (that ranges) often suggests using multiple various tools to assist attain one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to set up referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was totally 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 developer that desires a platform that permits them to send custom e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or web content designer, you ought to seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s entirely free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you really wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good sign that people like reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful platform used by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own website and utilize the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv also provides you a site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own site currently, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site subscribers straight to your beehiiv email checklist. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable people to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack choice.
How to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you access to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, external embed kinds, and extra. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those seeking a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Case Studies
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally pick your brand name design and colors to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined details on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin writing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Analyze.” And at the really lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot above), Begin writing is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into segments), Grow is where you have access 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 create your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you want to write about, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and straightforward interface for creating.
When you begin composing, you can maximize headings, include links, and design your material just how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for different kinds of web content like videos, web links, pictures, and more.
The team at beehiiv is also continuously launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal extra material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your email template and change some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to first time clients, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, photo styles, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever solitary thing you can optimize with your email template since it’s a great deal. Simply try the system completely free and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a wonderful publishing system for any newsletter creator.
Right here are some of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it super very easy to create and send out emails. I mentioned above some of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll save you some additional reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely among the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) survive on a website. Consider it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, provide you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your web 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 update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter right from your beehiiv site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and want individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed type. This is what I use on this website (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 size, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s also a choice for acknowledgment tracking if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the team is working on updates for these, but I discussed a few issues I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your list to onward your emails to buddies and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your checklist, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem several newsletter business offer benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you an additional opportunity for growing your e-mail list.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this article.
Costs memberships
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership profits is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be really rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter needs to supply. For example, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that produces millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
One of things I like about beehiiv is exactly how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter Beehiiv Case Studies.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer count go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you need to start and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom domain, surveys, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for several customers.
I’m unsure just how the unit economics work with this, however beehiiv is most definitely less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters absolutely free.
Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics.
Lots of flexibility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create premium options to monetize.
Polls.
To be truthful, I have not seen another newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However obviously, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my site structure system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to discover more.
Today, there truly is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not such as using iframe’s since they tend to decrease my web site a bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s very noticeable when you get on a sluggish web connection. However I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow form (which I love making use of). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would just add extra prices that I don’t need. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the cons here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point develop a better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a great service for anybody looking to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far outweighs many that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather inexpensive wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not create review messages typically. I just do when I really make use of the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a buddy.
I wish you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.