Over two years earlier, I read among my favored e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and promptly started tearing up Beehiiv Crunchbase.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent maker is difficult. I’m usually getting pitched various devices and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological since I invested the last six months trying out different e-mail and newsletter systems to assist construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great options for composing e-newsletters. But I could not discover one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me completely customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it extremely easy to create and send e-mails, and offers me tools that help me analyze metrics and get more clients.
I assume I have actually finally discovered the right device.
But, I know beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it easy to design, create, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by previous workers at the famous newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally choose it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern newsletter system for fairly time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it involved ultimately introducing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure several e-newsletter makers look up to prominent newsletters with millions of subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have wonderful content, lots of subscribers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even a lot more customers.
So, I took place a search to determine just how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they create an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device truly understand e-newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I understood this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on developer growth.
Due to the fact that, any designer recognizes, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the best e-newsletter pile (that ranges) commonly indicates using multiple different devices to assist accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish references. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was free to begin making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content designer that wants a platform that allows them to send customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or web content developer, you ought to seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indication that people like reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a fantastic platform used by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your very own website and utilize the system as your all-in-one service for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a website similar to Substack. But, 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 web site clients straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable individuals to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to leverage various marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
How to start using beehiiv email marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and extra. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Crunchbase
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed information on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start composing,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Examine.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your major control center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down right into segments), Expand 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 ads, Design is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you want to cover, I recommend simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and easy to use user interface for writing.
Once you start composing, you can maximize headings, include web links, and design your content just how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of options for various types of material like video clips, web links, photos, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise continuously releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal a lot more material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and readjust some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture styles, and more. I’m not going to go through ever single point you can enhance with your email template because it’s a great deal. Just try out the platform free of charge and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a terrific posting platform for any type of e-newsletter designer.
Right here are several of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it super easy to write and send out emails. I pointed out over several of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) reside on a website. Think about it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, offer you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom-made domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is very important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv web site or through embed forms.
If you currently have a website, and desire people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed form. 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 three different alternatives– a full width, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim installed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s also a choice for attribution monitoring if you want to onward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– rather neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is servicing updates for these, however I discussed a couple of concerns I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is an option for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your list to onward your e-mails to close friends and coworkers and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your checklist, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually appear many e-newsletter firms provide benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you another opportunity for expanding your email list.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration revenue is absolutely a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among the things I love about beehiiv is just how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count Beehiiv Crunchbase.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to start and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom domain name, polls, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for numerous users.
I’m not exactly sure exactly how the unit economics service this, however beehiiv is definitely cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Right here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters free of charge.
Clean and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Create premium alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be honest, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
However of course, I don’t want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom typefaces.
I make use of Webflow as my web site structure platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter too much information why I love Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to learn more.
Now, there truly is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site aside from using an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my internet site a bit. Every single time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s really visible when you get on a sluggish net connection. However I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a regular Webflow kind (which I love using). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier but that would certainly simply add added expenses that I don’t need. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I thought I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the cons right here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will eventually produce a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a terrific service for any individual wanting to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter platform far exceeds lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively affordable for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation messages commonly. I just do when I really utilize the device myself and would certainly advise it to a pal.
I hope you found some quality on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.