Over two years back, I read among my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and instantly started tearing up Beehiiv Customer Support.
I had not been sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a full-time creator is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched various tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last six months trying out various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to help develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful options for composing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The problem with several existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me completely personalize my e-newsletter styles, makes it very very easy to compose and send out emails, and offers me tools that help me evaluate metrics and obtain more clients.
I assume I’ve ultimately discovered the ideal tool.
However, I understand beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually 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 style, write, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the popular newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly select it as my newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a contemporary newsletter system for quite a long time currently. I’ve postponed hard when it concerned ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure numerous newsletter creators appreciate popular newsletters with countless clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have fantastic material, tons of subscribers, and a clever referral program that permits them to get even more subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to find out how these big e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they produce a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this device actually recognize newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I recognized this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s focused on developer development.
Because, any kind of maker recognizes, you need development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the best e-newsletter pile (that scales) often means making use of multiple various tools to assist accomplish one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up references. It can obtain costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was cost-free to begin utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material maker that wants a system that enables them to send personalized newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or web content maker, you should seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s entirely complimentary to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you really wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indication that individuals love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a terrific system made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your own internet site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a website similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own site currently, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your site customers straight to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack choice.
How to start making use of 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” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those just starting (or for those seeking a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Customer Support
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand name colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start writing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot over), Begin composing is where you develop and release newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your clients are (and damage them down right into sections), Expand is where you have accessibility 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, Design is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you wish to cover, I advise just going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly user interface for creating.
As soon as you begin writing, you can maximize headings, include web links, and style your content how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of alternatives for different sorts of web content like videos, links, photos, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise continuously launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a great deal more material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a description, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to first time clients, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before solitary thing you can maximize with your e-mail template because it’s a whole lot. Just experiment with the platform absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a terrific posting system for any type of newsletter creator.
Below are some of the crucial features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send e-mails. I discussed above several of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll save you some added reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely among the better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) live on a site. Think of it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, provide you an internet site. However, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom-made domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or via embed forms.
If you already have a website, and want people to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed form. This is what I use on this internet 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 3 different options– a full width, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for attribution tracking if you want to ahead UTM criteria for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the group is servicing updates for these, yet I pointed out a few issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is an option for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your listing to ahead your e-mails to friends and coworkers and if they obtain other people to register for your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually appear lots of e-newsletter firms give incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you an additional method for expanding your email checklist.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership profits is certainly a monster of its very own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be extremely profitable depending on what your e-newsletter needs to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among things I love concerning beehiiv is how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Beehiiv Customer Support.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you whatever you need to start and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain, polls, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite generous in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit option for several individuals.
I’m not exactly sure how the system business economics deal with this, however beehiiv is definitely less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters free of charge.
Clean and modern-day subscriber analytics.
Great deals of versatility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce costs options to generate income from.
Polls.
To be truthful, I have not seen another e-newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However naturally, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made font styles.
I use 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 excessive information why I love Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow testimonial if you want to find out more.
Now, there actually is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides using an iframe embed. I personally don’t like using iframe’s since they often tend to reduce my site a little bit. Every single time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s very recognizable when you’re on a slow-moving web connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow form (which I love using). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier but that would just add additional expenses that I do not need. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I assumed I would state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the cons below. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a far better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a terrific solution for any individual wanting to dive into the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system much surpasses lots of that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly low-cost for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not compose evaluation messages frequently. I only do when I really make use of the device myself and would advise it to a friend.
I hope you discovered some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.