Over two years ago, I was reading among my favored email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and instantaneously started wrecking Beehiiv Dark Mode.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m often obtaining pitched various tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological since I spent the last six months trying out different e-mail and newsletter platforms to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent choices for composing newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The concern with several existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely personalize my newsletter styles, makes it very very easy to compose and send out e-mails, and offers me tools that help me evaluate metrics and get more subscribers.
I believe I’ve ultimately located the ideal device.
However, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right 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 easy to style, write, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former employees at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally opt for it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter platform for rather time now. I’ve procrastinated hard when it concerned lastly launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous e-newsletter makers appreciate popular e-newsletters with countless clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have wonderful material, tons of subscribers, and a clever referral program that allows them to get even a lot more customers.
So, I took place a search to figure out just 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 obtain more clients? How do they develop a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device really understand newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Due to the fact that, any kind of maker knows, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the ideal newsletter stack (that ranges) often indicates utilizing multiple different tools to assist achieve one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can get pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was free to begin utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that wants a system that allows them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or content creator, you need to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to begin and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you really end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indication that people love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic system used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own web site and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you an internet site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own internet site already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your website clients directly to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit individuals to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to take advantage of different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, external embed forms, and more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those searching for a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Dark Mode
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also choose your brand name colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start creating,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the very lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your clients are (and damage them down right into sectors), Expand 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, Style is where you develop your newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you intend to discuss, I suggest just mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and straightforward interface for composing.
As soon as you begin creating, you can optimize headings, include links, and design your web content just how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for different sorts of material like videos, web links, photos, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise constantly releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a lot more content features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your email template and readjust some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a description, include your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, picture formats, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever solitary thing you can maximize with your e-mail template because it’s a lot. Just experiment with the system completely free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a terrific publishing system for any kind of e-newsletter creator.
Below are a few of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it super very easy to compose and send e-mails. I stated above some of the important things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a site. Consider it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and an area where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, offer you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom-made domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or with embed kinds.
If you already have an internet site, and desire people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various options– a full size, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to forward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– rather cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the group is servicing updates for these, yet I stated a few concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your listing to forward your e-mails to friends and coworkers and if they get other individuals to sign up for your listing, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I’ve seem many e-newsletter business provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you one more avenue for expanding your email list.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this article.
Premium memberships
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Subscription income is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” problems of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying subscribers. This can be really profitable depending upon what your newsletter has to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that creates millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among things I love regarding beehiiv is just how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Beehiiv Dark Mode.
You get access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you need to get started and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for several individuals.
I’m not sure how the device business economics work with this, however beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters completely free.
Clean and modern subscriber analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Create costs choices to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But obviously, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to mention some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the cons I have actually discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized typefaces.
I use Webflow as my site building platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much detail why I like Webflow so much yet you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to learn more.
Today, there actually is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as using iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to slow down my internet site a bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the page. It’s very obvious when you’re on a sluggish internet connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not make use of a normal Webflow form (which I enjoy making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would simply include additional prices that I don’t require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I assumed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will eventually develop a far better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a terrific service for any individual seeking to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system much outweighs numerous that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively inexpensive of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write review blog posts commonly. I just do when I really make use of the device myself and would advise it to a pal.
I wish you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.