Over 2 years back, I read among my favored e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and instantaneously started wrecking Beehiiv Delivery Deferred.
I had not been certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full-time maker is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched various tools and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I spent the last six months checking out various e-mail and newsletter systems to aid develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent options for creating newsletters. However I could not locate one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my newsletter designs, makes it super very easy to write and send out e-mails, and provides me devices that help me assess metrics and obtain even more customers.
I assume I have actually ultimately found the best tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it very easy to style, write, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous staff members at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly choose it as my newsletter platform of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually watched for a contemporary e-newsletter system for rather time now. I have actually put things off hard when it involved ultimately launching my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure many newsletter creators respect popular newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have great web content, tons of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get even extra customers.
So, I went on a search to find out exactly how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool truly understand newsletter development and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I knew this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator growth.
Because, any type of creator recognizes, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And finding the best newsletter stack (that ranges) often suggests using several various tools to assist attain one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up references. It can get expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to start using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that desires a platform that allows them to send customized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or material maker, you must seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you in fact wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent sign that individuals like reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific platform made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own site and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally offers you an internet site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your website customers directly to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow individuals to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to leverage different marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack option.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to register for 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 subscribers, offer you access to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, outside embed types, and extra. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just starting out (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Delivery Deferred
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally select your brand name colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin creating,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning writing is where you create and publish newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your subscribers are (and break them down right into sections), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you make your newsletter landing page and message template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you want to cover, I suggest just going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and easy to use user interface for writing.
As soon as you begin composing, you can enhance headings, include web links, and design your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for different types of material like video clips, links, pictures, and more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise constantly launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a whole lot more material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to create your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, fonts, picture formats, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before single thing you can enhance with your email template because it’s a great deal. Just experiment with the platform free of cost and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it an excellent publishing system for any newsletter creator.
Here are several of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly simple to create and send out emails. I discussed over a few of the important things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll save you some added analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely one of the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive on a site. Think about it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, give you a site. However, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom-made domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is necessary. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or through embed types.
If you currently have a site, and want people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to use an embed kind. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three different alternatives– a complete size, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution monitoring if you want to ahead UTM parameters for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working on updates for these, however I stated a couple of worries I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your list to onward your e-mails to close friends and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your listing, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually appear numerous e-newsletter business provide benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– offering you an additional opportunity for growing your email checklist.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration income is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be really lucrative relying on what your newsletter needs to use. For example, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that generates millions in income a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of things I like concerning beehiiv is how tidy and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter Beehiiv Delivery Deferred.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you whatever you need to get going and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for numerous individuals.
I’m not sure just how the device business economics work on this, but beehiiv is certainly cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while utilizing 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 start sending e-newsletters totally free.
Clean and contemporary customer analytics.
Great deals of versatility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce costs alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
But certainly, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m mosting likely to point out some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the cons I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my site building platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive information why I enjoy Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow evaluation if you want to discover more.
Now, there actually is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from using an iframe embed. I personally do not like utilizing iframe’s since they often tend to reduce my site a bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s really obvious when you get on a slow net link. But I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not utilize a regular Webflow form (which I like utilizing). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would certainly just add extra prices that I do not require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I thought I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point produce a much better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a great service for any person wanting to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system much surpasses many that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather cheap for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write testimonial messages usually. I only do when I in fact utilize the device myself and would suggest it to a friend.
I wish you discovered some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.