Over 2 years earlier, I was reading one of my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and instantaneously started tearing up Beehiiv Demo Video.
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent creator is tough. I’m typically getting pitched different devices and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months experimenting with different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to help build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great options for composing newsletters. But I could not find one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully personalize my newsletter designs, makes it incredibly easy to write and send emails, and gives me tools that assist me examine metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I assume I’ve lastly found the ideal tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv may 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 platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it very easy to style, create, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the popular e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately opt for it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter platform for fairly time now. I’ve hesitated hard when it pertained to lastly introducing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make certain numerous e-newsletter makers look up to prominent e-newsletters with millions of clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have fantastic web content, tons of clients, and a smart referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more customers.
So, I went on a quest to find out how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they create a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device truly understand newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I knew this was going to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Due to the fact that, any type of creator understands, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that ranges) usually indicates making use of multiple various devices to aid attain one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was free to begin making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that wants a system that permits them to send custom e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or content maker, you need to seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you actually wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent indication that individuals love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a terrific platform made use of by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a site similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own site currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your website clients straight to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to take advantage of various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
Exactly how to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you access to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, external embed kinds, and much more. It’s a really charitable offering for those just starting (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Demo Video
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally select your brand colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your main control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning creating,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the really lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Begin composing is where you produce and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your clients are (and break them down right into segments), Grow 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, Style is where you create your newsletter landing page and article template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you want to discuss, I advise simply going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and user-friendly interface for composing.
As soon as you start creating, you can optimize headings, add web links, and style your web content how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of choices for different types of content like video clips, links, photos, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is also frequently releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a great deal more material features relying on when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture styles, and extra. I’m not going to go through ever before solitary thing you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the platform free of cost and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of impressive features that make it a wonderful publishing system for any type of newsletter creator.
Below are several of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it super easy to compose and send e-mails. I discussed over several of the important things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll save you some extra reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely among the far better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive a site. Think about it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, give you an internet site. However, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom-made domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is essential. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have a web site, and want people to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed type. This is what I make use of on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various alternatives– a complete size, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to onward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– quite neat.
However, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the group is working on updates for these, yet I discussed a couple of problems I had in the pros and cons area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your list to ahead your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to register for your checklist, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually seem several e-newsletter firms give incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– offering you one more opportunity for growing your email listing.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium registrations
They claim all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration profits is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely lucrative depending on what your newsletter needs to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that creates millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the things I love about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count Beehiiv Demo Video.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer count rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you whatever you require to start and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit option for many customers.
I’m not exactly sure just how the device business economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is definitely less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are some of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters free of cost.
Clean and modern subscriber analytics.
Lots of flexibility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Develop costs choices to generate income from.
Polls.
To be honest, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter system that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However naturally, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m going to point out some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my site structure platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive information why I like Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow review if you wish to discover more.
Right now, there really is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site apart from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not like utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my internet site a little bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s extremely obvious when you’re on a sluggish internet link. Yet I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow type (which I enjoy making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would just include added prices that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the cons below. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will ultimately develop a much better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a fantastic service for anybody wanting to dive into the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system much outweighs lots of that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively economical wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t create testimonial posts usually. I only do when I actually make use of the tool myself and would advise it to a buddy.
I wish you located some clarity on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.