Over two years ago, I was reading one of my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and immediately began destroying Beehiiv For Blogging.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched various tools and solutions 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 different e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to help build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic choices for composing newsletters. However I could not locate one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter layouts, makes it super simple to compose and send emails, and provides me devices that aid me assess metrics and get even more customers.
I think I’ve ultimately located the best tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to design, create, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the well-known e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly select it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for fairly some time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it came to lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure lots of e-newsletter creators appreciate popular newsletters with numerous customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have great content, lots of subscribers, and a clever referral program that allows them to get back at much more clients.
So, I took place a hunt to determine exactly how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to all of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool actually recognize newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Since, any kind of designer knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the right newsletter pile (that ranges) commonly implies making use of multiple different tools to aid attain one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was complimentary to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that wants a system that permits them to send personalized newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or web content developer, you should seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you really wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great indicator that individuals love reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is an excellent platform utilized by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own site and utilize the system as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv also offers you a site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site customers directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit people to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to leverage different marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
Exactly how to begin making use of beehiiv e-mail 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 “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, external embed kinds, and a lot more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv For Blogging
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your e-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 URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand name colors and design to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed details on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start composing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Examine.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Begin creating 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 subscribers are (and break them down into segments), Expand is where you have accessibility 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 develop your e-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 easy to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you wish to blog about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Start creating”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use user interface for writing.
When you begin writing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and style your content how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for various types of content like video clips, links, pictures, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is also regularly releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal much more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to create your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome email to first time customers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, fonts, picture styles, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before solitary thing you can maximize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Just experiment with the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a fantastic publishing system for any e-newsletter creator.
Right here are several of the crucial features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it extremely simple to create and send out emails. I pointed out over some of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a website. Think of it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, provide you a website. However, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or with embed types.
If you currently have an internet site, and want individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three different choices– a complete width, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for attribution monitoring if you want to ahead UTM parameters for tracking objectives– rather neat.
However, 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, yet I mentioned a couple of issues I had in the pros and cons area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your list to onward your emails to buddies and colleagues and if they obtain other people to sign up for your checklist, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve appear many e-newsletter firms offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you an additional opportunity for growing your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this article.
Costs memberships
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership earnings is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be very profitable depending on what your e-newsletter has to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that produces millions in income a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the things I love concerning beehiiv is exactly how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter Beehiiv For Blogging.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber count rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you whatever you need to begin and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for many customers.
I’m unsure how the system economics deal with this, however beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to establish and start sending out newsletters totally free.
Tidy and contemporary client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce premium choices to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I have not seen an additional newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
However certainly, I do not intend to be biased so I’m going to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made typefaces.
I use Webflow as my web site structure platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to go in too much detail why I like Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow testimonial if you want to discover more.
Today, there actually is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as using iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to slow down my web site a bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s extremely obvious when you get on a sluggish internet connection. However I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a regular Webflow form (which I love utilizing). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier but that would certainly simply add extra prices that I don’t require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the disadvantages below. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will ultimately produce a better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a great service for anyone aiming to dive into the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system much exceeds numerous that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather affordable for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not create evaluation articles often. I just do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a friend.
I hope you discovered some quality on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.