Over 2 years back, I read among my preferred email 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 instantaneously began destroying Beehiiv Forms.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time maker is difficult. I’m often getting pitched various devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last six months checking out different e-mail and newsletter systems to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great choices for composing newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a precise “yes”.
The problem with several existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully customize my e-newsletter designs, makes it incredibly simple to compose and send e-mails, and offers me devices that assist me evaluate metrics and get more subscribers.
I assume I have actually lastly located the best device.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it very easy to design, write, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former workers at the well-known newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly select it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve watched for a modern e-newsletter platform for quite some time currently. I’ve hesitated hard when it concerned ultimately launching my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain several newsletter developers appreciate prominent newsletters with countless subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have great material, tons of customers, and a creative referral program that enables them to get even more clients.
So, I took place a search to find out exactly how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they create an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool really understand e-newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the initial 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 focused on maker development.
Since, any maker understands, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate e-newsletter pile (that scales) usually means utilizing multiple different devices to aid attain one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish referrals. It can get pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to start utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content developer that wants a system that allows them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or web content maker, you must seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely complimentary to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you in fact end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great indication that individuals love reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great platform utilized by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and use the system as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to obtain the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a website comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own internet site currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site clients straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable people to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to take advantage of different marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
How to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software application.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, exterior embed types, and a lot more. It’s a really generous offering for those just starting (or for those trying to find a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Forms
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll then create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand design and colors to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning writing,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Start writing is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and damage them down into sections), Grow is where you have accessibility 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 ads, Layout is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you want to cover, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can modify your template and styling later– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and easy to use interface for creating.
When you begin composing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and design your web content just how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of options for different kinds of material like videos, links, photos, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is also regularly releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a great deal more material features relying on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and change some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, image styles, and much more. I’m not going to experience ever before solitary point you can optimize with your email template because it’s a great deal. Just try out the system for free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any kind of newsletter designer.
Below are some of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely easy to create and send out emails. I stated above some of the important things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll save you some extra reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the far better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive on a website. Think about it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, provide you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a personalized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or with embed types.
If you currently have a website, and want individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed type. This is what I utilize on this web 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 choices– a complete width, a fixed size, and a slim installed. 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 likewise an option for acknowledgment tracking if you want to forward UTM parameters for tracking functions– pretty cool.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make sure the team is working on updates for these, but I stated a few problems I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your listing to forward your emails to close friends and coworkers and if they get other people to subscribe to your list, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever type you want. I’ve seem lots of e-newsletter companies provide benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you an additional avenue for expanding your email list.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this article.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription revenue is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” issues of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be extremely rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter has to use. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the things I love about beehiiv is how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count Beehiiv Forms.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you everything you require to get going and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for many users.
I’m not sure just how the unit business economics work on this, however beehiiv is absolutely less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and modern-day client analytics.
Lots of adaptability with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce costs alternatives to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen another newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
But of course, I do not want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I have actually discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom typefaces.
I use Webflow as my web site building system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much detail why I like Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to learn more.
Right now, there truly is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as making use of iframe’s because they often tend to reduce my internet site a bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s extremely recognizable when you get on a slow-moving internet link. But I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t use a normal Webflow kind (which I love utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly just include extra prices that I do not need. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I thought I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the cons here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will ultimately develop a much better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent option for anybody aiming to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system much surpasses lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly economical of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review posts frequently. I just do when I really make use of the tool myself and would recommend it to a good friend.
I wish you located some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.