Over two years earlier, I read among my preferred email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and quickly started wrecking Beehiiv GDPR.
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m frequently getting pitched various tools and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional since I invested the last 6 months trying various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to help construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent choices for writing newsletters. But I could not locate one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The concern with many existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my newsletter designs, makes it super very easy to compose and send emails, and gives me tools that assist me analyze metrics and get more clients.
I believe I have actually ultimately found the ideal device.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it easy to style, write, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former employees at the famous e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly choose it as my newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a modern-day newsletter system for quite time now. I have actually postponed hard when it came to lastly launching my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure many newsletter creators admire prominent e-newsletters with numerous clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have wonderful web content, lots of clients, and a creative referral program that enables them to get even more subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to determine just 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 produce a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this device really recognize e-newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the initial marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Since, any kind of maker knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the best e-newsletter stack (that ranges) typically means utilizing numerous various devices to assist attain one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to set up referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was free to start using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that wants a system that permits them to send custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or web content designer, you need to seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a great sign that individuals like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic system utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also gives you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own website currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site clients right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to utilize different marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Exactly how to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software application.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, outside embed kinds, and more. It’s a very generous offering for those just beginning (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv GDPR
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll then create a name and link for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise pick your brand name design and colors to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed details on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning creating,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning writing is where you develop and publish newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and damage them down into sectors), Grow is where you have access 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, Style is where you design your newsletter landing page and post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you wish to write about, I suggest simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and straightforward interface for composing.
When you begin creating, you can optimize headings, add links, and style your web content how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for different sorts of web content like videos, links, pictures, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally constantly launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a whole lot much more material features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, fonts, image layouts, and a lot more. I’m not going to go through ever solitary point you can enhance with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Simply try the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a great publishing platform for any newsletter developer.
Below are several of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it super very easy to write and send e-mails. I stated over several of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a web site. Think about it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, offer you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a personalized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is essential. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv web site or via embed types.
If you already have a web site, and desire individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed form. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three various alternatives– a complete width, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also an alternative for attribution monitoring if you intend to onward UTM criteria for tracking functions– quite cool.
However, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is servicing updates for these, however I stated a few problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your listing to onward your emails to good friends and coworkers and if they obtain other people to sign up for your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually seem numerous newsletter firms offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you one more avenue for growing your email listing.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs registrations
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration earnings is most definitely a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be extremely lucrative depending on what your newsletter needs to provide. For example, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
One of the things I like about beehiiv is just how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count Beehiiv GDPR.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you need to start and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad 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 every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for several customers.
I’m not exactly sure just how the system economics deal with this, but beehiiv is certainly less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are several of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
Easy to set up and start sending newsletters for free.
Clean and modern-day customer analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Develop costs alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be sincere, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
However obviously, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to point out some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I have actually found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized font styles.
I use Webflow as my internet site building platform of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much information why I love Webflow so much but you can read my Webflow evaluation if you wish to find out more.
Right now, there really is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than using an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as making use of iframe’s since they tend to decrease my site a little bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s really noticeable when you get on a slow-moving web connection. Yet I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow form (which I enjoy utilizing). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier however that would certainly just include extra prices that I do not require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the cons below. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually create a far better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a wonderful solution for any person seeking to study the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform much outweighs several that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly affordable wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write testimonial posts frequently. I only do when I actually utilize the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a pal.
I hope you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.