Over two years ago, I was reading one of my favored e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and instantaneously started wrecking Beehiiv Geekout Newsletter.
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 services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months trying out different email and newsletter systems to aid construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent choices for creating e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t discover one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully personalize my newsletter designs, makes it very simple to create and send out emails, and gives me devices that help me examine metrics and get even more subscribers.
I believe I’ve finally found the best tool.
Yet, I understand beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right 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 simple to style, compose, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this article, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally opt for it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern newsletter platform for quite a long time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it came to lastly launching my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain lots of newsletter designers admire preferred e-newsletters with countless customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have excellent material, tons of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get even a lot more customers.
So, I went on a search to determine exactly how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device really recognize e-newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the very first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I knew this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Since, any kind of developer understands, you need growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the best newsletter stack (that scales) frequently means utilizing numerous different tools to assist achieve one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to set up referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was cost-free to begin utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that desires a system that allows them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or material maker, you ought to seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to begin and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a great indicator that individuals love reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is an excellent platform utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your own site and use the system as your all-in-one option for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally offers you an internet site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own internet site already, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your web site customers directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit individuals to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to utilize different marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack choice.
Exactly how to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you access to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and much more. It’s a really charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those looking for a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Geekout Newsletter
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally pick your brand colors and design to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have described details on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin writing,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Start creating is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your clients are (and break them down right into sections), Grow is where you have access to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you design your newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you want to write about, I advise just going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and user-friendly user interface for composing.
Once you start writing, you can enhance headings, include links, and design your content how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for different kinds of web content like videos, links, photos, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is also continuously releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a whole lot more material features depending upon when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to design your email template and readjust some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, fonts, picture layouts, and more. I’m not going to undergo ever before single point you can maximize with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Simply try the platform free of charge and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a fantastic publishing system for any kind of e-newsletter maker.
Right here are some of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it very easy to write and send out e-mails. I mentioned over several of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) live on an internet site. Consider it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, offer you a website. However, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom-made domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is necessary. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and desire people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different alternatives– a full width, a dealt with width, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for attribution monitoring if you want to ahead UTM specifications for tracking purposes– quite neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the group is dealing with updates for these, but I discussed a few problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your checklist to onward your emails to pals and colleagues and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually appear lots of newsletter business give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you another opportunity for expanding your e-mail listing.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership profits is absolutely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be really lucrative depending on what your e-newsletter needs to supply. For example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among things I like concerning beehiiv is just how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count Beehiiv Geekout Newsletter.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you everything you require to begin and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain, surveys, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for numerous individuals.
I’m not exactly sure exactly how the unit business economics service this, but beehiiv is absolutely cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are several of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending out e-newsletters free of cost.
Clean and contemporary customer analytics.
Lots of versatility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Create premium alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen one more newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features together so well.
However of course, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m going to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site structure platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive information why I enjoy Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow evaluation if you wish to learn more.
Right now, there truly is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than using an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as utilizing iframe’s because they tend to decrease my internet site a bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s extremely obvious when you get on a slow net link. Yet I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t use a normal Webflow form (which I like using). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would simply include additional prices that I do not need. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m also confident that Webflow will at some point create a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is a great solution for anyone looking to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform far exceeds several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly affordable wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is uncommon. 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 each month.
Anyways, I don’t write evaluation posts typically. I only do when I really utilize the tool myself and would recommend it to a buddy.
I wish you located some quality on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.