Over two years back, 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 first time. I clicked it and immediately started tearing up Beehiiv GPTEA.
I had not been certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full time creator is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched different tools and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months experimenting with various e-mail and newsletter systems to assist build my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific options for creating newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me totally tailor my newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly simple to create and send out e-mails, and gives me tools that aid me assess metrics and get more subscribers.
I think I have actually finally found the appropriate tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to design, create, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former employees at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly select it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter system for rather some time now. I have actually postponed hard when it involved lastly introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure several e-newsletter developers respect popular e-newsletters with numerous clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have great content, tons of customers, and a creative referral program that allows them to get back at more subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to identify exactly how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they create an e-newsletter layout 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 device actually understand newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the very first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter system. One that’s focused on developer development.
Due to the fact that, any designer recognizes, you need development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the best e-newsletter stack (that scales) often indicates using several different devices to help accomplish one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, 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 material developer that wants a platform that allows them to send custom newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or web content developer, you need to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s completely free to get started and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you actually wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indication that individuals love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a wonderful platform used by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your very own site and use the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a web site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own internet site currently, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your website subscribers straight to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to register for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing channels to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack alternative.
How to begin using beehiiv email marketing software application.
Enroll in a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, exterior embed forms, and extra. It’s a really generous offering for those just beginning (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv GPTEA
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll then create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand name design and colors to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described details on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start writing,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Assess.” And at the very lower you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Begin writing is where you create and release newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and break them down right into sectors), Expand 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, Design is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you intend to cover, I recommend just going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Start composing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and straightforward interface for creating.
Once you start composing, you can maximize headings, add web links, and style your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of choices for different sorts of material like video clips, web links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is also frequently launching item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a lot much more material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history shades, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, photo layouts, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before solitary thing you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Just try the platform free of charge and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of impressive features that make it a wonderful publishing system for any type of e-newsletter creator.
Right here are a few of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it very very easy to write and send out emails. I mentioned over several of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) live on a website. Consider it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, offer you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is essential. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv site or via embed types.
If you already have an internet site, and desire people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed type. This is what I use on this website (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 3 various options– a full width, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to forward UTM specifications for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the team is working with updates for these, yet I discussed a few concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your list to onward your emails to buddies and associates and if they get other individuals to register for your checklist, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem several newsletter firms offer incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you an additional method for expanding your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this post.
Costs memberships
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership profits is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be extremely financially rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to supply. For example, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that creates millions in income a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the things I love concerning beehiiv is how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count Beehiiv GPTEA.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer count increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you everything you require to start and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, surveys, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for numerous customers.
I’m not sure just how the unit business economics deal with this, however beehiiv is most definitely less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are a few of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
Easy to set up and start sending out e-newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce premium alternatives to generate income from.
Polls.
To be honest, I haven’t seen another newsletter system that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet obviously, I do not want to be biased so I’m going to state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my site structure platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much yet you can review my Webflow review if you wish to discover more.
Now, there actually is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not such as utilizing iframe’s since they often tend to decrease my site a bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s very visible when you get on a slow-moving net connection. But I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow form (which I enjoy making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly simply include additional costs that I do not need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the cons below. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately create a much better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a wonderful remedy for any individual wanting to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system much outweighs numerous that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly cheap of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not write review articles commonly. I just do when I really use the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a good friend.
I hope you located some quality on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.