Over 2 years earlier, I read among my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and immediately began destroying Beehiiv Half Baked.
I had not been certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a permanent maker is tough. I’m frequently obtaining pitched various tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last six months experimenting with different e-mail and newsletter systems to aid build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific alternatives for creating e-newsletters. But I could not discover one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The concern with many existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me completely tailor my newsletter styles, makes it incredibly simple to compose and send emails, and provides me devices that aid me evaluate metrics and get more customers.
I believe I have actually ultimately found the ideal tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to design, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous workers at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid makers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately choose it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve watched for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for quite some time now. I have actually put things off hard when it came to lastly releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous newsletter developers respect popular newsletters with countless clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have wonderful web content, tons of subscribers, and a creative referral program that enables them to get back at much more clients.
So, I went on a quest to determine how these big newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they create a newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to all of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this device really understand e-newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I understood this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker development.
Because, any kind of developer recognizes, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the right e-newsletter pile (that scales) usually implies utilizing multiple different devices to help accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up references. It can obtain costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was cost-free to start utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that desires a platform that permits them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or material creator, you need to seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s entirely free to begin and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great sign that individuals love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a terrific platform used by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one option for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv additionally offers you an internet site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site currently, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site customers directly to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit people to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to leverage different marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
How to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and extra. It’s a really charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those searching for a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Half Baked
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally choose your brand design and colors to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed details on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning composing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Begin composing is where you develop and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and damage them down into segments), Grow is where you have access 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, Style is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you wish to cover, I advise just mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Start composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and straightforward user interface for composing.
When you start composing, you can maximize headings, add web links, and style your material just how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of options for different sorts of web content like videos, links, pictures, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is also continuously launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a lot extra content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to first time clients, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, font styles, image formats, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever solitary thing you can enhance with your email template since it’s a lot. Just check out the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it an excellent posting platform for any type of e-newsletter maker.
Below are a few of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it super very easy to create and send emails. I discussed above several of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll save you some added reading.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) live on a site. Think of it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where people can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, offer you a web site. However, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is essential. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv website or via embed kinds.
If you already have a website, and want people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed form. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different alternatives– a full size, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for attribution tracking if you want to forward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
However, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the group is dealing with updates for these, but I discussed a few concerns 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 an option for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your list to ahead your e-mails to good friends and colleagues and if they obtain other people to sign up for your checklist, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I’ve seem numerous newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you one more opportunity for expanding your email listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this write-up.
Premium memberships
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Subscription revenue is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be very rewarding relying on what your newsletter has to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Beehiiv Half Baked.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count increase is absolutely 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 whatever you require to get going and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain, surveys, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit option for several individuals.
I’m uncertain just how the system economics work on this, yet beehiiv is certainly less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are some of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and begin sending e-newsletters free of charge.
Clean and modern client analytics.
Lots of versatility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Develop costs options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen one more newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features together so well.
However naturally, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the cons I have actually located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my internet site building platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much information why I like Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to find out more.
Today, there truly is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site apart from making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not like utilizing iframe’s because they tend to decrease my website a bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s really obvious when you’re on a slow-moving web link. However I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can not utilize a regular Webflow form (which I love making use of). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would simply include extra expenses that I do not require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I thought I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the disadvantages below. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a much better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for anyone wanting to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform much outweighs several that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively low-cost of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not compose review blog posts usually. I only do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a pal.
I hope you discovered some quality on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.