Over two years earlier, I was reading among my preferred email 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 instantly started tearing up Beehiiv Home Page.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time creator is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last six months trying various email and newsletter platforms to assist construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent options for creating e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t locate one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The problem with many existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter styles, makes it incredibly easy to write and send e-mails, and offers me devices that help me analyze metrics and get more clients.
I assume I have actually finally located the appropriate device.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it simple to style, compose, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former staff members at the well-known newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally choose it as my newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern newsletter platform for quite some time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it came to ultimately introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure several newsletter creators respect popular e-newsletters with numerous customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have excellent content, tons of clients, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to find out just how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they produce a 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 believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device truly comprehend e-newsletter creation and development.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on developer growth.
Because, any type of developer understands, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the right e-newsletter pile (that scales) typically indicates utilizing several various devices to aid achieve one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish recommendations. It can obtain expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things 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 designer that desires a system that allows them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
The most effective newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or web content creator, you must seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you really wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent sign that individuals love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is an excellent platform used by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your own website and make use of the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv also gives you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your site customers straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the very 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 versatility to take advantage of different marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack choice.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, external embed kinds, and extra. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just beginning (or for those searching for a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Home Page
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll then produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise select your brand colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed information on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin composing,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Analyze.” And at the very lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your customers are (and damage them down into segments), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Design is where you make your newsletter landing page and message template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you want to write about, I suggest just mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Start composing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly user interface for writing.
Once you start writing, you can maximize headings, include links, and style your web content how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of choices for various sorts of material like videos, web links, pictures, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise frequently launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a great deal extra content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your email template and change some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo, activate or off a welcome email to very first time clients, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image styles, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before single thing you can maximize with your email template since it’s a lot. Simply try out the system free of cost and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it an excellent posting system for any kind of newsletter creator.
Below are a few of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very simple to write and send emails. I pointed out above several of the things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly among the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) survive an internet site. Consider it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, provide you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a personalized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is essential. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter right from your beehiiv site or via embed types.
If you already have a site, and want individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various options– a complete size, a taken care of width, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s also a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to onward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the team is dealing with updates for these, but I discussed a couple of worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a service for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your listing to onward your emails to friends and associates and if they get other people to register for your checklist, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever form you want. I’ve appear many e-newsletter companies provide rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you one more avenue for growing your email list.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription earnings is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be really lucrative relying on what your e-newsletter needs to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that generates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the things I love about beehiiv is exactly how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Beehiiv Home Page.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you whatever you need to start and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for several users.
I’m unsure exactly how the system economics service this, but beehiiv is certainly cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are several of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters absolutely free.
Tidy and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Lots of adaptability with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create premium options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
However naturally, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the cons I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my internet site structure platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive detail why I love Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow evaluation if you wish to discover more.
Right now, there actually is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to decrease my web site a little bit. Each time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s really visible when you’re on a slow-moving web link. But I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a routine Webflow type (which I love using). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply include additional expenses that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I believed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the cons here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will eventually create a far better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a terrific service for anyone seeking to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system much outweighs many that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly economical of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unusual. 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 don’t compose review posts often. I just do when I in fact use the device myself and would advise it to a pal.
I wish you located some quality on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.