Over 2 years earlier, I read among my favored e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and promptly started destroying Beehiiv Hosting.
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent maker is difficult. I’m typically getting pitched different devices and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological because I spent the last 6 months checking out various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to help develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great alternatives for creating newsletters. But I could not find one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter styles, makes it very simple to create and send out emails, and offers me devices that assist me analyze metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I think I’ve lastly found the ideal tool.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everyone. 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 e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it very easy to layout, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the well-known e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter system for fairly a long time now. I’ve procrastinated hard when it came to lastly launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make certain several newsletter developers appreciate preferred e-newsletters with countless clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have terrific web content, lots of customers, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get back at a lot more clients.
So, I took place a search to find out exactly how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool truly comprehend e-newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I knew this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Since, any kind of designer understands, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the ideal e-newsletter pile (that scales) usually implies making use of several various devices to assist accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish references. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was complimentary to begin making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material maker that desires a system that allows them to send custom newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or web content designer, you need to seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s totally free to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you really end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a great sign that individuals like reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful system used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own site and use the system as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a web site similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own website currently, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your web site subscribers right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow people to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those just starting (or for those trying to find a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Hosting
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally pick your brand design and colors to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your main control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning writing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Examine.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Start creating is where you develop and release newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and break them down right into sections), Grow is where you have access 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you design your newsletter landing page and blog post 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 e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you want to discuss, I suggest just going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Start composing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and user-friendly user interface for creating.
When you start creating, you can maximize headings, include links, and design your material exactly how you like.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for different sorts of web content like videos, web links, images, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is additionally continuously launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot more content features depending on when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your email template and readjust some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, font styles, photo styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before solitary thing you can maximize with your email template because it’s a lot. Just try out the system absolutely free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any kind of newsletter designer.
Below are some of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it super easy to compose and send e-mails. I pointed out over several of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) live on a site. Think about it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a place where people can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, provide you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a personalized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is very important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv website or via embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and want individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to use an embed form. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various options– a full size, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to onward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working on updates for these, yet I discussed a couple of problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your list to ahead your emails to buddies and coworkers and if they get other individuals to sign up for your list, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually appear several e-newsletter firms give rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you one more opportunity for expanding your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this post.
Costs memberships
They claim all you need 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 newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be extremely rewarding depending upon what your newsletter has to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of the things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is how clean and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count Beehiiv Hosting.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you everything you require to begin and expand your newsletter (up to 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, customized domain name, polls, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit option for lots of users.
I’m not exactly sure just how the device economics service this, however beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics.
Lots of adaptability with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create premium alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen one more newsletter system that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
However of course, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I’ve found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my site building system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive information why I love Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow review if you would love to learn more.
Now, there actually is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t like making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to decrease my internet site a bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s really noticeable when you’re on a slow net link. But I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not utilize a normal Webflow kind (which I like using). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would simply include extra prices that I don’t need. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually produce a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is a fantastic option for any person aiming to study the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter platform much outweighs many that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly economical for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not write review posts often. I only do when I really utilize the device myself and would certainly advise it to a friend.
I hope you discovered some quality on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.