Over two years ago, I was reading among my favored e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantaneously started wrecking Beehiiv Integrate with Zapier.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m often getting pitched various devices and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I spent the last six months trying different email and newsletter platforms to aid develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful options for composing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The problem with several existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my newsletter layouts, makes it extremely simple to create and send out emails, and gives me tools that aid me assess metrics and obtain more customers.
I assume I have actually ultimately discovered the right tool.
But, I understand beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to style, compose, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the popular e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly opt for it as my newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter system for quite time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it pertained to ultimately releasing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure several e-newsletter creators look up to prominent e-newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have great web content, lots of clients, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at more customers.
So, I took place a search to figure out exactly how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device truly understand e-newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Because, any type of designer knows, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that scales) typically means utilizing several different devices to assist achieve one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up referrals. It can get costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was free to begin making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that wants a system that allows them to send customized newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
The most successful newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or content creator, you should seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you in fact end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indication that individuals love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a wonderful system made use of by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your own web site and make use of the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a website similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own website already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your web site clients straight to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
How to start using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The primary step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, external embed forms, and much more. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply beginning (or for those looking for a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Integrate with Zapier
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand name colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start composing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot over), Begin creating is where you produce and publish newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your clients are (and break them down into segments), Grow is where you have accessibility 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 ads, Style is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you want to discuss, I recommend just going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and straightforward user interface for writing.
Once you start creating, you can optimize headings, include web links, and style your web content how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of alternatives for different sorts of material like video clips, web links, photos, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is also constantly launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a whole lot a lot more material features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your email template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image formats, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever single thing you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Just try the system for free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a terrific posting platform for any type of newsletter maker.
Here are several of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it very easy to compose and send out emails. I discussed above a few of the things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the much better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on a website. Consider it as a website 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 recognize with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, provide you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or through embed types.
If you currently have an internet site, and want individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three various alternatives– a complete size, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for attribution monitoring if you want to ahead UTM specifications for tracking objectives– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is servicing updates for these, however I mentioned a few concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is an option for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your checklist to onward your e-mails to friends and colleagues and if they get other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually seem numerous newsletter companies offer incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you one more opportunity for expanding your email listing.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this article.
Premium registrations
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership revenue is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” issues of your newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be really lucrative depending upon what your newsletter has to supply. For example, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the important things I love regarding beehiiv is exactly how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Beehiiv Integrate with Zapier.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer count rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you everything you need to get started and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for several individuals.
I’m not sure exactly how the unit economics service this, however beehiiv is definitely more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are some of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters free of charge.
Clean and modern subscriber analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce costs options to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be honest, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter platform that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However of course, I do not wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to mention some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the cons I have actually located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my web site building system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much information why I like Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow review if you wish to learn more.
Today, there actually is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site besides making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to reduce my website a little bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s really obvious when you get on a sluggish net link. But I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow form (which I like utilizing). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would just add additional costs that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the cons here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will at some point develop a better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a terrific option for any individual aiming to dive into the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far surpasses many that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively economical of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unusual. 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 per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose evaluation posts commonly. I just do when I actually use the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a friend.
I hope you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.