Over 2 years earlier, I read one of my favored email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and quickly began tearing up Beehiiv Integration with WordPress.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent developer is difficult. I’m often obtaining pitched various devices and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional because I invested the last six months checking out different e-mail and newsletter systems to assist develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent alternatives for writing e-newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my newsletter designs, makes it very very easy to create and send e-mails, and offers me tools that aid me assess metrics and obtain even more customers.
I assume I have actually ultimately found the appropriate device.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. 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 newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to style, compose, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the famous e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help makers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately opt for it as my newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter system for fairly a long time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it pertained to lastly launching my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain several newsletter creators look up to prominent newsletters with millions of customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have fantastic web content, lots of customers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get back at more subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to determine how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more clients? How do they produce a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device actually recognize newsletter production and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the very first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Because, any kind of maker knows, you require growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the ideal e-newsletter stack (that ranges) frequently suggests using several different tools to help achieve one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things 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 developer that wants a platform that allows them to send out personalized newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or web content developer, you ought to seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you actually wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a good indicator that people enjoy reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a fantastic system utilized by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv also offers you an internet site similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own web site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your site subscribers straight to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable individuals to register for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to utilize different marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance personalization, analytics, outside embed forms, and a lot more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those searching for a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Integration with WordPress
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your main control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed information on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin creating,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into segments), Grow is where you have accessibility 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, Layout is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you intend to discuss, I suggest simply going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start composing”.
You can modify your template and designing later– focus on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly user interface for composing.
Once you start writing, you can optimize headings, include web links, and style your material just how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of choices for different types of material like videos, links, images, and more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally regularly launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a whole lot extra material features relying on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to design your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome email to first time customers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, image layouts, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before solitary point you can optimize with your e-mail template since it’s a great deal. Just check out the platform totally free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any e-newsletter developer.
Right here are a few of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly easy to write and send out emails. I discussed over some of the important things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely one of the much better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a web site. Consider it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, offer you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is very important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or with embed types.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed kind. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different alternatives– a complete size, a fixed width, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for attribution tracking if you intend to onward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– rather neat.
However, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working with updates for these, however I mentioned a couple of concerns I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your list to forward your emails to good friends and associates and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your listing, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you desire. I have actually appear numerous newsletter business provide rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another opportunity for growing your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this article.
Costs memberships
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration profits is most definitely a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be extremely financially rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter needs to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that generates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the things I love concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter Beehiiv Integration with WordPress.
You get access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various 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 (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for many users.
I’m uncertain how the system business economics deal with this, but beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly 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 set up and start sending newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Lots of adaptability with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Create costs choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be honest, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
Yet certainly, I do not wish to be biased so I’m going to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the cons I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my internet site building platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to go in too much information why I love Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow evaluation if you ‘d like to learn more.
Right now, there actually is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site apart from using an iframe embed. I personally do not such as using iframe’s since they often tend to reduce my internet site a little bit. Each time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s really noticeable when you get on a sluggish web link. Yet I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t use a routine Webflow form (which I love utilizing). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would just add extra costs that I don’t require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately produce a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is an excellent service for anyone looking to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far outweighs several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively inexpensive for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not create testimonial messages often. I only do when I in fact use the device myself and would recommend it to a buddy.
I hope you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.