Over 2 years ago, I read one of my favored email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and quickly began wrecking Beehiiv Markdown.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time maker is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological since I invested the last 6 months experimenting with different email and newsletter platforms to help build my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great alternatives for writing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me totally customize my newsletter designs, makes it very easy to create and send out emails, and provides me devices that assist me assess metrics and obtain more customers.
I believe I’ve lastly discovered the ideal device.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it very easy to design, write, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous staff members at the well-known e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help designers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly opt for it as my newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter platform for rather time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it pertained to ultimately introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure several e-newsletter makers respect popular newsletters with numerous customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have great web content, tons of clients, and a clever referral program that permits them to get even a lot more customers.
So, I went on a search to identify how these large newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they produce a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to answer every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool truly comprehend newsletter development and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I recognized this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker development.
Because, any kind of creator knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the ideal newsletter stack (that ranges) typically means using several different tools to aid accomplish one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish recommendations. It can obtain expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was totally free to start making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that wants a platform that permits them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or material maker, you need to seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to begin and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you actually end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indication that individuals like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific system made use of by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own internet site and make use of the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv also provides you an internet site similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own website already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your internet site clients directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow individuals to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to take advantage of different marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack choice.
Just how to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you accessibility to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance personalization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply starting (or for those trying to find a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Markdown
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your 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”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll likewise select your brand design and colors to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined details on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin composing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Examine.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you create and publish newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can watch who your customers are (and break them down 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you design your newsletter landing page and message template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you wish to discuss, I recommend simply going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and user-friendly user interface for creating.
When you start writing, you can maximize headings, add web links, and style your material how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for different sorts of material like videos, web links, images, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is additionally frequently launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a lot extra material features relying 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 design your email template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a description, include your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to first time customers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, picture layouts, and more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever solitary thing you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Simply try the system completely free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a fantastic posting system for any kind of newsletter maker.
Below are some of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it very easy to compose and send emails. I pointed out over a few of the things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll save you some additional reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the much better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive a web site. Consider it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, offer you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom-made domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or with embed forms.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different choices– a full width, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an option for attribution tracking if you wish to onward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the team is servicing updates for these, however I pointed out a few concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your listing to ahead your emails to friends and colleagues and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your list, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve appear numerous newsletter business offer incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you an additional method for expanding your email list.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this post.
Costs registrations
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration earnings is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be very rewarding depending on what your newsletter has to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that generates millions in income a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among things I love regarding beehiiv is just how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter Beehiiv Markdown.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber count go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you whatever you require to get started and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for several customers.
I’m unsure how the device economics deal with this, however beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are several of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to set up and start sending out e-newsletters completely free.
Clean and modern subscriber analytics.
Great deals of versatility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Create premium options to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be honest, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet naturally, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are some of the disadvantages I have actually located while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my internet site building platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much detail why I enjoy Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow review if you wish to find out more.
Today, there truly is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not such as making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to reduce my website a little bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s extremely noticeable when you get on a slow net link. However I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a regular Webflow form (which I love using). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would certainly just add added expenses that I do not need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I thought I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the cons right here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will eventually produce a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent option for anyone looking to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system much surpasses lots of that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively low-cost of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write review articles typically. I just do when I really make use of the device myself and would certainly advise it to a close friend.
I hope you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.