Over two years earlier, I read among my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and instantaneously started tearing up Beehiiv Marketplace.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a full-time developer is difficult. I’m commonly obtaining pitched different devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological because I invested the last 6 months experimenting with different email and newsletter systems to aid construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent options for creating newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me totally tailor my newsletter layouts, makes it very simple to write and send e-mails, and offers me tools that help me evaluate metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I assume I have actually finally found the right device.
But, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to style, compose, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by previous staff members at the popular e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help designers 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 discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly go with it as my newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter system for fairly time currently. I’ve postponed hard when it involved ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous newsletter designers admire preferred e-newsletters with millions of subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have wonderful web content, tons of clients, and a clever referral program that permits them to get back at more subscribers.
So, I went on a hunt to find out exactly how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they create a newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool truly comprehend newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Since, any type of designer knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate newsletter pile (that ranges) typically implies using multiple different tools to assist achieve one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up recommendations. It can get expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was cost-free to begin using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that desires a platform that permits them to send custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or web content designer, you ought to seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s totally free to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you in fact wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indication that people enjoy reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a terrific system made use of by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own internet site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv also gives you a site similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your web site customers straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit individuals to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to leverage different marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Just how to begin using beehiiv email marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, external embed types, and extra. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those trying to find a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Marketplace
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally pick your brand name colors and design to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed info on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning creating,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Evaluate.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Start creating is where you create and release newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your clients are (and break them down into sectors), Expand is where you have access 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 advertisements, Style is where you develop your newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you wish to blog about, I suggest simply going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Begin creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use user interface for creating.
Once you start writing, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your web content just how you like.
beehiiv offers you lots of options for different sorts of material like video clips, links, pictures, and more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally regularly releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a great deal extra content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time clients, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, image styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever single point you can maximize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Just check out the platform free of cost and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a terrific publishing system for any type of e-newsletter designer.
Here are a few of the important features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it super easy to create and send out emails. I mentioned above some of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) survive a website. Think about it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, offer you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom-made domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is necessary. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or via embed types.
If you currently have a web site, and want people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed type. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various alternatives– a full size, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s also a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to forward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the team is working on updates for these, but I pointed out a few concerns I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your checklist to forward your emails to pals and coworkers and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your list, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve appear lots of e-newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you one more opportunity for expanding your e-mail list.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium memberships
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership earnings is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your 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 financially rewarding depending on what your newsletter needs to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of things I love regarding beehiiv is exactly how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Beehiiv Marketplace.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer count increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you whatever you need to get going and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain, polls, and access to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for numerous individuals.
I’m not sure exactly how the unit economics service this, but beehiiv is certainly more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally 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 option:
Easy to establish and begin sending newsletters totally free.
Tidy and modern subscriber analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create costs alternatives to generate income from.
Polls.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen another newsletter system 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 going to state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made font styles.
I use Webflow as my website structure platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much information why I like Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to find out more.
Now, there actually is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site besides using an iframe embed. I personally don’t like utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to reduce my web site a little bit. Whenever a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the page. It’s very noticeable when you get on a sluggish internet connection. Yet I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not use a routine Webflow type (which I enjoy making use of). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly just include extra expenses that I don’t need. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the cons right here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point create a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a great option for any person seeking to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform much surpasses several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly affordable wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t write evaluation articles frequently. I just do when I actually use the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a friend.
I wish you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.