Over two years back, I read one of my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and quickly started destroying Beehiiv Max Plan.
I wasn’t certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time developer is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched various devices and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological because I spent the last six months trying various email and newsletter systems to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great alternatives for writing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me completely personalize my newsletter styles, makes it extremely very easy to create and send emails, and provides me devices that aid me evaluate metrics and get even more customers.
I think I’ve finally found the right 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 system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to design, write, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former workers at the renowned e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly opt for it as my newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for fairly time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it involved lastly launching my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure many e-newsletter developers appreciate popular newsletters with countless subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have terrific web content, lots of customers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at a lot more clients.
So, I took place a hunt to identify how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they create an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to answer all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that built this device actually recognize newsletter development and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Due to the fact that, any kind of developer recognizes, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the ideal e-newsletter stack (that scales) typically indicates utilizing several various tools to aid accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up references. It can get pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was complimentary to start using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content creator that desires a system that permits them to send customized newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or material creator, you must seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to start and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you actually wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indication that individuals enjoy reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a great system used by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your own web site and utilize the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment 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 motivate your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a website similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own website currently, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site subscribers right to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow people to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to utilize different marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
How to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, exterior embed forms, and more. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Max Plan
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise select your brand name design and colors to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start composing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot above), Begin composing is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your clients are (and break them down into sectors), Expand is where you have accessibility 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 ads, Layout is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you wish to blog about, I advise just mosting likely to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Start creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and user-friendly interface for composing.
When you start creating, you can maximize headings, include web links, and style your material how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for various types of web content like video clips, links, pictures, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is also continuously releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a lot more content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to create your email template and change some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo, activate or off a welcome email to very first time clients, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, image layouts, and more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever single point you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Just try the platform free of charge and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a great publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter designer.
Right here are some of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send e-mails. I mentioned over a few of the things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive 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 an area where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, offer you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a personalized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is necessary. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or through embed types.
If you currently have a site, and desire individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I use on this web 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 choices– a complete width, a dealt with size, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to ahead UTM specifications for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working on updates for these, however I discussed a few issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your list to onward your emails to buddies and associates and if they obtain other individuals to register for your checklist, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually appear many e-newsletter firms give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you another opportunity for growing your email checklist.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this post.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration income is certainly a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be really profitable relying on what your e-newsletter has to use. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that creates millions in profits a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of the important things I enjoy about beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count Beehiiv Max Plan.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you everything you need to get going and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain, surveys, and accessibility to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit option for numerous individuals.
I’m uncertain exactly how the device economics work on this, yet beehiiv is absolutely cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters completely free.
Tidy and modern customer analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce premium choices to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I have not seen another e-newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet of course, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m going to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made fonts.
I use Webflow as my website building system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow evaluation if you wish to learn more.
Today, there really is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than using an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to decrease my website a bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s really recognizable when you’re on a slow-moving web connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow kind (which I like using). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would certainly simply include additional costs that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the cons right here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will ultimately produce a better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
In general, beehiiv is an excellent solution for any individual wanting to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far exceeds numerous 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 also rather affordable wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not compose review posts usually. I only do when I actually make use of the tool myself and would advise it to a buddy.
I wish you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.