Over two years back, I read one of my favored email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and instantly began destroying Beehiiv Newsletter Builder.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time designer is difficult. I’m commonly obtaining pitched various devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional since I invested the last six months experimenting with various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent options for composing newsletters. But I could not discover one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me totally personalize my newsletter styles, makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send emails, and provides me devices that help me analyze metrics and get even more subscribers.
I assume I have actually lastly found the right device.
However, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right 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 very easy to layout, create, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the famous e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist designers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly select it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter system for quite a long time now. I’ve hesitated hard when it came to finally introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make certain many e-newsletter designers appreciate preferred e-newsletters with numerous clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have fantastic content, tons of subscribers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even extra customers.
So, I went on a hunt to identify just how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? 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 remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool really comprehend e-newsletter creation and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker growth.
Because, any type of developer understands, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate newsletter stack (that ranges) commonly implies using several different tools to assist achieve one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to set up referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was cost-free to begin utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that wants a system that allows them to send custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
The most successful newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or web content maker, you should seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a good sign that people enjoy reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great system utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own internet site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a web site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site currently, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your site customers directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit individuals to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you access to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, external embed types, and more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those looking for a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Newsletter Builder
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand design and colors to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have described info on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning creating,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Assess.” And at the very lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your major control center (screenshot above), Begin writing is where you develop and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch 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 advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with ads, Design is where you develop your newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you want to cover, I suggest just going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly interface for writing.
When you begin writing, you can optimize headings, include links, and style your web content just how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of alternatives for different types of content like videos, links, pictures, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally regularly launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a great deal more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to design your email template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, picture layouts, and a lot more. I’m not going to experience ever solitary point you can maximize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply experiment with the platform completely free and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a terrific publishing system for any type of e-newsletter creator.
Below are some of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it super simple to compose and send emails. I mentioned over a few of the things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) reside on a website. Think of it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a place where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, give you a website. However, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom-made domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or via embed types.
If you already have an internet site, and desire individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to use an embed form. This is what I utilize on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 different alternatives– a full width, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for attribution monitoring if you wish to forward UTM parameters for tracking functions– rather cool.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the team is dealing with updates for these, but I stated a few concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages area 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 producing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your list to ahead your e-mails to close friends and colleagues and if they obtain other people to register for your checklist, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever form you want. I’ve appear numerous newsletter business offer incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you an additional method for growing your e-mail checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs registrations
They claim all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration income is certainly a monster of its own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be extremely rewarding depending on what your newsletter has to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of the important things I love about beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Beehiiv Newsletter Builder.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer count go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you everything you need to start and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for numerous users.
I’m uncertain how the system economics work on this, yet beehiiv is certainly cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to establish and begin sending e-newsletters completely free.
Clean and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Develop premium options to monetize.
Polls.
To be honest, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet of course, I do not want to be biased so I’m going to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are several of the cons I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my site building system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much detail why I like Webflow so much but you can read my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to learn more.
Today, there truly is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t like making use of iframe’s because they have a tendency to slow down my web site a little bit. Whenever a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s extremely obvious when you’re on a slow-moving web link. But I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow type (which I like utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would certainly simply add extra expenses that I do not require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I thought I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually create a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a wonderful solution for anyone seeking to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system much surpasses several that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly affordable wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review blog posts typically. I only do when I actually utilize the device myself and would advise it to a close friend.
I wish you located some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.