Over two years earlier, I was reading 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 on it and promptly started tearing up Beehiiv Newsletters.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time developer is difficult. I’m usually getting pitched various devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I invested the last 6 months checking out various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent choices for creating newsletters. But I could not locate one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me totally customize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it super very easy to compose and send e-mails, and provides me tools that help me assess metrics and get more clients.
I think I’ve ultimately located the right tool.
But, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually 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 easy to style, write, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous employees at the renowned e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally choose it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a contemporary newsletter platform for rather time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it concerned ultimately introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous newsletter designers admire popular newsletters with numerous subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have great material, tons of subscribers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get back at much more customers.
So, I took place a search to figure out exactly how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they develop a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to answer every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool actually recognize e-newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the very first marketing and development 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 creator development.
Because, any kind of creator recognizes, you require growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the right newsletter pile (that ranges) usually means utilizing several different tools to help attain one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to set up referrals. It can get pricey.
So when I figured out 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 designer that desires a platform that allows them to send out personalized newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or material creator, you must seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you really wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent indication that people love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic platform made use of by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your very own internet site and use the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv likewise gives you an internet site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own website currently, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your web site customers straight to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to utilize various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack option.
How to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you access to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, outside embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those searching for a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Newsletters
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand design and colors to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed information on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start writing,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Analyze.” And at the really lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot over), Begin creating is where you produce and release newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your subscribers are (and break them down right into sections), Expand is where you have access 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 newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you wish to discuss, I advise simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning writing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and straightforward user interface for creating.
As soon as you start creating, you can enhance headings, add web links, and style your material just how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of alternatives for different kinds of material like videos, links, images, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is additionally constantly releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a lot a lot more content features depending upon when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and change some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, include your logo, activate or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, fonts, photo formats, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever single point you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply check out the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a terrific publishing platform for any kind of newsletter creator.
Below are several of the essential features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to write and send out e-mails. I mentioned above a few of the things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) live on an internet site. Consider it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, offer you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update 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 newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or with embed forms.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three various choices– a full size, a dealt with size, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for attribution monitoring if you wish to onward UTM specifications for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the team is working with updates for these, but I mentioned a couple of worries I had in the pros and cons area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your list to forward your emails to friends and associates and if they obtain other people to register for your checklist, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually appear numerous e-newsletter firms provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you another method for expanding your email listing.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this write-up.
Costs registrations
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription earnings is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be very profitable depending on what your e-newsletter needs to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that generates millions in profits a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among things I love about beehiiv is exactly how clean and easy the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Beehiiv Newsletters.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on just how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber count go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you everything you need to get going and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit alternative for numerous individuals.
I’m not exactly sure just how the system business economics work on this, but beehiiv is absolutely cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are a few of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and begin sending e-newsletters completely free.
Tidy and contemporary customer analytics.
Lots of flexibility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create costs alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be honest, I have not seen another newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet certainly, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the disadvantages I’ve located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized font styles.
I use Webflow as my web site structure system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive detail why I love Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to discover more.
Today, there really is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to slow down my website a little bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s really recognizable when you’re on a sluggish web connection. But I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not use a normal Webflow form (which I like utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would certainly just add additional prices that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I believed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the disadvantages right here. I’m also confident that Webflow will at some point create a much better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is a great remedy for anybody looking to study the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system much surpasses numerous that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather affordable wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t write testimonial messages usually. I just do when I actually make use of the device myself and would certainly advise it to a pal.
I hope you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.