Over two years earlier, I read one of my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and instantly began destroying Beehiiv or ConvertKit.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time creator is difficult. I’m commonly obtaining pitched various devices and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I invested the last six months experimenting with different email and e-newsletter platforms to aid construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic options for creating e-newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my newsletter styles, makes it very easy to write and send e-mails, and provides me tools that aid me assess metrics and obtain even more clients.
I believe I’ve finally found the ideal device.
Yet, I understand beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to style, write, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous workers at the popular e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help developers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally opt for it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter system for quite a long time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it involved ultimately introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure several e-newsletter creators respect popular newsletters with numerous subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have great web content, tons of clients, and a smart referral program that permits them to get back at much more customers.
So, I took place a search to find out just how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool truly understand newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the very first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Since, any kind of designer understands, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the ideal newsletter stack (that scales) usually means utilizing several various tools to aid attain one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to establish references. It can obtain pricey.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was totally free to begin making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material maker that desires a system that permits them to send out customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or web content designer, you need to seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely free to start and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you in fact end up having to spend 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 made use of by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own website and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own web site already, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site customers straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to take advantage of various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software program.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you access to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, exterior embed types, and extra. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those searching for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv or ConvertKit
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand name colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start creating,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Examine.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you produce and publish newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view 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 ads, 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 every one of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you wish to cover, I advise simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and easy to use user interface for composing.
As soon as you start composing, you can enhance headings, include web links, and design your web content exactly how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for different sorts of material like videos, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is also constantly launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a great deal a lot more content features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and readjust some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background colors, borders, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before solitary thing you can maximize with your e-mail template because it’s a lot. Simply try the system completely free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it an excellent posting system for any kind of newsletter designer.
Right here are some of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it incredibly simple to compose and send out e-mails. I stated over a few of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll save you some extra reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the much better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) reside on a web site. Consider it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, offer you a website. However, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a personalized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or with embed forms.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire people to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various alternatives– a complete size, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM criteria for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the group is servicing updates for these, yet I pointed out a few worries I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your list to ahead your emails to buddies and associates and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your list, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually appear several newsletter firms provide benefits 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– providing you an additional avenue for growing your e-mail listing.
Nevertheless, to get 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 post.
Premium registrations
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Subscription earnings is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be very lucrative relying on what your e-newsletter has to provide. For example, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among the important things I enjoy about beehiiv is just how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Beehiiv or ConvertKit.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to get going and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom domain, polls, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for many individuals.
I’m not exactly sure just how the device business economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and modern-day customer analytics.
Lots of adaptability with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Develop premium choices to generate income from.
Polls.
To be honest, I have not seen another newsletter platform that has been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet of course, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the cons I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made fonts.
I use Webflow as my website building system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much detail why I love Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow review if you would love to find out more.
Right now, there truly is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not like utilizing iframe’s since they tend to slow down my site a bit. Every single time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s really noticeable when you get on a slow web link. But I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not use a routine Webflow form (which I love using). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would certainly simply include added costs that I don’t require. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the disadvantages right here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will eventually create a better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for anyone wanting to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system much exceeds many 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 likewise fairly inexpensive of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review messages typically. I just do when I actually utilize the device myself and would advise it to a pal.
I wish you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.