Over 2 years ago, I read among my preferred 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 immediately started tearing up Beehiiv Polls.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent developer is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched different devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological because I invested the last 6 months checking out various email and e-newsletter systems to assist develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great options for composing newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with several existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it extremely very easy to write and send emails, and gives me devices that help me examine metrics and get even more clients.
I think I have actually lastly found the best tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to layout, compose, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous workers at the famous e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter system of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a contemporary newsletter system for quite time now. I’ve put things off hard when it concerned ultimately introducing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of e-newsletter creators look up to popular newsletters with countless customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have terrific content, lots of clients, and a smart referral program that allows them to get back at more subscribers.
So, I went on a search to find out how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they create a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer all of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device truly recognize e-newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Due to the fact that, any kind of developer understands, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the right e-newsletter stack (that ranges) typically implies utilizing multiple different devices to help achieve one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to set up referrals. It can get costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was cost-free to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content maker that wants a system that allows them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or content designer, you ought to seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indicator that individuals enjoy reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great platform made use of by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own website and use the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a website similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your web site subscribers right to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Exactly how to begin making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Register for 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 site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, outside embed forms, and more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those seeking a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Polls
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive on 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 process, you’ll additionally choose your brand name design and colors to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have described info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning composing,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Analyze.” And at the really lower you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you create and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into sectors), Expand 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 advertisements, Design is where you develop your newsletter landing page and message template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you want to write about, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly user interface for writing.
As soon as you begin composing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and design your content how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of choices for different sorts of content like videos, web links, photos, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise regularly launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a whole lot a lot more material features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to create your email template and readjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever single thing you can maximize with your email template because it’s a lot. Simply check out the system for free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a great publishing platform for any kind of newsletter maker.
Below are several of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it super simple to create and send out e-mails. I stated above several of things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on an internet site. Consider it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, offer you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a customized domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is very important. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or via embed forms.
If you currently have a site, and desire people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 different alternatives– a full size, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to onward UTM specifications for tracking functions– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the group is dealing with updates for these, but I discussed a few issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your checklist to onward your e-mails to close friends and associates and if they get other people to subscribe to your list, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever type you want. I’ve seem lots of e-newsletter firms give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you one more opportunity for growing your email list.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership earnings is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely lucrative relying on what your e-newsletter needs to supply. For example, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that creates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is how clean and easy the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count Beehiiv Polls.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer count rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you need to get going and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and access to premium 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 assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for several individuals.
I’m not exactly sure how the system economics deal with this, however beehiiv is definitely cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are some of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Develop premium alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
But obviously, I do not want to be biased so I’m going to state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I have actually discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized fonts.
I use Webflow as my web site building system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive information why I enjoy Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow testimonial if you want to discover more.
Today, there really is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not like using iframe’s because they tend to reduce my site a bit. Each time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the web page. It’s really visible when you’re on a slow internet link. Yet I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not utilize a normal Webflow kind (which I enjoy utilizing). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just add added prices that I do not need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I assumed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the disadvantages right here. I’m also confident that Webflow will eventually develop a better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for any individual wanting to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system far exceeds 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 additionally fairly low-cost wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unprecedented. 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 testimonial blog posts commonly. I just do when I actually use the device myself and would recommend it to a friend.
I wish you discovered some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.