Over two years earlier, I read among my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and promptly began destroying Beehiiv Premium Only Subscription.
I had not been certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent maker is tough. I’m frequently getting pitched different devices and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I invested the last 6 months trying out different email and newsletter platforms to assist develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful options for creating newsletters. Yet I could not find one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with several existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me totally customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it extremely simple to compose and send out emails, and gives me devices that help me examine metrics and get more clients.
I assume I have actually ultimately found the right tool.
Yet, I know 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 system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to style, write, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former workers at the well-known e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m going to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve watched for a modern-day newsletter system for quite a long time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it came to ultimately introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain many e-newsletter developers respect prominent newsletters with numerous customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have wonderful content, tons of customers, and a smart referral program that allows them to get back at more subscribers.
So, I took place a hunt to determine how these huge newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they develop a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool really understand newsletter production and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Because, any type of creator knows, you need development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the right newsletter stack (that scales) usually implies making use of multiple various devices to assist achieve one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can get expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was totally free to begin using, it was a piece of cake 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 customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or web content developer, you need to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s totally free to start and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you really end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a good sign that people enjoy reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is an excellent platform made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own web site and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a website similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own web site already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site subscribers right to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow people to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to leverage different marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
How to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, external embed types, and extra. It’s a very generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those searching for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Premium Only Subscription
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally select your brand name colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed details on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin writing,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your clients are (and break them down into segments), 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 newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you want to blog about, I advise simply going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and easy to use user interface for creating.
Once you start writing, you can maximize headings, include web links, and style your material how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of choices for different types of material like video clips, web links, images, and more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot much more material features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a description, include your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, photo formats, and extra. I’m not going to experience ever solitary thing you can maximize with your email template because it’s a great deal. Simply try the platform completely free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter designer.
Below are several of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very very easy to compose and send out e-mails. I mentioned above several of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive 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 newsletter, and an area where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, give you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is very important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire people to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to use an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this web site (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 complete size, a dealt with width, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution monitoring if you intend to onward UTM specifications for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the team is servicing updates for these, but I stated a couple of worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your checklist to ahead your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they get other people to subscribe to your list, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually seem many newsletter firms give incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another method for expanding your email listing.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this article.
Costs subscriptions
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription revenue is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” problems of your newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be very financially rewarding relying on what your newsletter needs to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the things I love regarding beehiiv is how tidy and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter Beehiiv Premium Only Subscription.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer count rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you everything you need to begin and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for numerous customers.
I’m unsure exactly how the unit economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are a few of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
Easy to establish and begin sending out newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and modern customer analytics.
Great deals of versatility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Create costs options to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I have not seen an additional newsletter system that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
But certainly, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m mosting likely to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I’ve located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized typefaces.
I utilize 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 go in too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to find out more.
Right now, there truly is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t like using iframe’s since they have a tendency to slow down my site a little bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s extremely obvious when you’re on a slow web connection. But I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not use a routine Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply include additional costs that I don’t require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I believed I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will eventually develop a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a great remedy for anybody looking to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system far exceeds several that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly affordable for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not compose evaluation messages usually. I just do when I in fact make use of the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a buddy.
I wish you discovered some quality on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.