Over 2 years earlier, I was reading among my favored email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and instantly began destroying Beehiiv Raises.
I wasn’t certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time maker is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched various devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological since I invested the last six months experimenting with various email and newsletter systems to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic options for writing e-newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it very easy to compose and send emails, and offers me devices that help me examine metrics and get more customers.
I think I’ve finally located the appropriate tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to design, write, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous employees at the famous e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help makers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m going to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly opt for it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern newsletter platform for rather a long time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it pertained to ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make certain several e-newsletter designers admire popular e-newsletters with numerous clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have great web content, tons of clients, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even much more clients.
So, I took place a search to determine how these large newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they produce a newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool really understand newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the initial marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Because, any developer recognizes, you require growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the best newsletter stack (that ranges) frequently indicates using numerous different devices to aid achieve one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I found 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 material designer that desires a system that allows them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, startup, or material developer, you ought to seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent indication that individuals enjoy reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great platform used by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own site and utilize the system as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv also provides you an internet site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own website currently, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your internet site subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to utilize various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
Just how to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, external embed types, and a lot more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just starting (or for those searching for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Raises
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any 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 live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also pick your brand name colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described information on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start creating,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your major control center (screenshot over), Start writing is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your customers are (and damage them down right into segments), Expand is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Design is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you want to blog about, I suggest simply going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Begin creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and easy to use user interface for writing.
When you start composing, you can maximize headings, include links, and design your content how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of options for various sorts of material like video clips, web links, images, and more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally constantly releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a whole lot more content features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, picture layouts, and more. I’m not going to experience ever solitary point you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just check out the system totally free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of impressive features that make it a wonderful posting system for any type of newsletter designer.
Right here are several of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly easy to write and send out emails. I discussed above some of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a website. Think of it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and an area where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, provide you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a personalized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or through embed forms.
If you currently have a site, and want people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three different choices– a full size, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to onward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– quite cool.
However, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working with updates for these, but I mentioned a couple of problems I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your checklist to ahead your e-mails to pals and colleagues and if they get other people to subscribe to your listing, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve appear many newsletter companies give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you an additional method for expanding your e-mail listing.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this article.
Costs registrations
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership profits is absolutely a beast of its very own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be really profitable depending upon what your newsletter needs to supply. For example, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
One of things I love about beehiiv is exactly how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count Beehiiv Raises.
You get access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer count rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four 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 (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite generous in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for numerous customers.
I’m unsure just how the device economics service this, but beehiiv is most definitely less costly (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters free of cost.
Clean and modern-day customer analytics.
Lots of adaptability with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Create premium choices to generate income from.
Polls.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter system that has had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet naturally, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to point out some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my website structure system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive information why I like Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow evaluation if you want to discover more.
Right now, there actually is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not like making use of iframe’s because they often tend to slow down my website a bit. Every time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s very recognizable when you’re on a sluggish web connection. Yet I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a routine Webflow form (which I like using). There are methods around this by using a device like Zapier but that would certainly just include added prices that I do not require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point create a much better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is a terrific solution for anybody looking to study the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform much exceeds numerous that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly affordable wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not compose review articles often. I just do when I in fact use the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a close friend.
I wish you located some clarity on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.