Over 2 years back, 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 on it and instantly began destroying Beehiiv RSS Feed.
I had not been certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full time creator is tough. I’m often obtaining pitched various devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional because I invested the last six months checking out different email and e-newsletter systems to assist build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic choices for composing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The issue with several existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely customize my e-newsletter designs, makes it incredibly easy to write and send emails, and provides me tools that help me analyze metrics and obtain more clients.
I believe I’ve lastly discovered the appropriate device.
However, 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 e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it very easy to style, create, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the renowned newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly select it as my e-newsletter system of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern newsletter system for fairly time now. I’ve hesitated hard when it involved finally releasing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of e-newsletter developers look up to prominent e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have fantastic content, tons of clients, and a clever referral program that permits them to get even extra clients.
So, I went on a hunt to find out just how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they create a newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool really recognize e-newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the initial marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I knew this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Because, any kind of developer knows, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And finding the best e-newsletter pile (that ranges) commonly suggests making use of several different tools to aid achieve one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was cost-free to start making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that wants a platform that permits them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, start-up, or material maker, you need to seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to get started and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indication that individuals love reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic system utilized by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your very own website and make use of the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv additionally gives you an internet site similar to Substack. However, if you have your own site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your web site subscribers right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow people to register for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to utilize various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
Just how to start using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and more. It’s a really charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those searching for a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv RSS Feed
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and much more.
You’ll then produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll likewise pick your brand colors and design to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined information on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin writing,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Analyze.” And at the really lower you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you develop and release newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your customers are (and damage them down right into sections), 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 advertisements, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you intend to write about, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and straightforward interface for composing.
When you begin composing, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your material just how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for various sorts of material like video clips, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is also regularly releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a whole lot much more content features depending on when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo styles, and more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before solitary point you can optimize with your e-mail template since it’s a great deal. Simply try the system free of charge and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of impressive features that make it a fantastic posting platform for any type of e-newsletter designer.
Here are a few of the essential features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly simple to compose and send e-mails. I discussed above a few of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the much better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on an internet site. Think about it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, offer you an internet site. However, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a customized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is very important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or via embed types.
If you currently have a site, and want people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different options– a complete width, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s also a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to onward UTM specifications for tracking functions– rather cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the group is servicing updates for these, yet I stated a few issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your listing to onward your emails to buddies and coworkers and if they obtain other people to sign up for your checklist, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve appear lots of e-newsletter business offer 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– offering you another avenue for growing your email list.
Nonetheless, to obtain access 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 short article.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration income is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be very lucrative depending on what your newsletter needs to supply. For example, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that generates millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I love regarding beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Beehiiv RSS Feed.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count rise is most 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 provides you every little thing you need to start and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain, polls, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for lots of individuals.
I’m uncertain how the device economics work with this, but beehiiv is certainly less expensive (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are several of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to establish and start sending newsletters completely free.
Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Lots of flexibility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop premium alternatives to generate income from.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features together so well.
But naturally, I do not intend to be biased so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made fonts.
I use Webflow as my site building system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much information why I like Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to discover more.
Right now, there really is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site apart from using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to decrease my website a bit. Each time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s very noticeable when you get on a sluggish net link. Yet I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t use a routine Webflow kind (which I love utilizing). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply add additional expenses that I don’t need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I thought I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the cons below. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will eventually create a far better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a fantastic solution for any person looking to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system much outweighs lots of that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively inexpensive for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write review blog posts usually. I just do when I actually use the device myself and would certainly advise it to a close friend.
I wish you discovered some clarity on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.