Over 2 years ago, I was reading among my favorite e-mail 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 promptly began wrecking Beehiiv Scale Plan.
I had not been certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time creator is difficult. I’m often obtaining pitched various devices and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I invested the last 6 months experimenting with different email and newsletter systems to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic options for composing newsletters. But I could not find one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The problem with many existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me totally tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it incredibly very easy to write and send out e-mails, and provides me devices that assist me examine metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I believe I have actually finally found the best tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv may 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 platform that makes it very easy to style, create, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous workers at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a modern e-newsletter system for fairly some time now. I’ve postponed hard when it involved lastly releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure lots of newsletter developers appreciate preferred e-newsletters with millions of subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have excellent content, lots of subscribers, and a creative referral program that enables them to get back at more customers.
So, I went on a quest to determine how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they create an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this tool really recognize newsletter production and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker development.
Because, any type of creator recognizes, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the ideal e-newsletter pile (that ranges) commonly indicates utilizing several various tools to aid accomplish one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system 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 start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content creator that wants a system that permits them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most successful newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, startup, or content designer, you ought to seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s totally free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you in fact wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent indicator that individuals enjoy reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is an excellent platform used by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables 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 obtain the word out.
beehiiv also offers you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own website already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your web site clients directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to leverage various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
How to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you access to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, exterior embed types, and extra. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those searching for a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Scale Plan
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise pick your brand colors and design to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin creating,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot over), Begin composing is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and damage them down right 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you wish to discuss, I recommend simply going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning writing”.
You can modify your template and designing later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and user-friendly user interface for creating.
When you start writing, you can optimize headings, add links, and style your content how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for different sorts of content like videos, web links, pictures, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally constantly launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a great deal more content features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, include your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, picture layouts, and much more. I’m not going to undergo ever solitary thing you can optimize with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Just experiment with the platform for free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it an excellent posting platform for any newsletter developer.
Right here are some of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it very simple to create and send out e-mails. I mentioned above a few of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) reside on a web site. Think of it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, offer you a site. However, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom-made domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is important. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or through embed forms.
If you currently have a website, and want individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various alternatives– a full size, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for attribution monitoring if you intend to ahead UTM parameters for tracking functions– quite cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the group is servicing updates for these, however I pointed out a few problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages area 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 urge existing subscribers on your list to forward your emails to pals and colleagues and if they obtain other people to register for your list, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve seem lots of newsletter companies provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you another avenue for growing your email list.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this short article.
Premium memberships
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription income is most definitely a monster of its own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” issues of your newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be extremely profitable depending upon what your newsletter has to use. For example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that produces millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the things I love about beehiiv is just how clean and basic the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Beehiiv Scale Plan.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you whatever you require to get started and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, personalized domain, polls, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the very same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit option for many individuals.
I’m not sure just how the unit economics deal with this, but beehiiv is certainly more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Naturally, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending newsletters totally free.
Clean and contemporary customer analytics.
Lots of flexibility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce costs options to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet obviously, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to mention some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the disadvantages I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made font styles.
I use Webflow as my web site structure system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much detail why I love Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow evaluation if you would love to find out more.
Today, there truly is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than using an iframe embed. I personally do not such as utilizing iframe’s since they have a tendency to slow down my website a bit. Each time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s really recognizable when you get on a slow-moving internet link. However I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not make use of a routine Webflow type (which I enjoy utilizing). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would just include extra prices that I do not need. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I believed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the disadvantages below. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately produce a much better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a terrific service for any person aiming to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform much surpasses several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively affordable of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not write testimonial posts commonly. I only do when I actually make use of the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a buddy.
I hope you found some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.