Over 2 years ago, I read among my favored email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and quickly began destroying Beehiiv Seed Deck.
I had not been certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full-time developer is difficult. I’m typically getting pitched various tools and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months trying out different email and newsletter platforms to assist build my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent options for composing newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The concern with several existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me totally personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it super easy to create and send emails, and provides me tools that assist me assess metrics and obtain more customers.
I believe I’ve ultimately located the appropriate tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to style, write, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the renowned e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally opt for it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day e-newsletter system for quite some time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it pertained to finally releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain many newsletter developers respect prominent e-newsletters with millions of subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have fantastic material, lots of customers, and a clever referral program that permits them to get back at a lot more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to find out how these large e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device actually understand newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I understood this was going to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Because, any kind of creator knows, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the ideal e-newsletter pile (that scales) frequently suggests making use of multiple different tools to help attain one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was cost-free to begin utilizing, 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 newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or material creator, you must seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s entirely complimentary to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you in fact end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent sign that people like reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a great platform made use of by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your very own site and make use of the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a web site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own site already, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site clients straight to your beehiiv email checklist. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to leverage various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack alternative.
How to begin making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, exterior embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting (or for those looking for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Seed Deck
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll then produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise pick your brand design and colors to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described details on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning writing,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the really lower you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you develop and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down into sections), Expand is where you have access 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 ads, Design is where you develop your newsletter landing page and post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you intend to cover, I suggest simply going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Start composing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and straightforward user interface for writing.
Once you begin creating, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your material exactly how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of alternatives for different kinds of content like videos, links, images, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise continuously releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a lot a lot more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify background shades, borders, spacing, fonts, picture formats, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before solitary point you can optimize with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Simply experiment with the platform totally free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a fantastic posting system for any newsletter developer.
Here are several of the necessary features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely easy to create and send e-mails. I stated above some of the important things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll save you some additional reading.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on a website. Think of it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, give you a website. However, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a customized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is very important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or through embed forms.
If you currently have a site, and want people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different alternatives– a full size, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s also a choice for attribution tracking if you want to ahead UTM specifications for tracking purposes– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the team is dealing with updates for these, however I pointed out a few problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your list to forward your emails to good friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your listing, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem lots of newsletter companies provide rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your customers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you an additional avenue for growing your e-mail checklist.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this article.
Costs registrations
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership profits is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be very lucrative depending on what your e-newsletter needs to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that produces millions in income a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is just how tidy and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Beehiiv Seed Deck.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you every little thing you need to start and expand your newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
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 costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for several individuals.
I’m uncertain exactly how the unit economics work on this, but beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and begin sending e-newsletters totally free.
Clean and modern client analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Create premium alternatives to generate income from.
Polls.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
However of course, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to point out some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my website structure platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter too much detail why I like Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to learn more.
Today, there really is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to slow down my site a bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s extremely visible when you get on a sluggish internet connection. But I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not utilize a normal Webflow form (which I like using). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would simply add extra prices that I do not need. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I thought I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the disadvantages below. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will eventually create a better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is a great remedy for any individual aiming to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system far exceeds many that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly cheap wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t write review posts frequently. I only do when I actually use the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a good friend.
I wish you discovered some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.