Over 2 years earlier, I read among my favored e-mail e-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 quickly began tearing up Beehiiv Silver Tier.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time designer is tough. I’m frequently getting pitched various tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional since I invested the last six months trying out various email and newsletter systems to assist construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great options for creating newsletters. Yet I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The concern with several existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely customize my newsletter layouts, makes it super very easy to create and send emails, and provides me devices that help me assess metrics and get more clients.
I assume I’ve lastly discovered the right tool.
But, I understand beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to design, compose, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help designers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally go with it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a modern newsletter system for rather time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it involved ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure many newsletter designers appreciate popular newsletters with millions of subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have excellent content, lots of customers, and a smart referral program that allows them to get even more clients.
So, I took place a hunt to determine exactly how these large newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool actually comprehend newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the initial marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I knew this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Due to the fact that, any kind of designer understands, you require development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the best e-newsletter stack (that scales) often implies utilizing numerous different tools to help accomplish one goal– one system for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish recommendations. It can get costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was free to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material maker that wants a system that allows them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or web content maker, you must seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to begin and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you really wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indicator that people love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic platform utilized by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own web site and utilize the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a website similar to Substack. However, if you have your own web site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site customers directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to utilize different marketing channels to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack option.
How to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, exterior embed types, and more. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting (or for those seeking a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Silver Tier
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally pick your brand name colors and design to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed details on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning writing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Evaluate.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your clients are (and break them down into sectors), Expand is where you have access 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, Style is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you intend to write about, I advise just going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Start composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and easy to use interface for creating.
Once you begin composing, you can optimize headings, include links, and design your material how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for different sorts of content like videos, web links, photos, and more.
The group at beehiiv is also regularly releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot extra content features relying on when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a description, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, picture layouts, and more. I’m not going to go through ever single thing you can maximize with your email template because it’s a whole lot. Just experiment with the system absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a fantastic posting platform for any kind of newsletter designer.
Below are some of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it super very easy to create and send emails. I mentioned above several of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on a web site. Think about it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, give you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a personalized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or with embed forms.
If you currently have a website, and want individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed type. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different options– a full size, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution monitoring if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– rather cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the group is dealing with updates for these, but I discussed a couple of worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your listing to ahead your emails to friends and associates and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually appear numerous newsletter firms provide rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you one more method for growing your e-mail list.
However, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this article.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription earnings is absolutely a beast of its very own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying subscribers. This can be extremely lucrative depending on what your e-newsletter needs to use. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that creates millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the things I like concerning beehiiv is how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Beehiiv Silver Tier.
You get access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer matter increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you whatever you require to get going and grow your newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom domain, surveys, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 each month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit option for many users.
I’m not exactly sure how the system economics service this, yet beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to establish and start sending out newsletters totally free.
Clean and modern-day subscriber analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Create premium alternatives to generate income from.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I have not seen one more e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
However obviously, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m going to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my site building system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter too much detail why I love Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow review if you would love to discover more.
Right now, there truly is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site apart from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not like utilizing iframe’s because they often tend to decrease my internet site a bit. Each time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s very recognizable when you’re on a sluggish web link. But I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow kind (which I enjoy making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would certainly just add added expenses that I don’t need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I assumed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the disadvantages here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will at some point create a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a fantastic service for anyone aiming to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system much surpasses many 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 customers on your list is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not compose testimonial posts typically. I only do when I in fact make use of the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a pal.
I hope you discovered some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.