Over two years ago, I read one of my favored e-mail 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 instantaneously started destroying Beehiiv SPF.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full time developer is difficult. I’m commonly obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional since I invested the last 6 months checking out various email and e-newsletter systems to assist develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful choices for creating newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me provide a precise “yes”.
The issue with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me totally personalize my e-newsletter styles, makes it extremely simple to compose and send emails, and gives me devices that help me analyze metrics and obtain more clients.
I assume I have actually finally discovered the right device.
But, I recognize beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to design, write, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the renowned e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help developers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m going to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately choose it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a contemporary e-newsletter system for quite a long time now. I’ve postponed hard when it pertained to ultimately launching my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain lots of newsletter makers admire popular e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have fantastic material, tons of subscribers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at more subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to identify how these big e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they create an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool really recognize newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the very first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I recognized this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on creator growth.
Because, any kind of creator knows, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the best e-newsletter pile (that ranges) usually means making use of numerous various tools to aid accomplish one goal– one system for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was complimentary to begin using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that wants a platform that permits them to send out personalized newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or material designer, you must seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to start and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you really end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indicator that people enjoy 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 platform made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own internet site and make use of the system as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv also provides you a site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own website already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site customers right to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to permit people to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing channels to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
How to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Enroll in a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, external embed types, and a lot more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those seeking a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv SPF
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll then create a name and link for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand name design and colors to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start writing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Analyze.” And at the very lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you develop and publish newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your clients are (and break them down right into sectors), 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 newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you intend to blog about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and user-friendly interface for creating.
Once you start writing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and style your material how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for various sorts of web content like video clips, web links, photos, and more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally frequently launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a lot a lot more material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your email template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history shades, borders, spacing, fonts, picture layouts, and extra. I’m not going to undergo ever before solitary point you can maximize with your e-mail template because it’s a lot. Just experiment with the platform totally free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a wonderful publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter developer.
Here are some of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it super simple to create and send emails. I pointed out over a few of the important things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive a website. Consider it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, provide you a site. However, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a personalized domain to get rid of 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 an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or through embed kinds.
If you already have a site, and want individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use 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 types, you have three different choices– a complete size, a repaired size, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for attribution tracking if you intend to onward UTM parameters for tracking functions– pretty neat.
However, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the group is working with updates for these, but I discussed a few issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your listing to onward your emails to pals and coworkers and if they get other individuals to register for your list, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve appear many e-newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you another method for growing your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this post.
Costs memberships
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription revenue is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be very financially rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that produces millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
One of the things I love regarding beehiiv is exactly how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter Beehiiv SPF.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you whatever you require to begin and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, surveys, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for many individuals.
I’m not sure just how the device business economics service this, however beehiiv is certainly less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and start sending newsletters completely free.
Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Lots of adaptability with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce costs choices to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen another newsletter platform that has been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet naturally, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I’ve discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized typefaces.
I use Webflow as my website building platform of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive detail why I like Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to learn more.
Right now, there really is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides using an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as using iframe’s because they tend to slow down my site a bit. Each time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s extremely recognizable when you get on a slow-moving net connection. But I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow kind (which I love utilizing). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would just include additional costs that I do not require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the cons below. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point develop a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is an excellent option for any individual looking to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system much surpasses lots of that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively affordable of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review articles often. I just do when I really use the device myself and would certainly advise it to a buddy.
I wish you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.