Over 2 years back, I was reading among my preferred e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and instantaneously began wrecking Beehiiv Starter.
I had not been certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched various tools and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological because I spent the last six months trying out different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to help construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent options for writing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me completely personalize my newsletter styles, makes it extremely easy to write and send out e-mails, and offers me tools that assist me evaluate metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I think I’ve finally located the best device.
But, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everybody. 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 e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to design, write, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the famous e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this article, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly choose it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for rather a long time currently. I’ve postponed hard when it pertained to ultimately launching my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make sure numerous e-newsletter makers respect prominent e-newsletters with countless customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have great content, lots of subscribers, and a clever referral program that permits them to get even more subscribers.
So, I took place a search to figure out exactly how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to answer every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device actually understand e-newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer development.
Because, any kind of designer recognizes, you need growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the ideal newsletter pile (that ranges) commonly indicates utilizing multiple various devices to assist accomplish one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to set up references. It can obtain costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, 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 maker that desires a platform that permits them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
The most successful newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, start-up, or material creator, you should seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you really end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a great sign that people enjoy reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a terrific system utilized by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own site and utilize the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while developing 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 much better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a web site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own website already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your website clients right to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to utilize various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software application.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, outside embed types, and more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those looking for a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Starter
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise select your brand design and colors to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
Once you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning creating,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your clients are (and break them down into segments), 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 e-newsletter with ads, Design is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you wish to write about, I recommend just going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and user-friendly user interface for creating.
When you begin creating, you can enhance headings, include links, and style your content exactly how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of options for various sorts of material like video clips, web links, images, and more.
The team at beehiiv is also frequently launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot a lot more content features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to design your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo, activate or off a welcome email to first time customers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background shades, borders, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and more. I’m not going to go through ever solitary point you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply try the platform for free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a great posting platform for any kind of newsletter maker.
Below are several of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely simple to write and send e-mails. I pointed out above some of the things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
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 email editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on a website. Think of it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, offer you a website. However, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or through embed kinds.
If you currently have a web site, and desire people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three various choices– a full width, a fixed size, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution monitoring if you intend to onward UTM parameters for tracking functions– quite cool.
However, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the group is servicing updates for these, yet I discussed a few concerns I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your checklist to ahead your e-mails to good friends and coworkers and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually seem several e-newsletter companies give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you one more method for expanding your email listing.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this article.
Costs registrations
They claim all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership earnings is definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be really financially rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to provide. For example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the things I like regarding beehiiv is how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count Beehiiv Starter.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your dashboard 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 listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you whatever you need to get going and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, personalized domain, polls, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 per month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for many users.
I’m uncertain just how the unit business economics work with this, but beehiiv is definitely more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and start sending out e-newsletters free of cost.
Clean and modern customer analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop costs choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I have not seen one more newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet obviously, I do not want to be biased so I’m going to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the cons I have actually discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my web site building platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive detail why I like Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to discover more.
Right now, there really is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than using an iframe embed. I personally don’t like making use of iframe’s because they often tend to reduce my site a little bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s extremely visible when you’re on a slow-moving web connection. But I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a routine Webflow kind (which I enjoy making use of). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier but that would simply add additional expenses that I do not need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I thought I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the cons here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will at some point create a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a fantastic option for any person seeking to dive into the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system much surpasses many that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly cheap for 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 each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose testimonial posts often. I just do when I really use the tool myself and would suggest it to a friend.
I hope you found some quality on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.