Over two years back, 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 very first time. I clicked it and immediately started tearing up Beehiiv Stripe.
I had not been certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full-time maker is difficult. I’m usually obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological since I invested the last six months trying different e-mail and newsletter systems to help build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great options for composing newsletters. However I could not locate one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter layouts, makes it extremely very easy to compose and send emails, and offers me tools that help me evaluate metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I assume I’ve finally located the appropriate device.
But, I understand 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 system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to style, compose, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous employees at the famous newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help designers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately opt for it as my newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter system for rather a long time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it pertained to lastly introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain several newsletter developers respect preferred newsletters with numerous subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have fantastic material, lots of subscribers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get back at more subscribers.
So, I took place a search to find out just how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this device really comprehend newsletter production and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the very first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on creator development.
Because, any maker understands, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And finding the right e-newsletter pile (that scales) frequently indicates making use of multiple different devices to aid attain one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up referrals. It can obtain expensive.
So when I found out 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 content developer that wants a platform that enables them to send custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or web content maker, you ought to seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you in fact wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a good sign that individuals enjoy reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great platform used by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a site similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your site subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
How to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those trying to find a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Stripe
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally pick your brand name design and colors to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed information on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning composing,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Start creating is where you produce and publish newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your customers are (and break them down right 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, Style is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you intend to blog about, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and straightforward interface for writing.
As soon as you begin composing, you can enhance headings, add links, and style your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of options for various types of web content like videos, links, pictures, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a great deal more content features depending upon when you read this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to first time customers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, fonts, image layouts, and much more. I’m not going to undergo ever single thing you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a great deal. Just check out the system for free and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a wonderful publishing platform for any type of newsletter developer.
Below are some of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it very easy to write and send emails. I discussed above some of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive on a web site. Think of it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, give you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining 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 types.
If you already have a site, and desire individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various options– a complete width, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s also a choice for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to ahead UTM specifications for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make sure the group is servicing updates for these, yet I pointed out a couple of concerns I had in the pros and cons area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your listing to ahead your emails to buddies and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to register for your list, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve appear lots of e-newsletter companies offer benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you an additional method for expanding your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to an extra superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership profits is most definitely a monster of its own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be really profitable depending on what your newsletter needs to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that creates millions in income a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the important things I like regarding beehiiv is exactly how tidy and easy the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Beehiiv Stripe.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you everything you need to get going and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, surveys, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for many users.
I’m not sure exactly how the unit business economics service this, but beehiiv is absolutely less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Below are several of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce premium options to generate income from.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen one more newsletter platform that has been able to package all of these features together so well.
But certainly, I do not intend to be biased so I’m going to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my site structure system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much information why I love Webflow so much but you can read my Webflow testimonial if you want to learn more.
Right now, there actually is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site besides using an iframe embed. I personally do not such as utilizing iframe’s since they tend to slow down my website a bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s really recognizable when you’re on a slow web connection. But I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can not use a routine Webflow kind (which I enjoy utilizing). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would just add added prices that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I assumed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the cons right here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually create a much better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is an excellent remedy for any individual looking to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system far surpasses several that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather economical wherefore 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 subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not compose review articles frequently. I only do when I actually utilize the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a close friend.
I wish you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.