Over two years back, I was reading one of my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and quickly started wrecking Beehiiv Subscription.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent maker is difficult. I’m frequently getting pitched various tools and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological because I invested the last six months trying various email and newsletter systems to aid build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic options for creating e-newsletters. However I could not find one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me totally personalize my e-newsletter styles, makes it incredibly easy to create and send out emails, and gives me devices that help me evaluate metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I think I have actually lastly discovered the right device.
But, I understand beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal 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 very easy to design, write, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former workers at the well-known e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help designers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this article, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately opt for it as my newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve watched for a modern newsletter platform for fairly a long time now. I’ve procrastinated hard when it came to lastly launching my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure many newsletter developers appreciate preferred e-newsletters with millions of clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have wonderful material, tons of subscribers, and a creative referral program that permits them to get even much more customers.
So, I went on a search to determine just how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they create a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool actually recognize e-newsletter creation and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the initial marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I knew this was going to be a various newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker development.
Because, any type of maker understands, you need development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the best newsletter stack (that scales) commonly means using numerous various tools to aid achieve one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to set up referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was free to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content maker that wants a system that permits them to send out custom newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or content creator, you ought to seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you actually end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent indicator that individuals like reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific system made use of by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own web site and use the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv also provides you an internet site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own website already, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site clients straight to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit individuals to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to leverage various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack choice.
Exactly how to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and extra. It’s a very generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those seeking a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Subscription
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also choose your brand name design and colors to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described details on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning composing,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Begin composing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can watch who your customers are (and break them down into sections), Expand is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Style is where you create your newsletter landing page and post template, Evaluate 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 e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you wish to cover, I recommend simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Start composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use interface for creating.
When you start composing, you can maximize headings, include links, and style your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for various types of web content like videos, web links, pictures, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is also frequently launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a great deal a lot more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your email template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to first time customers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever solitary thing you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply try out the system absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it a terrific publishing system for any type of e-newsletter developer.
Right here are a few of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it super very easy to write and send e-mails. I stated above several of the things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly among the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive a web site. Consider it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, give you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a personalized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter right from your beehiiv website or with embed forms.
If you currently have an internet site, and want individuals to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed form. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three various choices– a full width, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to ahead UTM parameters for tracking purposes– rather neat.
However, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the group is working on updates for these, however I stated a few issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks area 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 checklist to ahead your e-mails to pals and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to register for your list, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I have actually appear many e-newsletter business give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you another method for expanding your e-mail listing.
Nonetheless, 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 on in this short article.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration earnings is absolutely a beast of its very own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be extremely lucrative depending upon what your newsletter has to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that creates millions in income a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among things I love about beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Beehiiv Subscription.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you whatever you need to start and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain, surveys, and access to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for lots of customers.
I’m uncertain exactly how the unit business economics service this, yet beehiiv is certainly less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
Easy to establish and begin sending e-newsletters totally free.
Tidy and contemporary customer analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce premium choices to monetize.
Polls.
To be truthful, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
However obviously, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my website structure system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow testimonial if you would love to learn more.
Today, there truly is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site besides making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t like making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to reduce my website a bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s extremely visible when you’re on a slow-moving internet connection. However I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a routine Webflow form (which I like utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would certainly simply include added expenses that I don’t require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the cons here. I’m also confident that Webflow will ultimately create a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a wonderful service for any individual looking to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform much surpasses many that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather cheap for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not compose review blog posts typically. I just do when I in fact use the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a friend.
I wish you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.