Over two years back, I read among my favorite email 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 instantly began wrecking Beehiiv Surveys.
I had not been sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a full-time creator is tough. I’m often obtaining pitched different devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological since I spent the last 6 months trying different e-mail and newsletter platforms to aid construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic alternatives for composing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with many existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me totally tailor my newsletter styles, makes it super simple to create and send emails, and offers me tools that aid me evaluate metrics and get even more customers.
I believe I’ve ultimately located the ideal device.
However, I understand beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to style, write, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous staff members at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly choose it as my e-newsletter system of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a modern e-newsletter platform for rather some time now. I’ve postponed hard when it involved finally introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain many e-newsletter designers appreciate preferred newsletters with numerous clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have great web content, tons of clients, and a creative referral program that enables them to get back at more subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to find out exactly how these large newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool truly comprehend e-newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker development.
Due to the fact that, any creator understands, you need growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that ranges) usually implies using several different devices to help accomplish one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin using, 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 customized newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or web content designer, you must seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you in fact end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great indicator that people love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic platform used by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your own website and use the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv also gives you a website similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own website currently, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site customers right to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit people to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
How to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Enroll in a free plan
The primary step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, outside embed forms, and extra. It’s a very generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those looking for a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Surveys
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally pick your brand colors and design to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined information on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin creating,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Analyze.” And at the very lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your clients are (and break them down into sectors), Grow 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 advertisements, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you intend to blog about, I advise simply going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and user-friendly user interface for creating.
As soon as you start composing, you can enhance headings, add links, and style your web content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for various sorts of material like video clips, links, images, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally continuously launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a lot a lot more material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your email template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, fonts, picture formats, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before single point you can optimize with your e-mail template since it’s a whole lot. Just check out the system absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a fantastic posting system for any kind of e-newsletter developer.
Here are several of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it extremely easy to create and send e-mails. I pointed out over some of things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the far better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive an internet site. Think of it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, provide you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom-made domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or with embed forms.
If you already have a website, and want people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I use on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different choices– a full size, a dealt with size, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s also a choice for attribution monitoring if you want to onward UTM specifications for tracking functions– quite cool.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the group is dealing with updates for these, but I mentioned a couple of issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your list to ahead your e-mails to pals and colleagues and if they get other people to register for your listing, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you want. I have actually appear numerous e-newsletter business give incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you one more opportunity for expanding your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this post.
Costs registrations
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription profits is certainly a monster of its very own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be really financially rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter has to supply. For example, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that generates millions in income a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among things I love about beehiiv is just how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Beehiiv Surveys.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client count rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you whatever you need to begin and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain, surveys, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for lots of users.
I’m uncertain just how the unit business economics work on this, however beehiiv is most definitely less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to establish and start sending out newsletters totally free.
Clean and modern-day client analytics.
Lots of versatility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce premium alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I have not seen another e-newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
Yet certainly, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my website building platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive detail why I like Webflow so much yet you can review my Webflow evaluation if you ‘d like to find out more.
Today, there actually is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides using an iframe embed. I personally do not like using iframe’s because they tend to slow down my web site a little bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s really noticeable when you’re on a sluggish net link. However I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow type (which I love using). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would simply add added prices that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I assumed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will at some point produce a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a wonderful solution for any person aiming to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system much outweighs many that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather low-cost of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t compose evaluation posts frequently. I only do when I in fact utilize the device myself and would suggest it to a buddy.
I hope you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.