Over two years ago, I read one of my preferred e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and promptly began destroying Beehiiv Terms of Service.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time developer is tough. I’m frequently getting pitched various devices and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological because I invested the last six months experimenting with various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to help develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent alternatives for composing e-newsletters. However I could not find one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me totally customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it extremely simple to create and send out e-mails, and provides me tools that aid me evaluate metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I assume I’ve finally discovered the best tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to style, write, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former employees at the renowned newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help developers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m going to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately opt for it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve watched for a modern-day e-newsletter system for rather a long time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it involved ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain many newsletter developers appreciate prominent newsletters with millions of customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have fantastic content, lots of subscribers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get even a lot more subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to determine how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more customers? How do they produce a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device really recognize newsletter production and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the initial marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer growth.
Since, any kind of developer knows, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the best e-newsletter pile (that scales) frequently indicates making use of numerous various tools to help attain one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can get pricey.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to start utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content designer that wants a platform that enables them to send custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or web content maker, you should seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to get going and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent indicator that people love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful platform utilized by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your own site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own internet site already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site customers directly to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit people to register for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to take advantage of different marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack option.
How to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software program.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply starting (or for those seeking a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Terms of Service
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll likewise select your brand design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed info on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin composing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Analyze.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Start creating is where you produce and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and break them down right into sectors), 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 advertisements, Style is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you want to write about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning writing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly interface for creating.
When you start writing, you can maximize headings, add links, and design your content how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of choices for different types of web content like videos, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally regularly releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot much more material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time clients, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, picture layouts, and extra. I’m not going to undergo ever before single thing you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply try out the platform completely free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it an excellent publishing system for any newsletter creator.
Here are several of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it very easy to compose and send out emails. I mentioned above some of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a web site. Think about it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can sign up for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you a site. However, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is very important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have a site, and desire individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed type. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various alternatives– a complete size, a repaired width, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution monitoring if you wish to onward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working with updates for these, yet I pointed out a couple of problems I had in the pros and cons area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your list to onward your e-mails to pals and associates and if they obtain other people to sign up for your checklist, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever type you want. I have actually seem several e-newsletter firms offer benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you another method for expanding your email listing.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription earnings is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be very financially rewarding depending on what your newsletter needs to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that creates millions in income a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of things I love concerning beehiiv is how clean and easy the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter Beehiiv Terms of Service.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan gives you whatever you require to get started and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for lots of customers.
I’m not sure just how the device economics work with this, but beehiiv is certainly less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are several of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to establish and begin sending e-newsletters totally free.
Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Lots of adaptability with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Create premium alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be honest, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet obviously, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the cons I have actually located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made font styles.
I use Webflow as my web site building platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter too much information why I love Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow review if you would love to find out more.
Right now, there really is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not such as making use of iframe’s because they have a tendency to reduce my website a bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s extremely recognizable when you get on a slow internet connection. But I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not use a normal Webflow form (which I love using). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would simply include extra prices that I don’t require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the disadvantages right here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will eventually develop a better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is a wonderful remedy for any person seeking to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter platform far exceeds many that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather low-cost for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write testimonial messages often. I only do when I in fact utilize the device myself and would recommend it to a buddy.
I hope you discovered some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.