Over 2 years earlier, I read among my preferred email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and quickly started tearing up Beehiiv Thumbnail.
I wasn’t certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m typically obtaining pitched various tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last six months experimenting with various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to help build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent options for composing newsletters. However I could not discover one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me completely personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it very simple to create and send out emails, and offers me devices that assist me assess metrics and get more customers.
I think I’ve lastly discovered the ideal device.
But, I understand beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact appropriate 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 easy to layout, compose, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist makers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m going to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally opt for it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter system for rather time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it came to ultimately introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure several newsletter developers respect prominent e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have fantastic material, tons of subscribers, and a creative referral program that enables them to get back at more subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to identify just how these big newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they develop a newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool really understand e-newsletter creation and development.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the initial marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Due to the fact that, any developer recognizes, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the ideal e-newsletter pile (that ranges) usually indicates making use of numerous various tools to aid attain one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to set up referrals. It can get expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was free to start using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that desires a platform that enables them to send custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or web content developer, you should seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s entirely free to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you in fact end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indicator that individuals like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is an excellent platform made use of by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your own site and use the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally offers you an internet site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own website currently, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your internet site clients straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit people to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to utilize various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start 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, an e-newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, external embed types, and extra. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Thumbnail
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your main control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have described info on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start writing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Analyze.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot over), Begin writing is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your customers are (and break them down right 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 e-newsletter with ads, Layout 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 take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you wish to cover, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning writing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and user-friendly interface for creating.
When you begin composing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and design your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for various kinds of content like videos, links, photos, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is also constantly releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot extra material features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, image layouts, and extra. I’m not going to experience ever before single point you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Simply check out the system for free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a great publishing system for any type of newsletter maker.
Here are a few of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it very easy to compose and send emails. I stated above a few of the important things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive on a site. Think about it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, provide you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a personalized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or with embed types.
If you currently have an internet site, and want individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different options– a full size, a fixed width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an alternative for attribution tracking if you intend to forward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the group is working on updates for these, however I pointed out a couple of issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your listing to onward your emails to good friends and associates and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your list, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually appear numerous newsletter firms offer rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another method for expanding your e-mail listing.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this article.
Costs subscriptions
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration income is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be extremely rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter needs to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
One of the important things I like about beehiiv is how clean and easy the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter Beehiiv Thumbnail.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you everything you need to start and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain, polls, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for several customers.
I’m uncertain exactly how the system business economics deal with this, however beehiiv is certainly less costly (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters totally free.
Clean and contemporary client analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop costs alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter system that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
However obviously, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I have actually located while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my site structure platform of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow review if you want to learn more.
Today, there truly is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t like using iframe’s since they have a tendency to reduce my website a little bit. Each time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s really obvious when you’re on a sluggish web connection. However I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow kind (which I love making use of). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would simply include extra prices that I do not need. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will ultimately develop a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent service for anyone wanting to dive into the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform far outweighs several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather economical wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not create testimonial messages commonly. I only do when I in fact make use of the tool myself and would advise it to a close friend.
I hope you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.