Over 2 years back, I was reading among my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and promptly began tearing up Beehiiv Time Magazine.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent creator is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched different devices and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I invested the last 6 months trying out different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent choices for creating e-newsletters. But I could not find one that made me offer a definite “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my newsletter styles, makes it extremely easy to create and send out emails, and gives me devices that assist me analyze metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I think I have actually lastly located the appropriate device.
However, I understand beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to design, write, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former employees at the famous e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly select it as my newsletter platform of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for quite a long time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it involved lastly releasing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make sure lots of e-newsletter creators respect prominent e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have wonderful material, lots of customers, and a creative referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more subscribers.
So, I took place a hunt to identify just how these large e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they produce an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this tool actually understand e-newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s focused on creator development.
Because, any designer recognizes, you need development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the appropriate newsletter stack (that scales) usually means making use of numerous various tools to help attain one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that desires a system that permits them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or web content developer, you should seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s completely free to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you in fact end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good sign that people love reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great platform utilized by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own site and utilize the system as your all-in-one service for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise provides you an internet site similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own web site currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your website clients directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable individuals to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack choice.
Just how to begin using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you accessibility to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those seeking a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Time Magazine
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also choose your brand name colors and design to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed details on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning creating,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your major control center (screenshot over), Start writing is where you develop and release newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can watch who your customers are (and break them down into sectors), Grow is where you have accessibility 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, Layout is where you create your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you intend to write about, I suggest simply going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and easy to use interface for writing.
When you start writing, you can enhance headings, include web links, and style your web content how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of alternatives for various sorts of material like videos, links, images, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is also constantly releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a great deal a lot more content features depending upon when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to design your email template and change some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a description, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, photo styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever solitary thing you can optimize with your e-mail template since it’s a great deal. Simply check out the platform free of cost and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a great publishing system for any kind of e-newsletter maker.
Here are some of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it very easy to write and send emails. I pointed out over some of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely one of the better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive a web site. Consider it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, offer you a site. However, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a personalized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is very important. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv website or via embed types.
If you already have a site, and desire people to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various choices– a complete size, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to ahead UTM specifications for tracking functions– rather neat.
However, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the team is working with updates for these, yet I stated a few problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your list to forward your e-mails to close friends and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your listing, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve appear many e-newsletter business give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you one more method for expanding your e-mail listing.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this post.
Costs registrations
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration profits 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 create “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be really profitable relying on what your newsletter needs to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the things I like concerning beehiiv is exactly how tidy and basic the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count Beehiiv Time Magazine.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you every little thing you require to begin and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, customized domain, polls, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit option for lots of users.
I’m not sure just how the unit economics work on this, but beehiiv is most definitely more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are some of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters totally free.
Clean and modern subscriber analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Develop premium options to monetize.
Polls.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
Yet naturally, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site building system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in too much detail why I like Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow testimonial if you wish to discover more.
Now, there truly is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as using iframe’s because they often tend to decrease my website a bit. Every single time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s extremely visible when you’re on a sluggish internet connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a regular Webflow kind (which I like using). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would just include added prices that I don’t require. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I thought I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the disadvantages below. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will eventually produce a much better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a great solution for any person aiming to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system far exceeds numerous that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively cheap for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not compose evaluation blog posts commonly. I only do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a pal.
I wish you located some quality on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.