Over two years back, I was reading one of my preferred email 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 immediately began tearing up Beehiiv Tip Jar.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a permanent maker is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched different devices and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last six months checking out different email and e-newsletter systems to assist develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful alternatives for composing e-newsletters. Yet I could not discover one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me totally tailor my e-newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly simple to write and send out emails, and gives me devices that assist me evaluate metrics and obtain even more clients.
I assume I’ve finally found the appropriate device.
Yet, I understand 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 platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it very easy to layout, write, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the well-known newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly select it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter system for fairly some time now. I’ve procrastinated hard when it involved finally introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure numerous newsletter makers admire prominent e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have terrific material, tons of customers, and a creative referral program that permits them to get even extra customers.
So, I took place a quest to find out exactly how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they create a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device actually recognize e-newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the very first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I understood this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Since, any kind of developer understands, you need development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the best newsletter pile (that scales) commonly implies making use of multiple various tools to aid achieve 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 discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was cost-free 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 web content designer that wants a system that enables them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or material creator, you should seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to begin and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you really wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indication that people love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a wonderful platform made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own site and use the system as your all-in-one option for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv also offers you an internet site similar to Substack. But, if you have your own website currently, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your site customers right to your beehiiv email checklist. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit individuals to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to take advantage of various marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack choice.
How to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those trying to find a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Tip Jar
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise choose your brand name colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start writing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Assess.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings alternative.
Control panel is your major control center (screenshot above), Begin composing is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your customers are (and break them down into segments), Grow is where you have access 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, Design is where you create your newsletter landing page and article template, Examine 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 starting, and have an idea you wish to blog about, I advise just mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and easy to use user interface for composing.
As soon as you start composing, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your material exactly how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of options for different types of content like video clips, web links, pictures, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is likewise frequently releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a great deal a lot more content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your email template and change some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image formats, and more. I’m not going to go through ever solitary thing you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply try the platform absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of impressive features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter maker.
Right here are several of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it super simple to create and send e-mails. I mentioned over a few of things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the far better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) reside on a web site. Consider it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, offer you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a personalized domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or with embed forms.
If you already have a website, and want individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed type. This is what I make use of 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 three various choices– a complete width, a fixed size, and a slim installed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for attribution monitoring if you intend to ahead UTM parameters for tracking objectives– quite neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is dealing with updates for these, however I pointed out a couple of concerns 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 newsletter system, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your checklist to onward your emails to friends and colleagues and if they get other individuals to sign up for your list, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually seem several e-newsletter companies offer incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– offering you an additional method for expanding your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this post.
Premium registrations
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration earnings is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be extremely rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter needs to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that creates millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the things I enjoy about beehiiv is how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter Beehiiv Tip Jar.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you everything you require to begin and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain, polls, and access to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for lots of individuals.
I’m not exactly sure just how the device business economics work on this, yet beehiiv is definitely cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Naturally, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and modern-day customer analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Create premium options to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be honest, I haven’t seen one more newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
But naturally, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m going to point out some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I have actually located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized font styles.
I use Webflow as my internet site building system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in too much detail why I love Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow review if you ‘d like to discover more.
Right now, there actually is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to decrease my website a bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s really obvious when you’re on a slow internet connection. Yet I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not make use of a routine Webflow kind (which I enjoy making use of). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would certainly simply include extra prices that I do not need. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the cons right here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will eventually create a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a fantastic solution for any individual looking to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system much surpasses several that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively cheap for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not compose evaluation blog posts commonly. I only do when I in fact make use of the device myself and would recommend it to a friend.
I wish you discovered some clarity on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.