Over two years ago, I was reading one of my preferred email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and promptly started tearing up Beehiiv To WordPress.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time maker is difficult. I’m often getting pitched different devices and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last six months trying different email and newsletter platforms to assist construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great alternatives for creating e-newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me totally tailor my newsletter styles, makes it very easy to create and send out emails, and gives me tools that help me analyze metrics and obtain more clients.
I believe I have actually finally located the ideal device.
However, I understand beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it simple to style, create, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous employees at the renowned newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately opt for it as my newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually watched for a contemporary e-newsletter system for quite a long time currently. I’ve postponed hard when it pertained to ultimately introducing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous e-newsletter developers appreciate popular e-newsletters with countless clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have terrific content, tons of clients, and a clever referral program that allows them to get even much more clients.
So, I went on a quest to find out just how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they create an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device truly recognize e-newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker growth.
Because, any kind of designer recognizes, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the right newsletter pile (that scales) typically implies utilizing numerous various tools to aid attain one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up recommendations. It can get costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, 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 material designer that wants a system that enables them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or material creator, you ought to seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to get going and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you in fact end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great indicator that individuals like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful system used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you an internet site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your site customers directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit people to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack option.
How to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software application.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, outside embed types, and extra. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply starting (or for those searching for a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv To WordPress
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally pick your brand name design and colors to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have outlined information on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning creating,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you create and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your clients are (and break them down into segments), Grow is where you have access to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you develop your newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you intend to blog about, I suggest just mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin creating”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– focus on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and straightforward interface for creating.
When you start creating, you can maximize headings, include web links, and design your material exactly how you like.
beehiiv offers you lots of alternatives for different sorts of material like video clips, web links, pictures, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is additionally frequently launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a whole lot a lot more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and change some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to first time clients, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, image styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before solitary point you can enhance with your email template because it’s a great deal. Simply try out the platform totally free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it an excellent publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter maker.
Here are several of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it very very easy to create and send out e-mails. I mentioned over some of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll save you some added reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely one of the better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on an internet site. Think about it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can sign up for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, provide you a website. However, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv web site or through embed types.
If you currently have a site, and desire people to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed kind. 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 kinds, you have 3 different choices– a full size, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s also an option for attribution tracking if you intend to ahead UTM specifications for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is servicing updates for these, however I stated a few concerns 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 solution for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your list to forward your emails to pals and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your listing, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve appear lots of newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you one more method for expanding your email list.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more 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. Subscription income is most definitely a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” problems of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be really rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter has to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the things I love regarding beehiiv is just how tidy and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter Beehiiv To WordPress.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client count go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you whatever you require to get going and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for several customers.
I’m uncertain exactly how the unit economics work on this, however beehiiv is definitely cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters completely free.
Tidy and contemporary customer analytics.
Great deals of versatility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Create premium options to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen one more newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet obviously, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the cons I have actually discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my website structure platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much detail why I love Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow testimonial if you want to learn more.
Today, there truly is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t like making use of iframe’s because they tend to slow down my site a bit. Each time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s very obvious when you get on a slow-moving net connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow form (which I like using). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier but that would simply include additional prices that I don’t require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I believed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately develop a much better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a terrific remedy for anyone aiming to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter system far exceeds several that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather economical of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not create testimonial posts commonly. I just do when I really make use of the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a pal.
I wish you located some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.