Over two years back, I was reading among my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and quickly started tearing up Beehiiv Vs Contentful.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time developer is tough. I’m typically obtaining pitched different devices and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last six months trying various email and newsletter platforms to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great options for composing newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The issue with several existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely customize my newsletter layouts, makes it very very easy to compose and send out emails, and provides me tools that assist me analyze metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I assume I have actually lastly located the best device.
But, I understand beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to style, create, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former workers at the famous e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly choose it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter system for quite a long time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it concerned ultimately introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous newsletter creators look up to prominent newsletters with numerous subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have excellent material, lots of subscribers, and a creative referral program that permits them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I went on a hunt to identify how these large newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they develop a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool actually comprehend newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the very first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Due to the fact that, any kind of developer recognizes, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the right e-newsletter pile (that scales) commonly suggests using multiple different tools to assist achieve one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish references. It can obtain pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was cost-free to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that desires a system that permits them to send out customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, startup, or content developer, you must seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely free to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you really wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent sign that individuals enjoy reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific system utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own web site and use the platform as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv also offers you a website comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own internet site already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your site subscribers right to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit people to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to leverage different marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
How to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you accessibility to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, exterior embed types, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting out (or for those searching for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Vs Contentful
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand name colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have described information on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start composing,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot above), Beginning writing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your clients are (and break them down right into sectors), Grow 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 design your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you intend to discuss, I advise just going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and straightforward user interface for writing.
As soon as you start composing, you can maximize headings, add web links, and design your material just how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of alternatives for different kinds of content like videos, web links, photos, and more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise continuously launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot more content features depending upon when you read this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email 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 modify background colors, borders, spacing, font styles, photo layouts, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before solitary point you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Just check out the system free of cost and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a fantastic posting system for any type of e-newsletter creator.
Below are some of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it very very easy to compose and send e-mails. I stated above a few of things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the much better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) live on a website. Think of it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can sign up for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, offer you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a personalized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv site or through embed forms.
If you already have a website, and want people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various alternatives– a complete width, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for attribution monitoring if you want to onward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– quite cool.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working on updates for these, however I mentioned a couple of worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your listing to ahead your emails to pals and colleagues and if they get other people to subscribe to your list, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve appear many newsletter firms offer rewards 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– giving you an additional method for expanding your email list.
However, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this write-up.
Costs registrations
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration income is absolutely a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be extremely financially rewarding depending upon what your newsletter has to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that generates millions in income a year simply by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among things I like about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter Beehiiv Vs Contentful.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client count rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you whatever you need to get going and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for several customers.
I’m not sure how the unit economics work with this, yet beehiiv is certainly less expensive (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters absolutely free.
Tidy and modern-day customer analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop costs alternatives to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has been able to package all of these features together so well.
Yet of course, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m going to point out some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized typefaces.
I use Webflow as my site structure system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much information why I like Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow evaluation if you would love to discover more.
Today, there really is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site besides using an iframe embed. I personally do not like making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to slow down my site a bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s really recognizable when you’re on a slow-moving web link. But I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow type (which I enjoy making use of). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would just include added prices that I do not require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I thought I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the cons below. I’m also confident that Webflow will ultimately produce a far better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for any person looking to dive into the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system much surpasses several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly inexpensive wherefore 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 into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create testimonial posts typically. I only do when I actually make use of the device myself and would certainly advise it to a close friend.
I hope you located some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.