Over two years back, I was reading 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 it and promptly began wrecking Beehiiv Vs Letterdrop.
I had not been certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time developer is tough. I’m often 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 spent the last 6 months experimenting with different email and e-newsletter platforms to aid develop my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great choices for writing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The issue with many existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me completely customize my newsletter layouts, makes it very easy to create and send out e-mails, and provides me tools that aid me evaluate metrics and get more clients.
I assume I have actually lastly found the best device.
But, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it very easy to layout, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the well-known newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately select it as my newsletter system of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day e-newsletter system for quite some time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it concerned ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of e-newsletter designers admire popular e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have great web content, tons of subscribers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at extra clients.
So, I went on a search to determine just how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they create a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool really recognize e-newsletter production and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I understood this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Because, any type of developer understands, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And finding the best newsletter stack (that ranges) commonly indicates making use of numerous different tools to assist attain one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was cost-free to begin making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content designer that desires a system that enables them to send custom newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or web content designer, you need to seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to get going and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you really end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indication that people like reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a great system utilized by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your own internet site and make use of the system as your all-in-one service for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your website customers right to your beehiiv email checklist. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit individuals to register for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
Exactly how to begin making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you accessibility to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, outside embed types, and more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just starting out (or for those searching for a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Vs Letterdrop
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally pick your brand design and colors to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin creating,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Analyze.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your customers are (and damage them down right into sectors), Grow is where you have accessibility 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 newsletter with ads, Style is where you create your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you wish to cover, I advise just mosting likely to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– focus on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and easy to use user interface for composing.
When you begin writing, you can optimize headings, include links, and design your web content how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for various sorts of web content like video clips, web links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is also regularly releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your email template and readjust some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever single point you can maximize with your email template since it’s a lot. Simply try out the system completely free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it an excellent posting system for any kind of e-newsletter designer.
Below are a few of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very easy to compose and send emails. I stated over some of things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll save you some additional reading.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the far better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive a website. Think of it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, offer you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is very important. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv website or with embed types.
If you already have a website, and desire people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed type. This is what I use on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different alternatives– a complete width, a fixed size, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM specifications for tracking functions– pretty neat.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the group is dealing with updates for these, yet I stated a couple of problems I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your list to forward your e-mails to friends and colleagues and if they get other individuals to register for your listing, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever type you want. I’ve appear many newsletter business provide incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you one more method for expanding your e-mail checklist.
However, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this short article.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership revenue is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be very profitable depending on what your e-newsletter has to offer. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the things I love concerning beehiiv is how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count Beehiiv Vs Letterdrop.
You get access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer count go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (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 everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for lots of customers.
I’m not exactly sure just how the unit business economics work on this, yet beehiiv is most definitely more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and start sending out newsletters free of cost.
Clean and contemporary customer analytics.
Lots of adaptability with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Create premium alternatives to generate income from.
Polls.
To be honest, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
However certainly, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my website structure platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much information why I love Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow review if you would love to discover more.
Today, there actually is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t like making use of iframe’s since they often tend to reduce my internet site a little bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s very noticeable when you’re on a sluggish web link. Yet I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a regular Webflow form (which I like using). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would just include added expenses that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the cons below. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point develop a much better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is an excellent service for anyone looking to study the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform much exceeds lots of that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather low-cost 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 can cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose evaluation articles often. I only do when I really make use of the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a close friend.
I wish you located some quality on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.