Over 2 years ago, I read one of my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and immediately began destroying Beehiiv Vs Substack Vs Medium.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time creator is tough. I’m typically getting pitched different devices and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological because I invested the last six months experimenting with different email and e-newsletter systems to help develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great alternatives for creating newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with several existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my newsletter layouts, makes it very easy to compose and send emails, and offers me devices that assist me evaluate metrics and obtain more customers.
I assume I’ve lastly found the ideal tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to layout, compose, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the renowned newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short 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 lastly select it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter system for fairly time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it concerned finally launching my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure many e-newsletter makers appreciate prominent newsletters with countless customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have terrific content, tons of customers, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get back at much more customers.
So, I went on a hunt to find out exactly how these large newsletters established their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more customers? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device truly comprehend e-newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the very first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I understood this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Since, any kind of creator understands, you need development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And finding the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that ranges) frequently means utilizing several various devices to help achieve one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to set up referrals. It can get pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that desires a platform that allows them to send customized newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
The most effective newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or web content maker, you ought to seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you really wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indication that people like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful platform utilized by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your very own web site and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a web site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site already, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site subscribers directly to your beehiiv email list. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to take advantage of various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
How to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, exterior embed types, and extra. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those searching for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Vs Substack Vs Medium
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also select your brand name design and colors to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed information on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning composing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your major control center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and damage them down into sectors), Expand 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 newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you develop your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you wish to discuss, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Start creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– focus on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and easy to use interface for writing.
Once you begin composing, you can maximize headings, include links, and design your content just how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of options for various sorts of web content like videos, links, photos, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally constantly launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a whole lot extra content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, photo formats, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before single thing you can optimize with your email template because it’s a whole lot. Simply try out the system completely free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a fantastic publishing system for any newsletter creator.
Below are several of the important features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it super very easy to create and send e-mails. I pointed out above several of the things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) live on a site. Consider it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a place where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, give you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is essential. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or through embed types.
If you already have a site, and desire individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed kind. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various options– a complete width, a dealt with size, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s also an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM parameters for tracking objectives– rather cool.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the team is working with updates for these, yet I pointed out a few problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your list to onward your e-mails to good friends and colleagues and if they obtain other people to sign up for your listing, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem many newsletter business offer rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you one more avenue for expanding your email list.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more superior plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium memberships
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Subscription revenue is absolutely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be extremely financially rewarding depending upon what your newsletter has to supply. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that creates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I enjoy about beehiiv is exactly how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber matter Beehiiv Vs Substack Vs Medium.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on just how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you every little thing you need to get started and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for numerous individuals.
I’m unsure how the device economics work with this, however beehiiv is certainly more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are several of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending e-newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics.
Lots of versatility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Create costs alternatives to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen one more e-newsletter platform 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 going to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized typefaces.
I make use of Webflow as my web site structure system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive detail why I love Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow review if you ‘d like to find out more.
Today, there truly is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to slow down my web site a bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s very obvious when you get on a slow web link. Yet I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a normal Webflow type (which I like utilizing). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier but that would certainly simply include added expenses that I don’t require. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I assumed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the disadvantages here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will at some point create a far better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is an excellent option for anyone aiming to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform far surpasses many that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly affordable of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not compose review articles usually. I just do when I actually use the tool myself and would advise it to a close friend.
I wish you located some quality on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.