Over 2 years ago, I read one of my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and instantly began tearing up Beehiiv Vs WordPress.
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent creator is tough. I’m commonly obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological since I spent the last six months checking out different e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great alternatives for composing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The concern with many existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it super simple to create and send out emails, and gives me devices that help me assess metrics and get more subscribers.
I assume I’ve finally found the appropriate device.
Yet, I understand beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate 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, write, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous workers at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately go with it as my newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter platform for rather a long time currently. I’ve postponed hard when it concerned finally releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of newsletter creators admire prominent newsletters with numerous customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have wonderful content, tons of clients, and a clever referral program that permits them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I took place a search to find out just how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool truly understand newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the very first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Due to the fact that, any type of maker understands, you require growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that scales) usually implies utilizing numerous various tools to assist accomplish one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish referrals. It can obtain expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was cost-free to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that wants a platform 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 devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or content creator, you ought to seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you in fact wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indication that people like reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic system made use of by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one option for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a web site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own internet site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site subscribers straight to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit people to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to utilize different marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
How to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, external embed kinds, and much more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just starting out (or for those looking for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Vs WordPress
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand colors and design to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your major dashboard, 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 options for “Begin creating,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Analyze.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you create and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and break them down into sectors), Grow 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 e-newsletter with ads, Style is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you wish to blog about, I advise simply going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin composing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and straightforward interface for writing.
Once you start creating, you can enhance headings, add links, and design your content just how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for different sorts of web content like videos, web links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is also continuously launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a great deal much more material features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your email template and change some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, photo formats, and a lot more. I’m not going to undergo ever before solitary point you can optimize with your e-mail template because it’s a lot. Just try the system for free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any newsletter designer.
Here are some of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely easy to write and send e-mails. I stated over several of the things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll save you some added reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) survive on an internet site. Think about it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a place where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, offer you a website. However, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a personalized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or via embed kinds.
If you already have a web site, and want people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various options– a full width, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim installed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to onward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working on updates for these, however I stated a few issues 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 system, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your listing to onward your emails to good friends and colleagues and if they get other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I have actually appear numerous e-newsletter business provide rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another opportunity for growing your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this article.
Premium memberships
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration earnings is definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” issues of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter has to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the important things I like concerning beehiiv is how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter Beehiiv Vs WordPress.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer matter rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you everything you need to get started and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for many customers.
I’m unsure exactly how the system economics work with this, yet beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
Easy to set up and start sending newsletters completely free.
Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Lots of adaptability with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Develop costs options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I have not seen one more e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet obviously, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I’ve located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my web site building system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive detail why I love Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow review if you want to learn more.
Now, there really is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not such as utilizing iframe’s since they tend to reduce my site a bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s really recognizable when you’re on a sluggish web link. However I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow type (which I enjoy making use of). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier but that would certainly just add additional prices that I do not need. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m also confident that Webflow will ultimately create a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is an excellent solution for any individual looking to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system much surpasses several that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly affordable wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t create testimonial blog posts frequently. I only do when I actually use the device myself and would recommend it to a pal.
I wish you discovered some quality on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.