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 design for the first time. I clicked on it and instantly started destroying Beehiiv WITB.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent maker is difficult. I’m commonly obtaining pitched different devices and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months experimenting with different email and e-newsletter systems to aid develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful choices for creating newsletters. However I could not find one that made me offer a definite “yes”.
The problem with many existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me completely customize my e-newsletter designs, makes it super very easy to compose and send e-mails, and gives me devices that aid me analyze metrics and get even more subscribers.
I think I’ve lastly discovered the best tool.
However, I know beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really 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 very easy to design, write, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately go with it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for rather time currently. I’ve postponed hard when it concerned finally releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure numerous newsletter makers look up to preferred e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have fantastic web content, tons of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get even a lot more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to figure out exactly how these big newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they develop an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool really recognize e-newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I knew this was going to be a various newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer growth.
Because, any kind of maker understands, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the ideal e-newsletter stack (that scales) typically indicates making use of several various tools to help attain one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to set up referrals. It can get costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was totally free to begin using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that wants a platform that allows them to send custom-made e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, startup, or material creator, you must seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you actually end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent indicator that people enjoy reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a fantastic system used by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own site and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a web site similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your site subscribers right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow people to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to utilize various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Exactly how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, outside embed forms, and a lot more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply beginning (or for those looking for a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv WITB
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand name colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning composing,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Examine.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Begin writing is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down right into segments), Grow is where you have access 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 ads, Style is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you wish to write about, I suggest just mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Start creating”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly interface for composing.
As soon as you begin writing, you can enhance headings, add web links, and style your material how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for different sorts of web content like video clips, links, images, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is also regularly launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a whole lot extra 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 design your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to first time customers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, image styles, and more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before single thing you can enhance with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the platform for free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a terrific posting system for any type of e-newsletter maker.
Below are some of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to write and send emails. I mentioned above a few of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some additional reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the far better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) survive a web site. Consider it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and an area where people can register for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, offer you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is essential. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or with embed types.
If you currently have a web site, and want people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various alternatives– a full size, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for attribution monitoring if you want to onward UTM specifications for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the team is dealing with updates for these, however I stated a couple of concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your list to onward your e-mails to friends and associates and if they obtain other individuals to register for your list, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever type you want. I have actually seem numerous e-newsletter business give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you an additional method for growing your e-mail listing.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this post.
Costs subscriptions
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration income is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” problems of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be very rewarding relying on what your newsletter has to use. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among the things I enjoy about beehiiv is how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Beehiiv WITB.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client count increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you need to get going and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and access 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 concern support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit alternative for lots of individuals.
I’m uncertain exactly how the unit business economics work on this, yet beehiiv is definitely less expensive (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters completely free.
Clean and contemporary client analytics.
Lots of flexibility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Develop premium alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be truthful, I have not seen another newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
But naturally, I don’t want to be biased so I’m going to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my web site building platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow review if you wish to find out more.
Today, there actually is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from using an iframe embed. I personally don’t like using iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my website a little bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s really recognizable when you’re on a slow web link. Yet I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow form (which I like using). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just add additional expenses that I don’t require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the cons right here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a wonderful solution for any person wanting to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system much outweighs lots of that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly inexpensive of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unheard of. 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 write evaluation posts commonly. I just do when I in fact make use of the tool myself and would recommend it to a good friend.
I hope you discovered some quality on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.