Over 2 years earlier, I read one of my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and instantaneously started wrecking Beehiiv Withdrawal.
I had not been certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m frequently obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological since I invested the last six months trying various email and e-newsletter systems to help develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful options for creating newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me completely personalize my newsletter styles, makes it extremely simple to create and send out e-mails, and gives me devices that assist me assess metrics and get more customers.
I believe I have actually ultimately found the ideal device.
But, I know 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 e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it very easy to style, create, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous employees at the famous e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid makers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately select it as my newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter system for fairly time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it involved finally launching my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain several e-newsletter developers look up to preferred newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have great web content, lots of customers, and a creative referral program that permits them to get back at extra customers.
So, I took place a search to find out exactly how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they create a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to all of my concerns. I thought 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 mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the initial marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker growth.
Because, any kind of designer knows, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that ranges) typically means utilizing several different tools to help accomplish one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was complimentary to start making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content maker that desires a platform that allows them to send out customized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or web content developer, you need to seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to get going and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you actually wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good sign that people like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is an excellent platform used by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your own internet site and utilize the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also provides you a site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own site already, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your website subscribers straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to take advantage of various marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
Exactly how to begin making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, external embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply beginning (or for those trying to find a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Withdrawal
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll then produce 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 internet site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand name colors and design to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin composing,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot over), Beginning writing is where you develop and publish newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down 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 create your newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you intend to discuss, I advise just mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use interface for creating.
When you start writing, you can maximize headings, include links, and design your material just how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of options for various types of material like video clips, web links, photos, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is also continuously releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a whole lot extra material features relying on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to create your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture formats, and much more. I’m not going to go through ever single thing you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Simply try out the system totally free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any kind of e-newsletter creator.
Right here are a few of the essential features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to create and send e-mails. I discussed above a few of things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll save you some additional reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the far better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive an internet site. Consider it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, offer you a site. However, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or via embed types.
If you currently have a site, and want people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed form. This is what I make use of on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 different choices– a complete size, a dealt with width, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment tracking if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking functions– quite cool.
However, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is servicing updates for these, however I pointed out a few concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your listing to ahead your emails to good friends and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve appear several e-newsletter business offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another avenue for growing your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this post.
Costs memberships
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership revenue is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be really profitable depending on what your e-newsletter has to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that generates millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of the important things I love regarding beehiiv is just how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Beehiiv Withdrawal.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer count increase is 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 whatever you require to begin and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for numerous customers.
I’m not sure how the unit business economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are some of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and start sending out newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and contemporary client analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop costs options to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen one more e-newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
However naturally, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the disadvantages I have actually found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my web site structure system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive information why I enjoy Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow review if you want to discover more.
Today, there really is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t like making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to reduce my website a little bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s very noticeable when you get on a slow-moving web connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a routine Webflow form (which I like making use of). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just include added costs that I don’t need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I assumed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the disadvantages below. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately create a much better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for any person wanting to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform far outweighs numerous that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly inexpensive wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create review blog posts often. I just do when I really use the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a close friend.
I wish you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.