Over 2 years back, I was reading one of my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and quickly began destroying Beehiiv Zero To One.
I had not been certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m usually getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months checking out various email and newsletter platforms to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific options for creating newsletters. However I could not find one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with several existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me fully customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it super easy to create and send e-mails, and offers me devices that assist me analyze metrics and obtain more customers.
I assume I have actually ultimately discovered the ideal tool.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually appropriate 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 simple to design, compose, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately go with it as my newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a modern e-newsletter platform for fairly a long time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it pertained to ultimately introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain lots of newsletter developers appreciate prominent newsletters with numerous subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have excellent material, tons of subscribers, and a smart referral program that allows them to get even extra subscribers.
So, I took place a search to identify just how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this device really understand newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer development.
Due to the fact that, any type of creator recognizes, you need development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the best e-newsletter stack (that scales) commonly implies utilizing several different devices to help attain one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was cost-free to start using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that desires a system that enables them to send out customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or material designer, you must seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s completely free to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you actually wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a great sign that people love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a terrific platform made use of by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your own site and make use of the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a website comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own internet site already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your site customers straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable individuals to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to leverage various marketing channels to get your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, external embed types, and a lot more. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Zero To One
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand name design and colors to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your main control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed details on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning creating,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Start creating is where you develop and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your clients are (and break them down into sectors), Expand is where you have access 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you make your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you want to cover, I suggest just going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and user-friendly user interface for composing.
When you begin creating, you can enhance headings, add links, and style your web content how you like.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for different kinds of content like videos, web links, images, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is additionally constantly launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a lot more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your email template and change some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify background shades, borders, spacing, fonts, photo formats, and much more. I’m not going to undergo ever before solitary thing you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Just experiment with the system totally free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it a great publishing platform for any type of newsletter designer.
Below are some of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it very easy to compose and send emails. I mentioned above several of things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
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 most definitely one of the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a website. Think about it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can sign up for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, offer you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom-made domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter right from your beehiiv site or through embed forms.
If you currently have an internet site, and want individuals to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed type. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different choices– a full width, a fixed width, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to onward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the team is dealing with updates for these, yet I mentioned a few worries I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your list to ahead your e-mails to friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve appear lots of newsletter firms provide rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you an additional method for growing your e-mail list.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this post.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership earnings is definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” problems of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be extremely lucrative relying on what your e-newsletter has to offer. For example, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I enjoy about beehiiv is exactly how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count Beehiiv Zero To One.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client count increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you require to start and grow your newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for lots of individuals.
I’m unsure how the unit business economics deal with this, however beehiiv is definitely less costly (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to set up and begin sending e-newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and modern customer analytics.
Great deals of versatility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create costs options to generate income from.
Polls.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen one more newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But naturally, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I have actually located while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my web site building system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much information why I love Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow evaluation if you want to discover more.
Now, there actually is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site besides utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as using iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to slow down my website a bit. Every time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s extremely obvious when you get on a slow-moving net connection. But I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t use a routine Webflow kind (which I love utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would certainly just add added prices that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the cons right here. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point develop a much better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
In general, beehiiv is an excellent solution for any individual aiming to study the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter system far outweighs many that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly cheap of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list 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 commonly. I just do when I really make use of the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a pal.
I wish you discovered some quality on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.