Over 2 years back, I read one of my favored e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and quickly started destroying Can I Use Beehiiv as a Blog.
I had not been certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent designer is tough. I’m typically getting pitched different devices and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional since I invested the last six months trying various e-mail and newsletter platforms to assist develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic options for creating newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The concern with many existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me fully customize my e-newsletter designs, makes it very easy to write and send emails, and gives me tools that assist me evaluate metrics and obtain more clients.
I believe I have actually ultimately found the best device.
However, I understand beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to design, create, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the popular e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally select it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve watched for a modern-day newsletter platform for quite a long time now. I have actually postponed hard when it concerned finally launching my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of newsletter designers appreciate popular newsletters with numerous customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have terrific web content, lots of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get even more clients.
So, I went on a search to determine 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 obtain even more customers? How do they produce a newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device actually recognize e-newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the very first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Because, any maker knows, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the right newsletter stack (that scales) typically implies using numerous different tools to aid accomplish one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish references. It can get expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that desires a system that enables them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or material creator, you ought to seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely free to begin and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you in fact wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indicator that people like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a fantastic system utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own web site and utilize the system as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your website subscribers straight to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable people to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to utilize various marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
How to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those searching for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Can I Use Beehiiv as a Blog
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand colors and design to ensure your e-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 detailed info on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning writing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Examine.” And at the really lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Begin writing is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your customers are (and damage them down right into segments), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development 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 develop your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you intend to cover, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Begin creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– focus on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and straightforward interface for composing.
When you start writing, you can enhance headings, add links, and style your content how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for various sorts of content like video clips, web links, images, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is also regularly releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a whole lot extra material features relying on when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your email template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, image formats, and extra. I’m not going to undergo ever before single thing you can maximize with your e-mail template since it’s a whole lot. Just try out the platform for free and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of impressive features that make it an excellent posting platform for any kind of newsletter maker.
Right here are some of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely easy to create and send out e-mails. I pointed out over several of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll save you some extra reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the much better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on a web site. Think about it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, offer you a site. However, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a personalized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is very important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or via embed types.
If you already have a web site, and desire individuals to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed kind. 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 three different options– a full width, a dealt with width, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM parameters for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the group is dealing with updates for these, but I pointed out a few problems I had in the pros and cons area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your checklist to onward your e-mails to pals and colleagues and if they get other people to register for your checklist, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve appear many e-newsletter business give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– offering you another avenue for expanding your email checklist.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this article.
Costs registrations
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription revenue is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be really profitable depending upon what your newsletter has to use. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among things I like about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and easy the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Can I Use Beehiiv as a Blog.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you whatever you need to get started and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain, surveys, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit option for several individuals.
I’m uncertain how the device economics work with this, yet beehiiv is definitely cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are a few of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
Easy to establish and start sending out e-newsletters totally free.
Clean and modern-day client analytics.
Lots of versatility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Develop costs options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But of course, I don’t want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my website building system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive information why I like Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow evaluation if you would love to learn more.
Today, there really is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides using an iframe embed. I personally don’t like making use of iframe’s because they have a tendency to reduce my internet site a little bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s really noticeable when you get on a slow-moving web connection. But I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t use a routine Webflow form (which I enjoy utilizing). There are methods around this by using a device like Zapier however that would just include extra prices that I don’t need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I thought I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m also confident that Webflow will eventually develop a much better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is an excellent remedy for any person aiming to dive into the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform much outweighs several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively economical of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose evaluation posts frequently. I only do when I in fact make use of the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a buddy.
I hope you found some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.