Over two years ago, I was reading one of my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and immediately started destroying Does Beehiiv Integrate with ConvertKit.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time developer is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched different tools and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months trying out various e-mail and newsletter platforms to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific alternatives for creating e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t locate one that made me provide a precise “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me fully tailor my newsletter styles, makes it extremely simple to compose and send out emails, and provides me devices that help me examine metrics and get more clients.
I think I’ve lastly found the best device.
Yet, I understand beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually 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 simple to design, write, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous employees at the popular e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly opt for it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter platform for quite a long time now. I’ve postponed hard when it concerned ultimately introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain several e-newsletter creators look up to prominent e-newsletters with countless clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have fantastic material, tons of clients, and a clever referral program that permits them to get back at a lot more customers.
So, I went on a search to find out exactly how these large e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this device actually recognize e-newsletter creation and development.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer growth.
Because, any type of developer understands, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the ideal e-newsletter stack (that ranges) usually indicates utilizing several different tools to aid accomplish one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was totally free to start making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content maker that wants a platform that enables them to send custom newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or material maker, you ought to seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely complimentary to get started and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you really wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indicator that individuals love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is an excellent platform utilized by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your very own website and use the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv likewise gives you an internet site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own internet site already, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your internet site subscribers right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit individuals to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to utilize different marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, outside embed forms, and a lot more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those trying to find a new system to move to).
Onboarding Does Beehiiv Integrate with ConvertKit
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also select your brand colors and design to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described info on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin writing,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot above), Start creating is where you create and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down right into sections), 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 ads, Design is where you make your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you wish to blog about, I recommend simply going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and easy to use user interface for composing.
When you start creating, you can enhance headings, include links, and style your web content exactly how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for various types of content like video clips, links, photos, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise continuously launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a whole lot a lot more content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your e-mail template and change some setups.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a description, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image formats, and extra. I’m not going to experience ever before solitary thing you can optimize with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Just check out the platform free of charge and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it a terrific posting platform for any e-newsletter maker.
Below are a few of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very easy to create and send out e-mails. I stated above some of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll save you some added analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely among the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a website. Think of it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, offer you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a customized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is necessary. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or through embed types.
If you already have a web site, and want individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed type. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various alternatives– a full size, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to ahead UTM specifications for tracking objectives– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is dealing with updates for these, yet I discussed a few concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your list to ahead your e-mails to friends and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to register for your list, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually seem lots of e-newsletter companies provide incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you another opportunity for expanding your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this write-up.
Costs memberships
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership earnings is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” issues of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be extremely rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that generates millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count Does Beehiiv Integrate with ConvertKit.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client matter increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you require to get started and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, surveys, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite generous in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for lots of customers.
I’m not sure just how the unit economics work on this, but beehiiv is absolutely cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are some of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending out newsletters free of cost.
Clean and modern subscriber analytics.
Lots of adaptability with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce costs options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
But obviously, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized font styles.
I use Webflow as my internet site structure system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow testimonial if you would love to discover more.
Right now, there really is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than using an iframe embed. I personally don’t like utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to slow down my web site a bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s really obvious when you’re on a sluggish net link. However I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a regular Webflow kind (which I love making use of). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would just include extra costs that I do not need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I thought I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will at some point produce a much better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is an excellent solution for any person aiming to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform far outweighs several 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 also rather cheap for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not write review posts frequently. I only do when I in fact use the tool myself and would advise it to a friend.
I hope you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.