Over 2 years earlier, I read one of my favored email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and quickly began wrecking Does Beehiiv Take A Cut.
I wasn’t certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time creator is tough. I’m commonly obtaining pitched various devices and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months trying various email and e-newsletter systems to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent choices for writing newsletters. But I could not find one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my newsletter designs, makes it super very easy to write and send out emails, and offers me tools that assist me analyze metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I believe I have actually ultimately located the appropriate device.
But, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually 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 simple to layout, create, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by previous workers at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m going to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately go with it as my newsletter system of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for quite a long time now. I’ve hesitated hard when it came to finally releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make sure lots of newsletter developers admire preferred e-newsletters with millions of subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have terrific material, lots of clients, and a clever referral program that enables them to get even extra clients.
So, I took place a quest to identify exactly how these big e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they develop a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to all of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device really understand newsletter development and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s focused on designer development.
Due to the fact that, any type of designer recognizes, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the best newsletter pile (that ranges) frequently suggests making use of several various devices to help accomplish one goal– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was complimentary to begin using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content maker that wants a platform that allows them to send personalized newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or material creator, you should seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s entirely complimentary to get going and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you actually end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good sign that individuals like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic system made use of by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and utilize the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also offers you a site similar to Substack. But, if you have your own web site already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site subscribers straight to your beehiiv email checklist. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable people to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to leverage various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
Just how to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you access to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, outside embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those seeking a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Does Beehiiv Take A Cut
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive 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 also select your brand name design and colors to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed details on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning composing,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Examine.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Beginning composing is where you create and publish newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your clients are (and damage them down into sectors), Grow 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 newsletter with ads, Design is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you want to blog about, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Start composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and easy to use interface for creating.
As soon as you start writing, you can optimize headings, include links, and design your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for various kinds of web content like videos, web links, images, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is also continuously releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a lot more material features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to first time clients, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, image layouts, and much more. I’m not going to go through ever before solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Just try out the system totally free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it a great publishing platform for any kind of newsletter maker.
Below are a few of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely easy to compose and send out emails. I stated above several of things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a website. Think about it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, offer you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a personalized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different alternatives– a full size, a fixed width, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for attribution monitoring if you intend to ahead UTM criteria for tracking functions– pretty neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is servicing updates for these, but I stated a few worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is an option for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your checklist to onward your emails to good friends and coworkers and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your list, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve appear several newsletter firms provide rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– offering you another method for growing your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription earnings is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” problems of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be very rewarding depending upon what your newsletter has to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that generates millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of the important things I enjoy about beehiiv is just how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Does Beehiiv Take A Cut.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you require to get started and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, personalized domain, surveys, and access to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite generous in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for lots of customers.
I’m not exactly sure just how the unit economics service this, however beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and start sending newsletters completely free.
Clean and contemporary client analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Develop premium alternatives to generate income from.
Polls.
To be truthful, I have not seen one more e-newsletter platform that has had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet certainly, I do not intend to be biased so I’m going to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the cons I’ve found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site building platform of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to discover more.
Now, there actually is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to slow down my internet site a little bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s extremely recognizable when you’re on a slow internet link. But I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow form (which I enjoy using). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would just add extra expenses that I don’t need. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the cons below. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately develop a better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for anyone wanting to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system much exceeds numerous that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly inexpensive for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing 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 do not compose evaluation messages commonly. I only do when I really utilize the device myself and would suggest it to a pal.
I hope you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.