Over 2 years earlier, I read among my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and instantly started tearing up Does Morning Brew Use Beehiiv.
I had not been sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched various tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months experimenting with different email and newsletter systems to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic alternatives for creating e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t locate one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The concern with several existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it super simple to create and send out emails, and offers me devices that help me evaluate metrics and get even more clients.
I believe I have actually lastly discovered the ideal tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to design, compose, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former workers at the famous e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short article, I’m going to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly go with it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for quite a long time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it came to lastly releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure lots of newsletter designers admire prominent newsletters with countless clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have fantastic web content, lots of subscribers, and a clever referral program that allows them to get even a lot more clients.
So, I took place a search to determine how these huge newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this device really recognize newsletter production and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Due to the fact that, any type of maker understands, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the ideal e-newsletter pile (that scales) frequently implies utilizing numerous different devices to help accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was totally free to begin using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that desires a system that permits them to send custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or content developer, you ought to seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you actually wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent sign that individuals love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great platform used by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own website and make use of the system as your all-in-one service for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv also provides you an internet site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own site already, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your website customers straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow people to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to leverage various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
Exactly how to begin using beehiiv email marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, external embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those trying to find a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding Does Morning Brew Use Beehiiv
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally pick your brand name design and colors to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed details on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning composing,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot over), Begin creating is where you create and release e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your clients are (and break them down into segments), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you create your newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you want to cover, I recommend just going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Begin composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and user-friendly interface for composing.
As soon as you start creating, you can enhance headings, include links, and design your material how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for different types of material like videos, web links, photos, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is also frequently launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a great deal extra material features depending upon when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your email template and change some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, photo styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever solitary thing you can optimize with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Simply try out the platform free of cost and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it an excellent posting system for any type of e-newsletter developer.
Right here are some of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it very simple to create and send emails. I mentioned over some of the important things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) live on an internet site. Think of it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, provide you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom-made domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or with embed types.
If you currently have a website, and want people to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use 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 post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various choices– a complete width, a dealt with size, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution tracking if you intend to onward UTM parameters for tracking functions– rather cool.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working on updates for these, however I pointed out a few issues I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your listing to onward your emails to pals and associates and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your listing, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually seem numerous newsletter companies offer incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you another method for growing your email checklist.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this short article.
Costs memberships
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership profits is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be really profitable depending on what your newsletter needs to supply. For example, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that produces millions in income a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among things I like about beehiiv is just how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter Does Morning Brew Use Beehiiv.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you whatever you require to begin and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit choice for numerous customers.
I’m uncertain just how the device economics work with this, yet beehiiv is certainly more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Below are several of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to establish and start sending out newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and modern subscriber analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Create premium choices to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I have not seen another newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
Yet naturally, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I have actually located while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my internet site structure system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive detail why I love Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow testimonial if you wish to discover more.
Now, there actually is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as using iframe’s since they tend to reduce my website a bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the page. It’s extremely recognizable when you get on a slow-moving web connection. But I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not use a normal Webflow form (which I like making use of). There are methods around this by using a device like Zapier however that would certainly simply add extra expenses that I do not require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the cons here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually create a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent solution for any individual aiming to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system far surpasses numerous that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly inexpensive of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not create testimonial articles typically. I just do when I really utilize the device myself and would advise it to a close friend.
I wish you found some quality on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.