Over two years back, I read among my favored email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and instantaneously started destroying Equal Opportunity Beehiiv.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time creator is difficult. I’m usually getting pitched different devices and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months checking out various e-mail and newsletter platforms to aid develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great alternatives for writing newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me fully customize my newsletter designs, makes it super easy to compose and send out emails, and offers me tools that assist me examine metrics and obtain more customers.
I believe I have actually lastly found the appropriate tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to style, compose, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former employees at the popular e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help creators launch and monetize their own 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 determined to ultimately choose it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for rather some time now. I’ve hesitated hard when it pertained to lastly launching my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure numerous newsletter developers admire prominent e-newsletters with numerous clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have great web content, lots of subscribers, and a smart referral program that allows them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I went on a hunt to figure out exactly how these big newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they create a newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device really comprehend newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the very first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Because, any developer knows, you require development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And finding the ideal e-newsletter stack (that scales) usually implies using several various tools to help achieve one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish referrals. It can get pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was 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 wants a system that allows them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or content developer, you must seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to start and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you actually wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indicator that people like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic system used by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your own site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a site comparable to Substack. Yet, 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 internet site customers right to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow individuals to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, external embed kinds, and extra. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those trying to find a new system to move to).
Onboarding Equal Opportunity Beehiiv
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed information on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start writing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the really lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down into sectors), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Layout is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you intend to blog about, I suggest just going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and straightforward interface for writing.
As soon as you start creating, you can maximize headings, include web links, and style your material how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for different kinds of web content like videos, links, photos, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise continuously releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot much more content features depending upon when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your email template and readjust some setups.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo formats, and more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before single thing you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the platform free of cost and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any e-newsletter maker.
Below are several of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it very simple to create and send emails. I stated above a few of things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) live on a web site. Think of it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, offer you a website. However, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom-made domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or via embed kinds.
If you currently have a web site, and want individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed form. This is what I utilize on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three various options– a complete size, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for acknowledgment tracking if you want to ahead UTM criteria for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the team is dealing with updates for these, however I pointed out a few problems 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 system, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your listing to onward your emails to close friends and associates and if they obtain other people to register for your listing, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve appear many newsletter companies give rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you one more opportunity for expanding your e-mail list.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this post.
Costs memberships
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription earnings is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be really profitable relying on what your e-newsletter has to use. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I like concerning beehiiv is how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Equal Opportunity Beehiiv.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer count go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you need to start and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, customized domain, polls, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 each month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit alternative for numerous customers.
I’m uncertain how the system business economics service this, however beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are a few of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce premium choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
However of course, I do not wish to be biased so I’m going to mention some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I have actually found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized typefaces.
I use Webflow as my site building system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in too much information why I like Webflow so much but you can read my Webflow evaluation if you wish to discover more.
Today, there really is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as making use of iframe’s because they tend to slow down my internet site a bit. Each time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s really visible when you’re on a slow-moving net connection. However I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a normal Webflow type (which I enjoy using). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would just include added prices that I don’t need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I thought I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the cons here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will at some point develop a much better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is an excellent service for any individual looking to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far outweighs numerous that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively affordable of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not create testimonial articles usually. I just do when I actually make use of the tool myself and would suggest it to a close friend.
I hope you found some quality on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.