Over 2 years ago, I read among my favored email 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 promptly began tearing up Flight Beehiiv.
I had not been certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time developer is tough. I’m typically obtaining pitched various devices and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I spent the last 6 months trying out various email and e-newsletter systems to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic options for writing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The problem with many existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me completely customize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it extremely very easy to create and send out e-mails, and offers me tools that assist me examine metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I assume I have actually lastly discovered the appropriate tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to design, write, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former employees at the famous e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally choose it as my newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern newsletter system for fairly a long time now. I have actually put things off hard when it pertained to ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure many newsletter designers look up to popular e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have fantastic web content, lots of clients, and a creative referral program that permits them to get even more customers.
So, I went on a search to figure out how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they create a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this device truly comprehend newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Because, any kind of maker knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the best newsletter stack (that ranges) usually suggests utilizing numerous various devices to assist attain one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up references. It can get costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to start using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that desires a platform that permits them to send personalized newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or web content designer, you should seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to get started and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you really end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indication that people love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a terrific system used by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own site and make use of the system as your all-in-one service for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a website comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own website already, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your web site subscribers straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the very 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 take advantage of various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
Just how to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, external embed types, and a lot more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just starting (or for those looking for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Flight Beehiiv
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll then create a name and link for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have outlined details on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning creating,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you create and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down into sections), 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 newsletter with ads, Style is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you wish to cover, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and straightforward user interface for creating.
When you start composing, you can optimize headings, add links, and style your content how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for various types of content like video clips, web links, images, and more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise regularly releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a great deal extra material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and change some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo, switch 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 modify history colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, picture layouts, and more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before solitary thing you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Simply try out the system totally free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a great publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter designer.
Right here are a few of the crucial features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it super easy to create and send out emails. I pointed out above a few of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some added reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the far better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive an internet site. Consider it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and an area where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, offer you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom 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 subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or with embed forms.
If you already have a website, and desire individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. 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 article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different choices– a complete size, a dealt with size, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for attribution monitoring if you want to ahead UTM specifications for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the group is servicing updates for these, but I stated a few worries I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your listing to forward your emails to buddies and coworkers and if they obtain other people to register for your checklist, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve seem numerous newsletter companies provide benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you one more avenue for expanding your e-mail checklist.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this article.
Premium memberships
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration revenue is absolutely a beast of its very own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying subscribers. This can be really rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter has to use. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that generates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is exactly how tidy and simple the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter Flight Beehiiv.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer matter rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you everything you require to get going and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for lots of individuals.
I’m not sure how the system economics service this, however beehiiv is certainly less costly (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Right here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages 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 e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and start sending out e-newsletters totally free.
Tidy and modern-day customer analytics.
Great deals of versatility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce premium options to generate income from.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
But obviously, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom typefaces.
I use Webflow as my internet site structure platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much information why I love Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you would love to find out more.
Right now, there really is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site besides using an iframe embed. I personally do not such as making use of iframe’s since they tend to slow down my website a bit. Each 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 extremely recognizable when you’re on a slow-moving web link. But I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not utilize a regular Webflow kind (which I like utilizing). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply include added costs that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the disadvantages here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually create a much better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful option for anybody looking to study the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system far outweighs many that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively economical for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t write review messages frequently. I only do when I actually make use of the device myself and would certainly advise it to a buddy.
I hope you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.