Over 2 years earlier, I was reading among my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and instantaneously started tearing up How Do I Switch From Substack To Beehiiv.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full time maker is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched different devices and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological since I spent the last six months experimenting with different email and e-newsletter systems to aid build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent alternatives for composing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t locate one that made me offer a definite “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me totally customize my newsletter designs, makes it super easy to create and send out emails, and offers me devices that help me analyze metrics and get more subscribers.
I believe I have actually lastly located the right device.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it very easy to layout, create, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous staff members at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly select it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a modern e-newsletter platform for fairly time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it came to lastly launching my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure many e-newsletter developers appreciate prominent newsletters with numerous subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have great material, lots of subscribers, and a creative referral program that allows them to get even much more clients.
So, I took place a search to figure out just how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to answer every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device really understand e-newsletter production and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the very first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Because, any type of developer knows, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the ideal e-newsletter pile (that ranges) often suggests making use of multiple various tools to aid achieve one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up references. It can obtain pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was free to start utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content creator that desires a platform that enables them to send out customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or material maker, you ought to seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to start and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indication that individuals love reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a wonderful platform used by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own website and utilize the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a web site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very 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 customers straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to leverage various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
Just how to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, outside embed forms, and much more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply starting (or for those seeking a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding How Do I Switch From Substack To Beehiiv
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also pick your brand name colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described information on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start creating,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Examine.” And at the very lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your major control center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you develop and publish newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down right into segments), Grow is where you have access 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 e-newsletter with ads, Design is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you intend to write about, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and easy to use interface for composing.
As soon as you begin writing, you can maximize headings, add web links, and design your content how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for different types of web content like video clips, web links, photos, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally regularly launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a lot extra content features depending upon when you read this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your email template and change some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, add your logo, activate or off a welcome email to very first time clients, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, photo formats, and a lot more. I’m not going to experience ever before solitary thing you can optimize with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Simply experiment with the system free of charge and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any kind of newsletter maker.
Right here are several of the crucial features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it very simple to create and send e-mails. I discussed above a few of the things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) live on a site. Consider it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, give you a website. However, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want 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 very important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or with embed forms.
If you already have an internet site, and want individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed kind. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different alternatives– a complete width, a dealt with width, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s also an alternative for attribution tracking if you wish to onward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working on updates for these, but I discussed a couple of 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 platform, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your list to onward your e-mails to pals and associates and if they get other people to sign up for your list, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve seem numerous e-newsletter firms provide benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another avenue for expanding your e-mail checklist.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this article.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Subscription profits is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying subscribers. This can be extremely rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter has to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of the things I love regarding beehiiv is just how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber matter How Do I Switch From Substack To Beehiiv.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you everything you require to start and expand your newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain, surveys, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for several users.
I’m not exactly sure exactly how the system economics deal with this, however beehiiv is certainly cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are some of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending out e-newsletters totally free.
Tidy and modern-day customer analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Create costs alternatives to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be honest, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However naturally, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to point out some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the cons I’ve found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site building platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much information why I like Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow review if you would love to discover more.
Right now, there really is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site apart from using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to slow down my internet site a bit. Each time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s very noticeable when you get on a slow net link. But I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not make use of a normal Webflow form (which I like using). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly just include extra prices that I don’t require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I believed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the cons below. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually create a better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a terrific remedy for anybody aiming to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far outweighs several that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly low-cost for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose testimonial articles frequently. I only do when I really make use of the device myself and would certainly advise it to a buddy.
I wish you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.