Over 2 years ago, I read among my favored email e-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 immediately began tearing up How Do I Transfer From Substack To Beehiiv.
I had not been certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a permanent developer is difficult. I’m often obtaining 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 six months trying out various email and e-newsletter platforms to assist construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great options for creating e-newsletters. However I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with several existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me fully tailor my newsletter styles, makes it incredibly simple to compose and send out e-mails, and offers me tools that aid me assess metrics and get more clients.
I assume I have actually ultimately found the best tool.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to style, compose, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the renowned e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m going to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly select it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a contemporary e-newsletter system for rather some time now. I’ve hesitated hard when it involved ultimately introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure lots of newsletter creators appreciate prominent newsletters with countless clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have excellent material, tons of clients, and a smart referral program that allows them to get back at extra subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to identify just how these large newsletters established their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address all of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this device really recognize e-newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the initial marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker growth.
Because, any type of designer knows, you need development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the ideal newsletter stack (that ranges) typically means using numerous various tools to assist achieve one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can get pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was totally free to begin making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content maker that wants a platform that enables them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or web content maker, you need to seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s completely free to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you in fact wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indicator that individuals like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic platform made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your own internet site and use the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also provides you a web site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your site customers right to your beehiiv email list. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable people to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to leverage various marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
Just how to begin making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, external embed forms, and a lot more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply beginning (or for those searching for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding How Do I Transfer From Substack To Beehiiv
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise select your brand name colors and design to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed information on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin creating,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Start creating is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and damage them down into sectors), Expand is where you have accessibility 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, Layout is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you want to cover, I suggest simply going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Start composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and user-friendly user interface for composing.
Once you begin creating, you can enhance headings, add web links, and style your web content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of options for various sorts of web content like video clips, links, images, and more.
The group at beehiiv is also continuously launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a lot much more material features relying on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your email template and readjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time clients, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify background shades, borders, spacing, fonts, image layouts, and much more. I’m not going to go through ever single thing you can enhance with your e-mail template because it’s a whole lot. Simply experiment with the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it an excellent publishing platform for any newsletter creator.
Here are several of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it super simple to create and send out emails. I mentioned over several of things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the far better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) survive a web site. Think about it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, provide you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a customized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or with embed kinds.
If you already have an internet site, and want people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed type. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different choices– a complete width, a fixed width, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s also a choice for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to ahead UTM criteria for tracking objectives– quite neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the team is dealing with updates for these, yet I stated a couple of concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your listing to onward your emails to pals and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your checklist, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve seem lots of e-newsletter business provide benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you one more opportunity for expanding your email listing.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs registrations
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership revenue is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” concerns 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 preferred costs e-newsletter that generates millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of the important things I love concerning beehiiv is how clean and easy the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter How Do I Transfer From Substack To Beehiiv.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you whatever you require to start and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 each month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 each month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit alternative for lots of users.
I’m not exactly sure how the system business economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is most definitely 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. Here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to establish and start sending out e-newsletters for free.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Lots of versatility with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Develop costs choices to generate income from.
Polls.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter system that has had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
But of course, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the disadvantages I have actually located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom typefaces.
I make use of Webflow as my site structure system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much detail why I love Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you want to learn more.
Today, there really is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from using an iframe embed. I personally do not such as making use of iframe’s because they tend to decrease my site a bit. Each time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s very recognizable when you get on a slow-moving net link. But I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t use a normal Webflow form (which I like utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would certainly simply include added costs that I don’t need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the disadvantages here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will eventually develop a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is a terrific remedy for anybody wanting to dive into the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far surpasses several that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly cheap of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not compose review posts typically. I only do when I in fact use the device myself and would certainly advise it to a close friend.
I wish you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.