Over 2 years earlier, I read among my favored e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and quickly began tearing up How Does Beehiiv Monetize.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time designer is tough. I’m typically getting pitched different tools and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I spent the last six months trying different email and newsletter systems to aid build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic alternatives for creating newsletters. Yet I couldn’t discover one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it super easy to write and send e-mails, and offers me tools that assist me examine metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I believe I’ve ultimately found the right device.
However, I understand beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to design, create, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the popular newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally choose it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter system for rather some time currently. I’ve postponed hard when it involved ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure many newsletter creators respect prominent newsletters with numerous clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have fantastic material, tons of customers, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get back at extra customers.
So, I went on a hunt to identify exactly how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they produce an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device actually comprehend newsletter development and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Due to the fact that, any maker understands, you need growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the ideal e-newsletter pile (that ranges) frequently suggests making use of numerous various tools to aid attain one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up recommendations. It can get pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, 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 web content maker that wants a system that permits them to send custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most effective newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or web content creator, you ought to seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to begin and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you actually wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indicator that individuals love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful platform utilized by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your own site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to obtain the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a website comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own website currently, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your web site customers directly to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit people to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to leverage various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
How to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, external embed types, and more. It’s a really generous offering for those just starting out (or for those looking for a new system to move to).
Onboarding How Does Beehiiv Monetize
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll then create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand colors and design to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning creating,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Assess.” And at the really lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Beginning composing is where you develop and publish newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your customers are (and break them down right into sectors), Expand is where you have access 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 advertisements, Design is where you design your newsletter landing page and message template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you want to write about, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and easy to use user interface for writing.
When you start composing, you can maximize headings, include links, and style your material how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for various sorts of content like video clips, links, photos, and more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise constantly releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a great deal much more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, font styles, picture formats, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before single point you can maximize with your email template because it’s a whole lot. Just check out the platform absolutely free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any e-newsletter creator.
Here are a few of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it incredibly very easy to write and send emails. I stated above several of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely among the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on a website. Think about 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 individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, give you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a personalized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is very important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or with embed forms.
If you already have an internet site, and desire individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed type. This is what I use 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 3 various options– a complete width, a taken care of width, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim installed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to ahead UTM specifications for tracking functions– pretty neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the team is working with updates for these, but I pointed out a couple of issues I had in the pros and cons area 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 producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your list to ahead your e-mails to buddies and coworkers and if they get other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually seem several e-newsletter business give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional avenue for expanding your e-mail listing.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this article.
Premium memberships
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration income is absolutely a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” issues of your newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be extremely rewarding depending on what your newsletter needs to use. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that produces millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
One of things I enjoy about beehiiv is just how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count How Does Beehiiv Monetize.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you everything you need to get going and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for numerous users.
I’m unsure just how the unit economics work on this, however beehiiv is definitely more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and begin sending out newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and modern customer analytics.
Lots of flexibility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce premium options to monetize.
Polls.
To be sincere, I have not seen an additional newsletter system that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
But certainly, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my internet site building system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive detail why I love Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you want to learn more.
Right now, there really is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from using an iframe embed. I directly do not like using iframe’s because they often tend to reduce my internet site a little bit. Every single time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the web page. It’s extremely recognizable when you get on a sluggish web link. However I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow type (which I enjoy making use of). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier but that would certainly just add additional prices that I do not require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I thought I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the cons here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will at some point develop a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is a wonderful service for any person looking to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far outweighs lots of that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly cheap for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation articles commonly. I only do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a close friend.
I wish you discovered some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.