Over two years earlier, I read one of my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and promptly started tearing up Is Beehiiv Safe.
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full time creator is tough. I’m commonly obtaining pitched different devices and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months trying out different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to help develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic options for composing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The concern with several existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully customize my e-newsletter designs, makes it super very easy to compose and send out emails, and provides me tools that assist me assess metrics and get even more clients.
I believe I’ve lastly located the appropriate device.
But, I understand beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to style, create, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former workers at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid developers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly select it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for quite a long time now. I have actually postponed hard when it came to finally introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make certain numerous e-newsletter creators appreciate prominent e-newsletters with numerous customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have excellent content, tons of customers, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get even extra subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to find out just how these huge e-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 develop a newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device actually recognize newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the very first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Because, any kind of creator understands, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the right newsletter pile (that scales) often indicates utilizing numerous various devices to help achieve one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was totally free to start utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that desires a system that enables them to send custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or web content creator, you need to seriously thinking about trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to start and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent sign 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 used by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own web site and use the platform as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a web site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own website currently, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site subscribers directly to your beehiiv email listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to leverage various marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
Exactly how to begin using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and a lot more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those looking for a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Is Beehiiv Safe
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll then create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand colors and design to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have described details on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start writing,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Assess.” And at the very lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot above), Begin composing is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your clients 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you develop your newsletter landing page and post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you intend to blog about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning composing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and straightforward interface for composing.
When you start writing, you can optimize headings, include links, and design your web content how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for different types of web content like video clips, links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is additionally constantly releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a whole lot extra content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome email 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 background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo styles, and extra. I’m not going to undergo ever solitary thing you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Simply check out the platform absolutely free and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a wonderful posting system for any kind of e-newsletter developer.
Here are some of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly simple to create and send e-mails. I stated over some of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll save you some added analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on a site. Think of it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can register for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, provide you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a customized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or through embed types.
If you already have a web site, and want individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 different alternatives– a full width, a taken care of width, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to ahead UTM parameters for tracking objectives– pretty neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working with updates for these, yet I mentioned a few concerns I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your list to onward your e-mails to friends and coworkers and if they obtain other people to sign up for your list, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve appear lots of e-newsletter business provide rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you another opportunity for expanding your e-mail checklist.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Subscription profits is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be really rewarding depending on what your newsletter has to provide. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the things I like concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter Is Beehiiv Safe.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you require to get started and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 each month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for lots of users.
I’m not sure exactly how the unit business economics work with this, however beehiiv is definitely more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are several of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending out newsletters completely free.
Tidy and modern client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Develop costs choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be honest, I haven’t seen another 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 state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the cons I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site building system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much information why I love Webflow so much but you can read my Webflow review if you want to learn more.
Today, there truly is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site besides utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not such as making use of iframe’s because they tend to reduce my site a bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s really visible when you get on a slow-moving internet link. But I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a routine Webflow form (which I like utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would certainly just add additional costs that I do not require. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I assumed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the cons here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will eventually create a much better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a great option for anyone aiming to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform much surpasses lots of that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather affordable wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review posts typically. I just do when I actually use the device myself and would suggest it to a friend.
I hope you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.