Over 2 years earlier, I was reading one of my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and promptly began destroying Katherine Rundell Beehiiv.
I had not been certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time maker is difficult. I’m usually getting pitched various devices and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last six months trying different email and newsletter systems to aid construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent choices for creating newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my newsletter styles, makes it extremely very easy to create and send e-mails, and offers me tools that assist me analyze metrics and get more clients.
I think I have actually ultimately located the right tool.
But, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it very easy to design, create, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous workers at the popular newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally select it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve watched for a modern e-newsletter system for fairly some time now. I have actually postponed hard when it concerned lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain lots of newsletter makers admire prominent newsletters with millions of customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have excellent material, tons of subscribers, and a clever referral program that permits them to get even more customers.
So, I went on a hunt to determine just how these large newsletters established their logistics. What platform 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 create an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this tool really understand newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the very first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Because, any creator recognizes, you need growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the right e-newsletter pile (that scales) usually suggests using numerous different devices to assist attain one goal– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish referrals. It can obtain expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content maker that wants a platform that permits them to send out customized newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or web content developer, you should seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to begin and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you actually end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indicator that people like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic platform used by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your own web site and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a web site similar to Substack. However, if you have your own website already, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site clients straight to your beehiiv email checklist. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to leverage various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
Just how to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, outside embed types, and extra. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Katherine Rundell Beehiiv
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand name design and colors to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed details on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start composing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot over), Begin composing is where you develop and publish newsletters, Messages 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 break them down into sectors), Expand 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 newsletter with ads, Layout is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you intend to blog about, I suggest simply going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Start creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and easy to use interface for composing.
Once you start composing, you can enhance headings, include links, and design your material how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of options for different types of material like video clips, web links, pictures, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally constantly launching item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a lot more content features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to create your e-mail template and change some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to first time customers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history colors, borders, spacing, fonts, picture layouts, and more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever solitary thing you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just try out the system for free and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it an excellent publishing platform for any kind of newsletter developer.
Below are some of the essential features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very simple to write and send out emails. I stated over several of things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive a web site. Think about it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, offer you an internet site. However, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is very important. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv site or through embed forms.
If you already have a website, and desire individuals to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different choices– a full width, a fixed width, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to onward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the group is dealing with updates for these, but I discussed a couple of issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a service for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your listing to ahead your emails to close friends and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your checklist, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve appear numerous newsletter business provide benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you one more method for growing your email checklist.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs memberships
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership earnings is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be extremely lucrative relying on what your e-newsletter has to use. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the things I love concerning beehiiv is just how tidy and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Katherine Rundell Beehiiv.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you require to begin and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit option for many customers.
I’m uncertain exactly how the device business economics work with this, but beehiiv is certainly less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and start sending newsletters free of cost.
Clean and modern subscriber analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Develop premium options to monetize.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I have not seen an additional newsletter system that has had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
But obviously, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I have actually discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized fonts.
I use Webflow as my internet site building system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much information why I love Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow evaluation if you wish to discover more.
Right now, there really is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site other than making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as utilizing iframe’s because they often tend to decrease my web site a little bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s really recognizable when you’re on a slow internet link. But I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not utilize a regular Webflow kind (which I like using). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would certainly simply add additional expenses that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I thought I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m also confident that Webflow will ultimately produce a much better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is a terrific option for anyone aiming to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform far exceeds numerous that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively low-cost wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not create testimonial blog posts commonly. I just do when I really utilize the tool myself and would advise it to a pal.
I wish you found some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.