Over two years ago, I was reading one of my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and quickly started wrecking Learn Azure and AWS Beehiiv.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time creator is difficult. I’m frequently obtaining pitched various devices and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological because I invested the last six months experimenting with various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to aid develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent alternatives for creating newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The concern with several existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly easy to write and send emails, and provides me devices that help me examine metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I think I’ve lastly found the right tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to style, compose, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former staff members at the renowned newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly opt for it as my newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve watched for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for rather a long time now. I have actually postponed hard when it pertained to finally releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make certain lots of e-newsletter creators respect prominent newsletters with numerous clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have fantastic content, lots of customers, and a creative referral program that allows them to get even much more customers.
So, I took place a quest to figure out exactly how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they produce a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device actually understand e-newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was going to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Since, any kind of maker recognizes, you need growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the right newsletter stack (that ranges) commonly indicates making use of several different tools to help attain one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was free to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material maker that desires a system that permits them to send personalized newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or material creator, you need to seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you in fact end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indication that individuals love reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a fantastic system used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your own internet site and make use of the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own web site currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site subscribers right to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to leverage various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
Just how to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, exterior embed types, and extra. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those searching for a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Learn Azure and AWS Beehiiv
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand name colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start writing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Analyze.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Begin composing is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down into sections), Expand is where you have access 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 ads, Style is where you develop your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you wish to discuss, I suggest simply going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Begin composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and user-friendly user interface for writing.
When you start composing, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your material how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for various kinds of web content like videos, web links, pictures, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise regularly releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot extra material features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your e-mail template and change some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, photo formats, and more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever solitary point you can enhance with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Simply try the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a fantastic publishing system for any type of newsletter designer.
Right here are several of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely very easy to create and send emails. I pointed out over a few of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the far better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a website. Think of it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, give you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a personalized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is important. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv website or with embed forms.
If you currently have a site, and want individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed kind. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different alternatives– a full width, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also an alternative for attribution monitoring if you wish to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the group is working with updates for these, yet I mentioned a few concerns I had in the pros and cons area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your list to ahead your emails to friends and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually appear several newsletter firms provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you an additional avenue for growing your email checklist.
However, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs memberships
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration revenue is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying clients. This can be very rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter has to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that creates millions in income a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the things I love about beehiiv is how clean and easy the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count Learn Azure and AWS Beehiiv.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you require to start and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and access to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for several users.
I’m not sure exactly how the device business economics service this, but beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters for free.
Clean and contemporary client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Develop premium alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be honest, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But certainly, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my internet site building platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to go in too much information why I love Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow review if you want to find out more.
Today, there really is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as making use of iframe’s because they have a tendency to slow down my internet site a bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s really obvious when you get on a slow internet link. Yet I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow form (which I like utilizing). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly simply add additional expenses that I don’t need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I thought I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the cons below. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a great remedy for anybody looking to study the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform much outweighs lots of that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly inexpensive wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not compose testimonial blog posts commonly. I just do when I really utilize the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a close friend.
I hope you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.