Over 2 years back, I was reading among my favored e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and quickly began destroying Lucky Culture Beehiiv.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m usually getting pitched different devices and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last six months experimenting with different email and e-newsletter platforms to aid build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific choices for writing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The concern with many existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me completely personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it super simple to compose and send out e-mails, and gives me devices that assist me analyze metrics and obtain more clients.
I believe I’ve lastly located the right tool.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it very easy to style, create, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally opt for it as my newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern newsletter platform for rather some time now. I have actually put things off hard when it involved finally releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure several e-newsletter developers admire preferred e-newsletters with numerous clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have excellent material, lots of customers, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I went on a hunt to identify how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this device really understand newsletter development and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the very first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Since, any creator knows, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the ideal newsletter pile (that scales) frequently indicates making use of numerous different devices to help attain one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up recommendations. It can get expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was free to begin using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that wants a system that enables them to send out custom newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or content creator, you must seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you in fact end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent indicator that people like reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is an excellent platform utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own website and use the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv also offers you a website similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your website subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable people to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack choice.
How to start using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, external embed types, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those seeking a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Lucky Culture Beehiiv
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise pick your brand name colors and design to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described info on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning composing,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very lower you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you produce and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your clients are (and damage them down right into sections), Grow 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you wish to write about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin creating”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and easy to use interface for creating.
When you begin composing, you can maximize headings, add web links, and style your material how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for different kinds of content like videos, web links, pictures, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is also constantly releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a whole lot much more content features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, picture formats, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever solitary point you can enhance with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply experiment with the system completely free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it a terrific posting system for any type of newsletter developer.
Right here are a few of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it incredibly simple to create and send e-mails. I stated above several of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the much better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) live on a site. Think about it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, provide you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is very important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or through embed kinds.
If you already have a web site, and want individuals to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 various options– a full width, a fixed width, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution monitoring if you want to forward UTM specifications for tracking functions– quite neat.
However, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working with updates for these, yet I discussed a few worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your checklist to onward your emails to close friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your checklist, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you want. I’ve appear lots of e-newsletter business give incentives 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– providing you an additional opportunity for expanding your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more premium 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 followers. Registration revenue is most definitely a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be extremely profitable depending upon what your newsletter needs to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I love concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count Lucky Culture Beehiiv.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer count rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you everything you need to get going and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the very same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit choice for numerous users.
I’m not exactly sure just how the unit economics work with this, however beehiiv is most definitely more affordable (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are several of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and begin sending e-newsletters completely free.
Tidy and contemporary customer analytics.
Lots of adaptability with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce premium alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be honest, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet certainly, I do not intend to be biased so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom fonts.
I use Webflow as my internet 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 like Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow evaluation if you want to discover more.
Today, there really is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides using an iframe embed. I personally don’t like using iframe’s since they often tend to reduce my website a little bit. Each time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s really visible when you’re on a sluggish net connection. Yet I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow kind (which I love using). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would just add extra prices that I do not require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the cons right here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually produce a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a wonderful service for any person wanting to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system much surpasses many 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 additionally fairly inexpensive wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t write review messages often. I only do when I in fact use the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a friend.
I wish you discovered some clarity on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.