Over two years earlier, I was reading one of my favorite email e-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 instantaneously began wrecking Matt Mcgarry GrowLetter.
I had not been certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time maker is difficult. I’m commonly obtaining pitched various devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months experimenting with various email and newsletter platforms to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific options for composing e-newsletters. Yet I could not find one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with several 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 very easy to create and send e-mails, and gives me tools that aid me analyze metrics and obtain even more clients.
I believe I have actually finally found the best tool.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it simple to design, create, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former workers at the famous newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m going to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately opt for it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter system for rather some time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it concerned finally releasing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure lots of e-newsletter developers respect preferred e-newsletters with millions of subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have great content, tons of customers, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get even a lot more customers.
So, I took place a quest to identify exactly how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more clients? How do they create a newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool actually recognize newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Since, any kind of developer recognizes, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the best e-newsletter pile (that scales) often suggests utilizing several different tools to assist accomplish one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish referrals. It can get expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was totally free to start using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that desires a platform that permits them to send out customized newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or web content maker, you ought to seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely free to get started and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you really wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent sign that people love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific system utilized by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your very own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a site similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own internet site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your internet site subscribers directly to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow people to register for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to take advantage of different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
How to begin using beehiiv email marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, external embed kinds, and more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those trying to find a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Matt Mcgarry GrowLetter
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll then produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally choose your brand design and colors to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning creating,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Analyze.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings alternative.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and damage them down into sectors), Grow 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 e-newsletter with ads, Style is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Writing 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 wish to cover, I suggest simply going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and user-friendly user interface for creating.
As soon as you start writing, you can enhance headings, add links, and style your web content how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for different sorts of web content like videos, links, photos, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is additionally regularly releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot more content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to create your email template and adjust some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to first time customers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, picture layouts, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever single point you can maximize with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Simply try the system absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it a terrific posting platform for any newsletter developer.
Below are several of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it super very easy to create and send out e-mails. I discussed above a few of things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a site. Consider it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and an area where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, provide you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is essential. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv web site or via embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and want people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed type. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various choices– a full size, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also a choice for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to ahead UTM criteria for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the group is working on updates for these, yet I pointed out a couple of concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your list to forward your emails to buddies and coworkers and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your checklist, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve seem many e-newsletter business give incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you one more opportunity for growing your e-mail list.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this post.
Premium registrations
They claim all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership revenue is definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” problems of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be very financially rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter has to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Matt Mcgarry GrowLetter.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer matter rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you need to get started and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and access to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 each month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit option for many users.
I’m not sure how the device business economics service this, but beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Right here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters absolutely free.
Tidy and modern client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Create premium alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I have not seen one more newsletter system that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However naturally, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m going to mention some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my web site structure platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive detail why I like Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow review if you wish to find out more.
Today, there really is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t like making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to decrease my website a bit. Every time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s really visible when you’re on a slow-moving web link. But I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier but that would simply add additional expenses that I do not require. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I believed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the disadvantages here. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually produce a much better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a terrific remedy for anyone aiming to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system much exceeds numerous that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively cheap wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unprecedented. 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 write testimonial blog posts commonly. I just do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would advise it to a friend.
I wish you located some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.