Over two years back, I read one of my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and quickly started wrecking Above The Hollow Beehiiv.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a permanent maker is tough. I’m usually getting pitched different tools and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological since I spent the last six months trying out various email and newsletter systems to aid develop my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great options for writing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t locate one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me fully tailor my e-newsletter layouts, makes it very very easy to compose and send e-mails, and gives me tools that assist me analyze metrics and obtain even more customers.
I believe I’ve finally discovered the appropriate device.
But, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it very easy to design, create, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the popular e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately choose it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a contemporary e-newsletter system for fairly some time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it pertained to ultimately launching my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure lots of e-newsletter designers look up to preferred e-newsletters with numerous clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have excellent material, tons of clients, and a creative referral program that allows them to get back at more customers.
So, I went on a quest to determine how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they produce a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool actually recognize e-newsletter creation and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the very first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a various newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Since, any designer recognizes, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the right newsletter stack (that scales) usually implies using several various tools to help accomplish one goal– one system for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was complimentary to start utilizing, it was a no-brainer 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 custom newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or web content designer, you need to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to begin and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent indication that individuals like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great platform utilized by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own site and use the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you an internet site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own web site already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site clients right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to leverage different marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, external embed forms, and more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those searching for a new system to move to).
Onboarding Above The Hollow Beehiiv
After producing an account, you’ll go through 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 paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally pick your brand colors and design to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
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 composing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the really lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you produce and release newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down right into segments), Expand is where you have access 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 newsletter with ads, Layout is where you make your newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you want to discuss, I recommend just going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and easy to use user interface for composing.
Once you start creating, you can maximize headings, add links, and style your material just how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for various kinds of web content like video clips, web links, images, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is also frequently releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a whole lot much more content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, 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 design.
You can edit background colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, photo formats, and extra. I’m not going to experience ever solitary thing you can enhance with your email template because it’s a lot. Just try out the platform totally free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any newsletter creator.
Here are several of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it very simple to create and send out e-mails. I stated above a few of things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the far better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive on an internet site. Think of it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can sign up for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, give you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is very important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and want people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed type. This is what I make use of on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different alternatives– a complete size, a repaired size, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s also an option for attribution monitoring if you intend to forward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– quite neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the group is servicing updates for these, yet I mentioned a couple of concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a service for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your listing to ahead your emails to pals and associates and if they obtain other individuals to register for your checklist, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever type you want. I’ve seem lots of e-newsletter firms offer rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you one more opportunity for growing your e-mail list.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this short article.
Premium memberships
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription earnings is certainly a beast of its very own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that creates millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the important things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is just how clean and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber matter Above The Hollow Beehiiv.
You get access 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 count go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you everything you require to get going and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for many users.
I’m not sure how the device business economics work on this, yet beehiiv is certainly more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are several of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters free of cost.
Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Lots of versatility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Develop costs choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I have not seen an additional newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
But certainly, I do not intend to be biased so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the cons I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my web site building system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow review if you ‘d like to find out more.
Right now, there actually is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t like making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to decrease my site a bit. Each time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s really noticeable when you’re on a slow-moving web link. However I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow form (which I enjoy utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would just add extra prices that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will ultimately create a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is an excellent solution for any person looking to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform much outweighs several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively low-cost of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose testimonial articles often. I only do when I actually utilize the device myself and would recommend it to a friend.
I hope you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.