Over 2 years ago, I read one of my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantaneously began wrecking Alex & Books Beehiiv.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m typically obtaining pitched different devices and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I invested the last six months checking out various email and newsletter systems to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful options for composing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully customize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it very simple to compose and send out e-mails, and gives me tools that assist me analyze metrics and get even more customers.
I assume I’ve finally discovered the appropriate device.
But, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to design, write, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth 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) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly go with it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve watched for a modern newsletter platform for quite time now. I’ve put things off hard when it concerned lastly launching my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make certain several e-newsletter designers appreciate preferred newsletters with countless clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have great content, tons of clients, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at extra subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to find out exactly how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they create a newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to answer all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that built this device actually comprehend e-newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the initial marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I understood this was going to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer development.
Due to the fact that, any type of designer recognizes, you require growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate newsletter stack (that scales) typically means using multiple various tools to aid achieve one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can get pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content maker that wants a platform that enables them to send out custom newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, start-up, or web content maker, you ought to seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to get started and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you actually end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indicator that individuals love 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 a great system utilized by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own internet site and use the system as your all-in-one service for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv additionally provides you an internet site similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own site currently, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site clients directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you access to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, exterior embed types, and more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just beginning (or for those searching for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Alex & Books Beehiiv
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally select your brand name design and colors to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start writing,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot over), Start creating is where you create and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your subscribers are (and damage them down into segments), Grow is where you have accessibility 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 advertisements, Design 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 every one of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you want to cover, I recommend just going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Start creating”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and straightforward interface for composing.
Once you start composing, you can maximize headings, include links, and design your content how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for different types of content like videos, web links, images, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is additionally frequently launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal extra content features depending upon when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your email template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, photo formats, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever solitary thing you can maximize with your email template since it’s a great deal. Just try out the platform for free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a wonderful publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter designer.
Here are some of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it very very easy to compose and send emails. I pointed out above a few of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some additional reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a web site. Consider 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 register for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, provide you an internet site. However, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or with embed types.
If you currently have a website, and desire people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed type. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different options– a full size, a repaired width, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s also an alternative for attribution monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM criteria for tracking objectives– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the team is servicing updates for these, yet I discussed a few worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your checklist to onward your e-mails to friends and coworkers and if they obtain other people to sign up for your checklist, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually appear many e-newsletter business provide incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– offering you one more opportunity for growing your email list.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to an extra premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this post.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership revenue is absolutely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be extremely profitable depending on what your newsletter has to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that produces millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I love about beehiiv is exactly how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Alex & Books Beehiiv.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer count increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you require to get started and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for many customers.
I’m not exactly sure how the device economics deal with this, but beehiiv is definitely less expensive (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Below are some of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to establish and start sending newsletters completely free.
Clean and modern-day subscriber analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Develop costs alternatives to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet of course, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my site building system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much information why I like Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow evaluation if you ‘d like to learn more.
Today, there truly is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not such as utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to reduce my internet site a bit. Each time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s really noticeable when you get on a slow-moving internet link. However I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a routine Webflow type (which I love using). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly just include additional expenses that I do not need. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I assumed I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the cons right here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually create a much better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a fantastic solution for anyone aiming to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter platform far outweighs lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather inexpensive for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not create testimonial blog posts usually. I just do when I really use the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a close friend.
I wish you discovered some quality on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.