Over 2 years ago, I read one of my favored e-mail 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 instantly started destroying Beehiiv 60 Day Free Trial.
I had not been sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time maker is difficult. I’m typically getting pitched different tools and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I spent the last 6 months checking out different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to assist construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific alternatives for composing newsletters. Yet I could not discover one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it incredibly simple to write and send e-mails, and provides me devices that help me evaluate metrics and obtain even more customers.
I believe I’ve finally found the ideal tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it easy to design, create, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the well-known newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m going to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly choose it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually watched for a modern-day e-newsletter system for fairly a long time now. I’ve procrastinated hard when it came to ultimately releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make sure many newsletter creators appreciate prominent newsletters with millions of customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have great content, tons of clients, and a clever referral program that allows them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to find out exactly how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool actually comprehend e-newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer growth.
Since, any kind of creator understands, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the ideal e-newsletter stack (that scales) frequently indicates utilizing multiple different devices to assist accomplish one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can get pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these things 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 maker that wants a system that permits them to send customized newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most successful newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or web content developer, you should seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s totally free to start and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you really wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a good sign that individuals love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic platform made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own website and use the platform as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv also provides you an internet site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site already, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your site customers straight to your beehiiv email list. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to utilize various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack choice.
How to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and more. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply beginning (or for those trying to find a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv 60 Day Free Trial
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand colors and design to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
Once you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed information on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start composing,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you develop and release newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down into sections), Expand 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 newsletter with ads, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you wish to write about, I recommend simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and straightforward user interface for creating.
When you start composing, you can maximize headings, include links, and style your material exactly how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for different sorts of web content like video clips, web links, photos, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is likewise continuously releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a lot a lot more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to design your email template and change some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to first time customers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history colors, borders, spacing, fonts, photo layouts, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before solitary point you can enhance with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the system absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a great publishing system for any kind of newsletter developer.
Right here are some of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it super easy to create and send out e-mails. I stated over several of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the far better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) reside on an internet site. Consider it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, offer you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas 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
Obtaining clients is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv website or via embed forms.
If you already have a website, and desire individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed form. This is what I make use of on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different options– a complete width, a dealt with size, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can discover 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 ahead UTM specifications for tracking purposes– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the team is working on updates for these, however I pointed out a couple of issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your checklist to onward your emails to buddies and associates and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your checklist, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually seem several newsletter companies offer rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you another avenue for expanding your email checklist.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs registrations
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration revenue is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” issues of your newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be extremely lucrative relying on what your newsletter needs to offer. For example, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that generates millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the things I love regarding beehiiv is how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter Beehiiv 60 Day Free Trial.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client matter increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you whatever you need to get going and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for several individuals.
I’m unsure exactly how the device economics work on this, however beehiiv is certainly cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are several of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending out newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and contemporary customer analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create premium choices to monetize.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet of course, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are several of the cons I have actually found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my website building system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you want to find out more.
Today, there really is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to reduce my web site a little bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s really visible when you get on a slow internet link. However I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow type (which I enjoy making use of). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would simply add additional costs that I do not need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the disadvantages below. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is an excellent option for any individual wanting to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system far surpasses many that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively affordable wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not compose testimonial messages frequently. I just do when I actually utilize the device myself and would suggest it to a pal.
I hope you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.