Over 2 years earlier, I was reading one of my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and immediately began wrecking Beehiiv Abuse.
I had not been sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full time designer is difficult. I’m frequently obtaining pitched various tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological because I spent the last 6 months experimenting with different email and e-newsletter systems to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific options for composing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t discover one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me totally tailor my newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly easy to compose and send emails, and provides me devices that assist me evaluate metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I think I’ve lastly located the ideal tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really best 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 very easy to style, write, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former staff members at the well-known newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly choose it as my newsletter platform of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day e-newsletter system for quite some time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it concerned ultimately introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure several newsletter designers look up to preferred newsletters with numerous subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have wonderful content, tons of subscribers, and a clever referral program that permits them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I took place a search 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 e-newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool truly understand newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the very first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Because, any kind of designer knows, you require growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the ideal e-newsletter stack (that scales) commonly indicates utilizing numerous different tools to assist achieve one goal– one system for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to set up recommendations. It can get costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that wants a system that permits them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or content designer, you must seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s entirely free to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you actually end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent indication that people love reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific system made use of by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own website and use the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv also provides you a website similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own internet site already, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site customers right to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable individuals to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
How to begin making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary 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 enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, exterior embed types, and extra. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those searching for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Abuse
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also pick your brand name colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described info on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin composing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Beginning composing is where you create and release e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your clients are (and break them down right into sections), 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 advertisements, Design is where you develop your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you wish to cover, I suggest simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and user-friendly interface for writing.
As soon as you begin creating, you can maximize headings, include links, and style your web content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of options for various types of material like video clips, links, pictures, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise frequently launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a whole lot extra material features relying on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and change some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, image layouts, and much more. I’m not going to experience ever single point you can maximize with your email template because it’s a great deal. Simply try out the system for free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a great publishing system for any kind of newsletter creator.
Below are some of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very easy to create and send e-mails. I mentioned above a few of things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a site. Think about it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, give you a website. However, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a customized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or via embed types.
If you currently have a web site, and desire people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed form. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three different options– a full width, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution tracking if you intend to onward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the group is servicing updates for these, but I pointed out a couple of problems I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your list to forward your e-mails to buddies and associates and if they get other people to subscribe to your list, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I have actually appear lots of e-newsletter business give incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you another opportunity for growing your e-mail list.
However, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs subscriptions
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership revenue is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely lucrative depending on what your e-newsletter has to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that generates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among the things I like concerning beehiiv is how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count Beehiiv Abuse.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you everything you require to get going and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, personalized domain, surveys, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for lots of individuals.
I’m uncertain exactly how the unit business economics deal with this, however beehiiv is definitely cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters for free.
Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Lots of adaptability with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop premium alternatives to generate income from.
Polls.
To be truthful, I have not seen another e-newsletter platform that has had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
But obviously, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I’ve located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my website structure system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much information why I love Webflow so much yet you can review my Webflow evaluation if you want to find out more.
Right now, there really is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site apart from making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as making use of iframe’s because they have a tendency to slow down my internet site a bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s extremely noticeable when you get on a slow-moving web link. But I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a regular Webflow type (which I enjoy making use of). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would simply include extra prices that I do not require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I thought I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the disadvantages here. I’m also confident that Webflow will ultimately develop a much better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a great remedy for anybody wanting to dive into the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform far exceeds many that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively affordable wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t create review blog posts commonly. I just do when I actually make use of the tool myself and would recommend it to a good friend.
I wish you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.