Over 2 years earlier, I was reading among my favored e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and immediately started tearing up Beehiiv Academy.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time developer is tough. I’m often getting pitched various tools and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological since I invested the last 6 months checking out various e-mail and newsletter platforms to aid develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic choices for writing e-newsletters. But I could not discover one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The problem with several existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my newsletter layouts, makes it very simple to compose and send emails, and provides me tools that aid me assess metrics and get more clients.
I assume I have actually ultimately located the best tool.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv may 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 simple to design, compose, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the renowned e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid makers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally go with it as my newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern newsletter platform for quite a long time currently. I’ve hesitated hard when it came to finally launching my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure many e-newsletter makers look up to prominent newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have fantastic content, tons of subscribers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to identify how these large 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 subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool actually understand newsletter development and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter system. One that’s focused on developer development.
Due to the fact that, any kind of maker knows, you require development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the right e-newsletter stack (that scales) usually implies using multiple various devices to assist achieve one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up referrals. It can obtain expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was totally free to begin utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content maker that desires a platform that allows them to send custom newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or content creator, you should seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good sign that individuals like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a terrific system utilized by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own web site currently, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your website clients straight to your beehiiv email list. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow people to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to utilize different marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack option.
How to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and much more. It’s a very charitable offering for those just starting (or for those seeking a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Academy
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll likewise choose your brand name colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning writing,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Analyze.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you create and publish newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can watch who your clients are (and damage them down right 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 e-newsletter with ads, Style is where you create your newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you wish to cover, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Start composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– focus on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and user-friendly user interface for composing.
When you begin composing, you can enhance headings, include links, and design your content just how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of options for various sorts of material like videos, web links, pictures, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise continuously releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot a lot more material features depending upon when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to design your email template and change some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, image formats, and extra. I’m not going to experience ever single point you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply try the system totally free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it an excellent publishing platform for any type of newsletter creator.
Right here are a few of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely simple to write and send emails. I discussed above several of things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive a web site. Consider it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, provide you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or through embed forms.
If you already have a web site, and want people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three various choices– a complete size, a fixed size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s also an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to forward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is dealing with updates for these, however I pointed out a few worries I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your list to ahead your e-mails to close friends and colleagues and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your listing, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever form you want. I’ve seem numerous e-newsletter firms provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional method for growing your e-mail listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this article.
Costs registrations
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership earnings is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be very financially rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to provide. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that generates millions in income a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I love concerning beehiiv is just how clean and easy the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Beehiiv Academy.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you whatever you require to begin and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom domain, polls, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit choice for numerous users.
I’m not exactly sure just how the device business economics work with this, however beehiiv is definitely more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are several of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics.
Lots of versatility with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Develop costs choices to generate income from.
Polls.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
But naturally, I do not wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom typefaces.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site structure platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you would love to find out more.
Today, there actually is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t like using iframe’s because they often tend to reduce my website a little bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s very visible when you’re on a slow net connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a routine Webflow type (which I enjoy utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would simply include extra expenses that I do not require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the disadvantages below. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will ultimately create a much better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a fantastic service for any person seeking to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform much outweighs numerous that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly inexpensive of what 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 customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not compose evaluation articles typically. I just do when I in fact use the tool myself and would advise it to a pal.
I hope you located some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.