Over two years ago, I was reading among my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and quickly started wrecking Beehiiv Advanced Analytics.
I had not been certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched different devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I invested the last six months trying various email and e-newsletter platforms to help construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful alternatives for composing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t locate one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with several existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me fully customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it extremely simple to compose and send out e-mails, and gives me devices that aid me assess metrics and get more subscribers.
I think I’ve finally discovered the appropriate tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to layout, compose, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous employees at the well-known newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately opt for it as my newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day newsletter platform for rather some time now. I’ve postponed hard when it came to finally releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure lots of e-newsletter creators respect preferred newsletters with countless subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have wonderful content, tons of customers, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to identify just how these large 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 even more subscribers? How do they create an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool truly understand newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Because, any kind of creator understands, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the ideal newsletter pile (that ranges) usually suggests using multiple different devices to aid achieve one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish referrals. It can get expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was cost-free to begin making use of, 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 permits them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or content maker, you need to seriously thinking about trying out beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to get started and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you actually end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indication that people like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a great system used by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your own site and use the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a web site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your web site customers right to your beehiiv email listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable people to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to leverage various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
How to start using beehiiv email marketing software application.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you access to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, external embed types, and more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Advanced Analytics
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand name colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have outlined info on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start writing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Assess.” And at the very lower you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into sectors), Grow is where you have access 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 newsletter with ads, Design is where you create your newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you intend to blog about, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Begin creating”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly user interface for creating.
When you begin creating, you can maximize headings, add links, and design your content just how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of options for different types of content like video clips, web links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a great deal a lot more content features relying on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your email template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a description, include your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, picture styles, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever single point you can optimize with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Simply experiment with the system absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it an excellent publishing system for any type of e-newsletter maker.
Here are several of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it super simple to create and send out emails. I pointed out above a few of the things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) survive 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 people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, provide you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a customized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or with embed types.
If you currently have a web site, and desire people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed form. This is what I make use of on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various choices– a complete width, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to onward UTM specifications for tracking functions– quite neat.
However, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the team is working on updates for these, but I pointed out a few worries I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your checklist to forward your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve seem lots of newsletter business offer rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you another avenue for growing your email checklist.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this article.
Costs memberships
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription profits 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” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be really financially rewarding relying on what your newsletter needs to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that creates millions in income a year just by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among things I like regarding beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count Beehiiv Advanced Analytics.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer count go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you require to get going and grow your newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain, polls, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for many customers.
I’m uncertain just how the system business economics service this, however beehiiv is definitely less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending out newsletters absolutely free.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Create costs alternatives to generate income from.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen another newsletter system that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet certainly, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the cons I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my site structure platform of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much detail why I like Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to discover more.
Today, there really is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site apart from using an iframe embed. I directly don’t like utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to decrease my internet site a little bit. Every time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s extremely visible when you get on a slow net link. However I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a routine Webflow form (which I like utilizing). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would simply add additional costs that I do not require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I believed I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the disadvantages here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will eventually produce a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a great option for any individual wanting to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform much surpasses several that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather inexpensive of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create testimonial articles typically. I just do when I really utilize the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a pal.
I hope you discovered some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.