Over 2 years ago, I was reading among my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and instantly began destroying Beehiiv Affiliate Commission.
I had not been sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time developer is tough. I’m typically obtaining pitched various tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional since I invested the last 6 months trying out various e-mail and newsletter platforms to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great alternatives for composing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The issue with several existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me completely customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it super simple to write and send emails, and offers me devices that help me examine metrics and obtain more customers.
I think I’ve lastly located the right tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv may not be for every person. 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 newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it simple to style, create, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the renowned e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately select it as my newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve watched for a modern-day newsletter system for fairly a long time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it concerned lastly introducing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure several newsletter designers look up to preferred e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have fantastic material, tons of clients, and a creative referral program that permits them to get back at more subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to figure 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 e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they create a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device actually recognize e-newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the initial marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I knew this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Due to the fact that, any developer recognizes, you require development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the right e-newsletter stack (that scales) commonly suggests utilizing multiple different tools to assist accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish referrals. It can obtain expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was cost-free to start making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that desires a platform that enables them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or web content creator, you need to seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to start and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you really wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good indication that individuals like reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is an excellent platform made use of by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own web site and make use of the system as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally gives you an internet site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own site already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your site clients directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to take advantage of different marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
Just how to start 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 “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and extra. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those searching for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Affiliate Commission
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined details on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start writing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot over), Beginning creating is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your subscribers are (and damage them down into segments), Grow 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you make your newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you intend to write about, I suggest simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning writing”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and straightforward user interface for writing.
Once you start writing, you can enhance headings, include links, and design your content how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for various kinds of content like video clips, links, pictures, and more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally constantly releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot extra material features depending on when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and change some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, photo formats, and extra. I’m not going to experience ever before solitary thing you can optimize with your email template since it’s a lot. Just experiment with the platform totally free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a great publishing system for any newsletter maker.
Right here are a few of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it incredibly simple to create and send e-mails. I stated above a few of the important things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the much better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a web site. Think about it as a site for your e-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 newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, give you an internet site. However, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a customized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or through embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and desire people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different choices– a full size, a fixed size, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution tracking if you intend to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the team is working with updates for these, yet I discussed a few problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your list to ahead your emails to good friends and coworkers and if they get other people to subscribe to your listing, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually seem numerous e-newsletter business give rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you another avenue for growing your e-mail listing.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this post.
Premium registrations
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership income is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” problems of your newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be extremely profitable depending on what your newsletter has to supply. For example, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that creates millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
One of the things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is just how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Beehiiv Affiliate Commission.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer count increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you everything you need to get going and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit option for numerous customers.
I’m unsure exactly how the unit business economics deal with this, but beehiiv is definitely more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Naturally, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are several of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending e-newsletters free of charge.
Clean and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce premium options to monetize.
Polls.
To be honest, I haven’t seen another e-newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
However naturally, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the cons I have actually found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my internet site structure platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much detail why I like Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow evaluation if you ‘d like to learn more.
Now, there really is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t like utilizing iframe’s because they tend to reduce my internet site a little bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s really visible when you get on a slow-moving net link. Yet I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not utilize a regular Webflow kind (which I enjoy using). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier but that would certainly simply add additional costs that I do not require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I thought I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the cons here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will eventually create a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
In general, beehiiv is a terrific remedy for anybody aiming to dive into the globe of e-mail 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 really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly affordable wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t compose testimonial messages commonly. I only do when I in fact utilize the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a pal.
I hope you found some quality on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.