Over 2 years earlier, I read one of my favorite email 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 promptly started tearing up Beehiiv App Marketplace.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent maker is tough. I’m typically obtaining pitched different devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months experimenting with various email and e-newsletter systems to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful choices for creating e-newsletters. But I could not find one that made me provide a precise “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter styles, makes it incredibly simple to write and send emails, and gives me devices that assist me evaluate metrics and get more customers.
I believe I’ve ultimately found the appropriate tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it very easy to layout, create, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former workers at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally opt for it as my newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter system for rather a long time now. I have actually put things off hard when it pertained to lastly introducing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure several e-newsletter makers admire preferred newsletters with countless clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have excellent content, tons of customers, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get even much more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to find out just how these huge newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool truly understand e-newsletter development and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Since, any creator understands, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the ideal newsletter stack (that ranges) often means using numerous various devices to aid accomplish one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to set up references. It can get costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was cost-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 designer that wants a platform that allows them to send personalized newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or web content developer, you must seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you in fact end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent sign that people enjoy reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great platform made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own internet site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to obtain the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a web site similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own web site already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site subscribers straight to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to utilize different marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack option.
Just how to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Enroll in 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 site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, exterior embed types, and a lot more. It’s a very generous offering for those just beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv App Marketplace
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally choose your brand name design and colors to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have outlined info on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start creating,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Examine.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your major control center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your clients are (and damage them down right into sectors), Expand is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with ads, Design is where you make your newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you want to blog about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start writing”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and user-friendly user interface for composing.
Once you start writing, you can maximize headings, include links, and design your web content how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of alternatives for various types of web content like videos, links, photos, and more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a lot extra material features depending upon when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, image formats, and much more. I’m not going to experience ever before solitary point you can optimize with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Simply try the system completely free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any kind of newsletter maker.
Right here are some of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely simple to compose and send emails. I discussed over several of things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll save you some added analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on an internet site. Think of it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, offer you a site. However, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a customized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter right from your beehiiv website or through embed types.
If you already have a site, and desire individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to use an embed kind. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various choices– a complete width, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an option for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to forward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the group is working with updates for these, however I pointed out a few worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages area below.
Referral program
One of 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 subscribers on your listing to forward your e-mails to close friends and colleagues and if they get other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually seem lots of newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you another avenue for expanding your e-mail list.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this short article.
Costs registrations
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration income is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” problems of your newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be extremely profitable relying on what your e-newsletter has to use. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the important things I enjoy about beehiiv is just how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter Beehiiv App Marketplace.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer count increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you whatever you need to get going and expand your newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, personalized domain, surveys, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for numerous customers.
I’m not sure exactly how the system economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and begin sending out newsletters totally free.
Tidy and modern-day customer analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop costs alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I have not seen one more e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet certainly, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m going to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I’ve located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my site building system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much information why I like Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow testimonial if you want to find out more.
Right now, there truly is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not such as using iframe’s since they tend to slow down my website a little bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s very visible when you’re on a slow-moving web connection. However I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a regular Webflow form (which I enjoy using). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly just add added costs that I do not require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I assumed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the cons here. I’m also confident that Webflow will at some point produce a far better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful remedy for anyone wanting to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter system far exceeds numerous that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather economical wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation articles typically. I just do when I in fact make use of the device myself and would certainly advise it to a buddy.
I hope you found some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.