Over two years back, I was reading among my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and promptly began tearing up Beehiiv Arnold’s Pump Club.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent developer is difficult. I’m frequently obtaining pitched various tools and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I spent the last 6 months trying out different email and e-newsletter systems to help develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific alternatives for composing newsletters. Yet I could not find one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely customize my newsletter designs, makes it very very easy to compose and send out e-mails, and offers me tools that aid me examine metrics and get more customers.
I assume I’ve finally located the ideal device.
However, I understand beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to design, compose, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former workers at the renowned newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m going to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally select it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter platform for quite some time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it came to lastly launching my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain many newsletter creators respect prominent e-newsletters with countless clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have great web content, tons of subscribers, and a smart referral program that allows them to get even more clients.
So, I took place a hunt to identify how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool really understand e-newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the very first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Since, any maker recognizes, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the ideal newsletter stack (that ranges) frequently implies making use of numerous various devices to aid attain one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish recommendations. It can get costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was complimentary to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that desires a system that permits them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media company, startup, or material designer, you ought to seriously thinking about trying out beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you actually end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indication that individuals love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great system used by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your very own internet site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also offers you a web site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site already, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your web site clients directly to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow people to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to take advantage of various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, external embed kinds, and a lot more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting (or for those searching for a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Arnold’s Pump Club
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you used?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then create a name and link for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand name design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have outlined information on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start writing,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you create and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your customers are (and break them down into segments), Grow is where you have accessibility 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 e-newsletter with ads, Layout is where you make your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you intend to blog about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and user-friendly user interface for composing.
Once you start writing, you can enhance headings, include links, and design your material just how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of alternatives for various sorts of web content like videos, web links, pictures, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise constantly releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a great deal more material features depending upon when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo formats, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before solitary point you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a great deal. Just try the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any type of e-newsletter designer.
Below are some of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it incredibly simple to compose and send emails. I pointed out over some of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the much better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive a site. Consider it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, offer you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or through embed forms.
If you currently have a website, and want people to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various choices– a complete size, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– rather neat.
However, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working on updates for these, but I pointed out a couple of worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your checklist to ahead your emails to good friends and associates and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your checklist, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever type you want. I have actually seem several newsletter business provide rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you an additional opportunity for expanding your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to an extra premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this post.
Costs subscriptions
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership revenue is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” issues of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely lucrative depending on what your newsletter needs to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that creates millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is exactly how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Beehiiv Arnold’s Pump Club.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you need to begin and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain, polls, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit option for many customers.
I’m not sure how the system economics service this, but beehiiv is certainly cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are several of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and start sending out newsletters totally free.
Tidy and contemporary customer analytics.
Lots of versatility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce costs choices to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen an additional newsletter system that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
But certainly, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m going to mention some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the cons I have actually discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my website building system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive detail why I love Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to discover more.
Today, there actually is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not like using iframe’s since they have a tendency to slow down my web site a bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s very noticeable when you’re on a slow web connection. But I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow form (which I like utilizing). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier but that would just include additional expenses that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I thought I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the disadvantages right here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will eventually create a much better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a wonderful service for anybody looking to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform much outweighs many that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly affordable of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not write review messages usually. I just do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a buddy.
I hope you located some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.