Over 2 years earlier, I read one of my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and immediately began tearing up Beehiiv Ashley Graham.
I had not been certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time maker is difficult. I’m frequently getting pitched various tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological since I invested the last 6 months trying out different email and e-newsletter platforms to help construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great alternatives for creating e-newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The issue with several existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me fully tailor my newsletter layouts, makes it extremely simple to write and send e-mails, and gives me tools that aid me analyze metrics and get even more subscribers.
I think I’ve lastly found the appropriate tool.
However, I know beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to style, write, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally go with it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter system for quite time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it came to ultimately introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain several newsletter designers admire prominent e-newsletters with countless clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have terrific material, lots of customers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get even extra customers.
So, I went on a quest to find out just how these large e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool actually 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 several of the first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I knew this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Due to the fact that, any type of creator understands, you require growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the ideal e-newsletter stack (that ranges) usually suggests utilizing multiple different devices to assist accomplish one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was totally free to begin using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content creator that wants a system that enables them to send customized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or content developer, you must seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you actually wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indication that people like reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a wonderful platform utilized by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage 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 internet site currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your site clients right to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable individuals to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to leverage various marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
Just how to begin making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, external embed kinds, and extra. It’s a really charitable offering for those just starting (or for those searching for a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Ashley Graham
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally choose your brand colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described info on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning composing,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you create and publish newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down into sections), Grow 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, Layout is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you wish to write about, I advise just going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly interface for writing.
As soon as you start composing, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your web content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of alternatives for various types of content like video clips, links, images, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is likewise regularly releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a great deal much more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your e-mail template and change some setups.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, picture layouts, and a lot more. I’m not going to undergo ever before solitary point you can maximize with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Just try the platform free of cost and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any kind of newsletter developer.
Below are some of the necessary features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it super easy to compose and send emails. I pointed out above a few of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll save you some added analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely among the far better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on an internet site. Think about it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, give you a web site. However, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or via embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and desire individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various alternatives– a complete size, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to ahead UTM criteria for tracking objectives– quite cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is servicing updates for these, but I pointed out a couple of issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your list to forward your e-mails to pals and coworkers and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your listing, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve seem many e-newsletter companies offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you one more opportunity for expanding your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more superior 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 real followers. Subscription revenue is certainly a monster of its own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be extremely lucrative depending upon what your newsletter needs to use. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that creates millions in income a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of things I love regarding beehiiv is just how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter Beehiiv Ashley Graham.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client count increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you everything you need to get going and expand your newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement 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) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for lots of customers.
I’m not exactly sure exactly how the system economics service this, however beehiiv is most definitely less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are some of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and begin sending e-newsletters completely free.
Tidy and modern-day customer analytics.
Lots of flexibility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Create premium choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
But certainly, I do not want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized font styles.
I use Webflow as my internet site building platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter too much information why I love Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow review if you would love to find out more.
Now, there really is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from using an iframe embed. I personally do not such as utilizing iframe’s because they tend to slow down my web site a bit. Every single time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s extremely obvious when you’re on a slow internet connection. But I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow kind (which I love making use of). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would certainly simply include added costs that I do not need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the cons here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will at some point develop a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is a great remedy for any individual wanting to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform far outweighs several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly inexpensive for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not write review posts usually. I just do when I actually make use of the device myself and would recommend it to a good friend.
I wish you discovered some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.