Over two years back, I read one of my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantly began wrecking Beehiiv Audio.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a permanent maker is tough. I’m commonly obtaining pitched various tools and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological because I invested the last 6 months trying out different e-mail and newsletter systems to aid construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific options for writing newsletters. However I could not locate one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me completely customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it incredibly simple to write and send out emails, and gives me devices that aid me evaluate metrics and get more customers.
I think I’ve lastly located the best device.
Yet, I understand beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it very easy to design, compose, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous staff members at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly choose it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a modern-day newsletter system for quite a long time now. I’ve procrastinated hard when it involved lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain lots of newsletter designers respect popular newsletters with millions of clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have excellent material, lots of clients, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get even more clients.
So, I went on a quest to find out just how these huge newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool actually comprehend e-newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the initial marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker development.
Since, any kind of creator knows, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the right e-newsletter pile (that scales) often suggests making use of numerous various tools to help accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to establish referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was cost-free to start utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that wants a system that permits them to send out personalized newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or content designer, you ought to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you actually wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indication that people enjoy reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is an excellent platform made use of by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your very own site and make use of the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv also gives you an internet site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own website already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your site subscribers right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you access to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a very charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those searching for a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Audio
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise select your brand name design and colors to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
Once you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed details on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning creating,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you create and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down into sectors), Expand 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 newsletter with ads, Design is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you want to discuss, I recommend simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Begin writing”.
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 easy to use user interface for writing.
Once you start creating, you can enhance headings, include web links, and design your material just how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for various sorts of material like video clips, links, pictures, and more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally constantly launching item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a great deal extra material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your email template and change some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, font styles, image styles, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template because it’s a great deal. Just try the system absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it an excellent posting platform for any e-newsletter creator.
Right here are several of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely easy to create and send out emails. I discussed over several of things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the far better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a website. Think of it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, provide you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom-made domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is very important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv site or via embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and want people to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three different choices– a full size, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise a choice for attribution tracking if you intend to forward UTM specifications for tracking functions– quite neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the group is dealing with updates for these, however I discussed a few problems I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your list to onward your e-mails to friends and coworkers and if they get other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem lots of e-newsletter firms give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you an additional avenue for expanding your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this article.
Premium registrations
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership revenue is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be very profitable depending on what your e-newsletter has to provide. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that generates millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
One of things I like concerning beehiiv is how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter Beehiiv Audio.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you everything you need to get going and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom domain, surveys, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the very same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for numerous individuals.
I’m not exactly sure just how the unit business economics work on this, yet beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to establish and start sending out e-newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and modern client analytics.
Lots of flexibility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Produce costs choices to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I have not seen an additional newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
But obviously, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I have actually located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my site structure system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive information why I enjoy Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow review if you wish to learn more.
Right now, there really is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site besides using an iframe embed. I personally do not like using iframe’s because they often tend to slow down my internet site a little bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s very noticeable when you’re on a slow internet link. But I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a regular Webflow kind (which I love using). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would certainly just add additional prices that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I thought I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the cons right here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will eventually create a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent option for anybody looking to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform much exceeds numerous that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly economical wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t write evaluation posts usually. I only do when I actually make use of the device myself and would advise it to a pal.
I wish you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.