Over two years ago, I was reading among my favored email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and quickly began destroying Beehiiv Beach Club.
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full time developer is difficult. I’m often obtaining pitched various devices and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional because I spent the last 6 months trying various email and e-newsletter platforms to assist construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great alternatives for writing e-newsletters. But I could not find one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me fully customize my e-newsletter designs, makes it very very easy to compose and send emails, and gives me tools that help me examine metrics and obtain more clients.
I believe I’ve finally located the best tool.
However, I know beehiiv may not be for everybody. 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 design, write, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately go with it as my newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for quite time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it involved lastly releasing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure many newsletter creators respect popular newsletters with countless customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have wonderful web content, tons of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get even more subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to identify exactly how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool truly recognize newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer growth.
Due to the fact that, any maker understands, you need growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the best newsletter stack (that ranges) frequently means utilizing multiple various devices to aid attain one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish references. It can obtain pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that wants a platform that enables them to send out customized newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or material designer, you need to seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to begin and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you actually end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indication that people enjoy reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful platform utilized by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your own internet site and utilize the system as your all-in-one service for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv permits you do to all 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 a site similar to Substack. However, if you have your own web site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site customers right to your beehiiv email list. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable individuals to register for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
Just how to start using beehiiv email marketing software application.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first 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 subscribers, give you accessibility to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, external embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Beach Club
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand name design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described details on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start writing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot over), Begin writing is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your subscribers are (and break them down into sectors), 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 newsletter with ads, Layout is where you make your newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you intend to blog about, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin composing”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and straightforward interface for composing.
Once you start composing, you can maximize headings, add links, and design your material exactly how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for various types of material like video clips, web links, images, and more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally continuously launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a great deal more material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your email template and readjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to first time clients, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, picture styles, and more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a great deal. Just try the platform totally free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a wonderful publishing platform for any type of newsletter developer.
Below are several of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it super simple to write and send e-mails. I stated above some of the important things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll spare you some added reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive a website. Think of it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your 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, including the cost-free one, give you a web site. However, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a personalized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is essential. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv site or via embed kinds.
If you already have a web site, and want individuals to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed form. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 various alternatives– a complete width, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise a choice for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to ahead UTM specifications for tracking objectives– rather cool.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the group is servicing updates for these, yet I pointed out a few worries I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your checklist to onward your emails to close friends and associates and if they get other individuals to register for your checklist, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever type you want. I’ve seem lots of newsletter companies offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you one more avenue for growing your e-mail listing.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this article.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration profits is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be really lucrative depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to supply. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that produces millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among things I like regarding beehiiv is how clean and basic the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Beehiiv Beach Club.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you whatever you require to begin and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit alternative for lots of individuals.
I’m unsure how the system business economics service this, however beehiiv is definitely less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to establish and begin sending newsletters for free.
Clean and modern subscriber analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Create costs options to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen another newsletter platform that has had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However obviously, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the cons I have actually found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized typefaces.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site building platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter too much detail why I enjoy Webflow so much yet you can review my Webflow review if you ‘d like to learn more.
Right now, there really is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site aside from using an iframe embed. I personally don’t like using iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to reduce my site a little bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s extremely obvious when you get on a sluggish internet link. Yet I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not utilize a normal Webflow type (which I enjoy making use of). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would simply add extra prices that I do not need. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I believed I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the disadvantages below. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
In general, beehiiv is a great solution for anybody seeking to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system much surpasses many that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively inexpensive of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unusual. 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 each month.
Anyways, I do not write testimonial posts frequently. I just do when I really utilize the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a friend.
I wish you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.