Over 2 years back, I was reading among my preferred email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and instantly started tearing up Beehiiv Bevoho.
I had not been certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time creator is tough. I’m often obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I spent the last 6 months checking out different email and e-newsletter systems to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great choices for writing newsletters. Yet I could not find one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me totally customize my newsletter designs, makes it incredibly very easy to create and send out emails, and offers me devices that assist me examine metrics and get more subscribers.
I assume I’ve ultimately located the right tool.
However, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to design, compose, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former staff members at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly choose it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a modern e-newsletter system for fairly time currently. I’ve hesitated hard when it pertained to ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure many e-newsletter makers respect popular newsletters with numerous subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have terrific web content, tons of subscribers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get even more subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to identify how these huge newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they create a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this tool actually comprehend e-newsletter production and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I knew this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker development.
Due to the fact that, any designer understands, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the right e-newsletter pile (that ranges) often implies using numerous different devices to help attain one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to set up referrals. It can obtain expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was cost-free to begin making use of, 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 system that enables them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or material maker, you need to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s completely free to get going and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you in fact end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indicator that individuals love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great system used by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally offers you an internet site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your site clients directly to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable individuals to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to utilize different marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
How to begin using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and much more. It’s a really charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those trying to find a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Bevoho
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand design and colors to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed info on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin composing,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the really lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Begin composing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your clients are (and break them down right 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 newsletter with ads, Style is where you develop your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you want to write about, I advise just mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and user-friendly user interface for composing.
Once you start writing, you can enhance headings, include web links, and style your material exactly how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of alternatives for various kinds of content like videos, links, photos, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously launching item feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a lot extra content features depending upon when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
Once you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your email template and adjust some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and extra. I’m not going to go through ever single thing you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a whole lot. Simply try the system completely free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it an excellent publishing system for any kind of e-newsletter developer.
Here are some of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to create and send e-mails. I stated above several of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on a website. Consider it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can register for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, give you a site. However, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a customized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is very important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or with embed types.
If you already have a web site, and want individuals to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I utilize on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different alternatives– a full size, a taken care of width, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise a choice for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to ahead UTM criteria for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working with updates for these, yet I pointed out a few problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your list to onward your emails to buddies and associates and if they obtain other people to register for your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever type you want. I’ve appear numerous newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you one more method for growing your e-mail checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this post.
Costs memberships
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration profits is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” problems of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely profitable depending on what your newsletter needs to use. For example, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
One of the things I love regarding beehiiv is exactly how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter Beehiiv Bevoho.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer matter rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you require to get started and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for many individuals.
I’m uncertain just how the unit economics work with this, but beehiiv is certainly less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are several of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters absolutely free.
Tidy and modern client analytics.
Lots of flexibility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce costs options to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be honest, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet of course, I do not intend to be biased so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the cons I have actually discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my site building platform of choice (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 however you can review my Webflow review if you would love to discover more.
Now, there truly is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not such as making use of iframe’s since they tend to slow down my site a bit. Whenever a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s really obvious when you’re on a sluggish internet connection. But I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow form (which I like making use of). There are methods around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would simply add additional expenses that I don’t require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I believed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the cons here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will ultimately produce a better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful option for any person seeking to study the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system much exceeds lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively cheap for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not compose evaluation blog posts commonly. I only do when I really make use of the device myself and would certainly advise it to a pal.
I wish you discovered some quality on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.