Over two years back, I was reading one of my favorite email e-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 instantly started destroying Beehiiv Boost Network.
I wasn’t certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a permanent creator is difficult. I’m typically obtaining pitched various devices and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last six months checking out various e-mail and newsletter systems to help build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific options for composing newsletters. However I couldn’t locate one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The problem with several existing newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me totally tailor my e-newsletter layouts, makes it extremely very easy to compose and send out e-mails, and gives me devices that help me assess metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I think I’ve ultimately found the right device.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to style, create, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a contemporary newsletter platform for fairly some time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it pertained to lastly launching my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure several e-newsletter makers look up to popular e-newsletters with numerous clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have fantastic content, tons of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get even extra customers.
So, I took place a search to determine how these large newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool actually recognize e-newsletter development and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the very first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on developer growth.
Because, any creator understands, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that ranges) frequently implies making use of numerous different devices to assist accomplish one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to establish referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was totally 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 desires a platform that permits them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or material creator, you should seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to get started and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you actually wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good indicator that people love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great platform used by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also gives you a website comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own site already, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your site customers straight to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable individuals to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to leverage various marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
How to begin making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, external embed types, and a lot more. It’s a really generous offering for those just starting out (or for those seeking a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Boost Network
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand design and colors to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start composing,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Examine.” And at the very lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your customers are (and damage them down right into segments), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run ads, 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 post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you want to discuss, I recommend just going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can modify your template and designing later– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and straightforward interface for composing.
When you begin writing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and design your material just how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for different sorts of content like videos, web links, pictures, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is also frequently launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a lot much more content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to design your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a description, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, photo layouts, and much more. I’m not going to experience ever single point you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply experiment with the platform for free and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it an excellent publishing system for any newsletter developer.
Right here are several of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it very simple to write and send e-mails. I pointed out over some of things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely among the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on an internet site. Consider it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, provide you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom-made domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or via embed kinds.
If you already have a web site, and desire individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to use an embed type. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various options– a full width, a dealt with size, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM parameters for tracking purposes– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the team is dealing with updates for these, but I pointed out a couple of issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your list to forward your emails to friends and colleagues and if they obtain other people to sign up for your listing, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve seem several newsletter business give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you another opportunity for expanding your e-mail list.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this post.
Costs memberships
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership revenue is certainly a monster of its own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be really rewarding depending upon what your newsletter has to use. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that generates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among things I love regarding beehiiv is how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter Beehiiv Boost Network.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber count increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to get started and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 each month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would 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 system business economics service this, but beehiiv is definitely cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages 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 newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to establish and begin sending out newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and modern client analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce costs choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I have not seen one more newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features together so well.
Yet obviously, I do not want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the cons I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized font styles.
I use Webflow as my site structure platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow review if you want to learn more.
Today, there really is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not such as utilizing iframe’s since they have a tendency to decrease my website a bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s really visible when you’re on a slow web connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not utilize a regular Webflow form (which I enjoy making use of). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would just include extra costs that I don’t require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I assumed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will eventually produce a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
In general, beehiiv is a great service for anybody wanting to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter system much exceeds lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather economical wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not compose testimonial articles commonly. I just do when I actually utilize the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a friend.
I hope you located some quality on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.