Over 2 years ago, I read one of my preferred email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantaneously began destroying Beehiiv Branding.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time developer is tough. I’m commonly obtaining pitched various devices and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological because I invested the last six months checking out various email and e-newsletter platforms to help construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great alternatives for composing newsletters. However I couldn’t locate one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it super simple to create and send e-mails, and offers me tools that help me assess metrics and get even more customers.
I think I’ve finally discovered the best device.
However, I understand beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to design, write, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the famous newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally opt for it as my newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve watched for a modern-day newsletter platform for fairly time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it involved finally introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain many e-newsletter developers respect preferred e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have great material, lots of subscribers, and a smart referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more subscribers.
So, I went on a hunt to find out just how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they create an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this device really recognize e-newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the initial marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Since, any kind of designer knows, you require growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the appropriate e-newsletter pile (that ranges) commonly indicates using multiple various tools to assist accomplish one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish recommendations. It can get expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that wants a platform that allows them to send custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or content designer, you should seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to start and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you really end 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 currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a terrific platform utilized by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your own internet site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one option for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv also offers you an internet site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site currently, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your website clients directly to your beehiiv email list. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable individuals to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
How to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, exterior embed types, and extra. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply starting (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Branding
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally pick your brand colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start creating,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your major control center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your clients are (and break them down into sectors), Expand is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with ads, Layout is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you intend to blog about, I advise just going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Begin composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and easy to use user interface for writing.
When you begin composing, you can enhance headings, include links, and design your material exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of alternatives for various kinds of material like video clips, links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise constantly releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a whole lot extra material features relying on when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo, activate or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, photo styles, and more. I’m not going to undergo ever solitary thing you can maximize with your email template because it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the platform totally free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it an excellent publishing system for any kind of newsletter creator.
Right here are a few of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it very easy to write and send emails. I stated above several of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some added reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely among the far better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive on an internet site. Think of it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, offer you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a customized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is essential. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or via embed types.
If you already have a web site, and desire individuals to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this 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 three different alternatives– a complete width, a fixed width, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an alternative for attribution tracking if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking functions– pretty cool.
However, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working on updates for these, however I stated a few concerns I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your list to onward your emails to buddies and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to register for your list, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I’ve appear many e-newsletter companies offer benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– offering you an additional method for expanding your email checklist.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this article.
Premium memberships
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership income is most definitely a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be very financially rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter needs to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of the important things I love about beehiiv is just how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Beehiiv Branding.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client matter rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you require to get going and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for lots of users.
I’m unsure just how the unit business economics service this, however beehiiv is certainly less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are several of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending out newsletters completely free.
Tidy and contemporary client analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Develop premium choices to monetize.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I have not seen one more newsletter system that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet obviously, I do not wish to be biased so I’m going to state some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I have actually discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made typefaces.
I make use of Webflow as my website structure platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive information why I like Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow review if you want to learn more.
Today, there truly is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to reduce my internet site a bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the page. It’s extremely noticeable when you’re on a slow web link. Yet I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not make use of a normal Webflow kind (which I love utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would certainly just include added costs that I do not need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I thought I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the disadvantages below. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will eventually develop a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for anybody seeking to study the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system far outweighs many that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly cheap of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t create evaluation blog posts usually. I just do when I actually utilize the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a good friend.
I wish you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.