Over 2 years back, I was reading one of my favorite email 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 instantaneously began tearing up Beehiiv Build A Media Brand.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m usually getting pitched various tools and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological since I spent the last 6 months trying out various email and newsletter systems to aid develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful options for writing e-newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter layouts, makes it extremely simple to write and send e-mails, and gives me tools that assist me analyze metrics and obtain even more clients.
I assume I’ve finally found the best tool.
However, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to design, compose, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the renowned newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally opt for it as my newsletter platform of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern newsletter platform for fairly a long time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it concerned ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure many newsletter creators look up to prominent newsletters with millions of clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have great web content, lots of clients, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get even much more customers.
So, I took place a quest to identify how these big e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they create an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to answer every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this device really understand e-newsletter development and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Since, any creator understands, you need development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that scales) commonly implies utilizing several different tools to aid accomplish one goal– one system for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish references. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was complimentary 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 material creator that wants a system that enables them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or content developer, you ought to seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you actually wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent indicator that individuals like reviewing 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 an excellent platform made use of by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your own website and use the system as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a website similar to Substack. However, if you have your own internet site currently, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site clients straight to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to permit people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to utilize various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start using beehiiv email marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, external embed kinds, and a lot more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Build A Media Brand
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 utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise pick your brand name design and colors to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have described info on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning composing,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the really lower you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot over), Begin writing is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down right into segments), Grow is where you have access 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 e-newsletter landing page and post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you wish to cover, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and user-friendly interface for writing.
When you start writing, you can optimize headings, include links, and design your material how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for different types of web content like videos, web links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is also continuously launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a great deal much more material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to design your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time clients, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, font styles, picture styles, and more. I’m not going to experience ever before solitary point you can optimize with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Just check out the system totally free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any type of newsletter developer.
Here are several of the essential features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it super simple to compose and send out e-mails. I discussed above several of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) reside on an internet site. Think about it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, offer you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a personalized domain to remove 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 newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or via embed types.
If you currently have a web site, and want individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed form. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different choices– a full size, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an option for attribution monitoring if you wish to forward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– rather cool.
However, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the group is servicing updates for these, but I pointed out a few issues I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a service for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your listing to ahead your emails to pals and coworkers and if they get other individuals to register for your list, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually appear several e-newsletter firms offer rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you one more avenue for expanding your email list.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this article.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership revenue is most definitely a beast of its very 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 just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be extremely rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter has to provide. For example, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the things I love about beehiiv is how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Beehiiv Build A Media Brand.
You get access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you whatever you require to start and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain, polls, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit choice for numerous individuals.
I’m uncertain exactly how the device business economics work with this, yet beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here 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 newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to establish and start sending out e-newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Produce costs choices to monetize.
Polls.
To be honest, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet naturally, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the cons I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom font styles.
I use Webflow as my site building system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive information why I love Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to learn more.
Now, there truly is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t like using iframe’s since they have a tendency to decrease my website a bit. Each time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s very obvious when you’re on a sluggish internet connection. But I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow form (which I like utilizing). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier however that would certainly simply include extra costs that I do not need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I thought I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will eventually produce a better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent option for anybody seeking to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system much outweighs many that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively affordable for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not create testimonial messages frequently. I just do when I really utilize the tool myself and would suggest it to a pal.
I wish you found some quality on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.