Over 2 years earlier, I was reading one of my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and promptly began tearing up Beehiiv Community Round.
I had not been sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I invested the last six months experimenting with different email and newsletter systems to help construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful options for composing newsletters. However I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The issue with several existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me totally tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send e-mails, and provides me tools that assist me analyze metrics and get even more customers.
I assume I have actually ultimately located the right tool.
However, I understand 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 platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to style, compose, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former employees at the renowned e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally select it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually watched for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for quite time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it concerned lastly releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure many newsletter designers respect prominent newsletters with countless clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have excellent web content, tons of subscribers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get back at more subscribers.
So, I went on a hunt to find out exactly how these huge newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address all of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device truly recognize e-newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the initial marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on developer growth.
Since, any kind of designer knows, you need growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the ideal e-newsletter pile (that ranges) frequently implies utilizing several different devices to assist accomplish one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to set up referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was free to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content developer that wants a platform that allows them to send custom-made e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or material creator, you should seriously thinking about trying out beehiiv. It’s entirely free to begin and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you actually end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great indicator that people like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a wonderful system made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your own website and use the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a website similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site currently, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site customers right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable people to register for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
Exactly how to start using beehiiv email marketing software application.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and much more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just starting (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Community Round
After creating an account, you’ll experience 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 kind of paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have described details on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning creating,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your customers are (and break them down into sectors), Expand 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 e-newsletter with ads, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you intend to write about, I suggest simply going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and user-friendly user interface for composing.
When you begin creating, you can maximize headings, add links, and style your material just how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of options for different kinds of material like videos, links, images, and more.
The group at beehiiv is also regularly launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot more material features depending upon when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and change some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to first time clients, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history shades, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, picture styles, and extra. I’m not going to go through ever solitary thing you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Just experiment with the platform completely free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a great publishing system for any kind of e-newsletter creator.
Right here are some of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it super easy to create and send out emails. I discussed above several of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll save you some added analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely one of the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a site. Consider it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a personalized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is very important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or with embed kinds.
If you already have an internet site, and desire individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed kind. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various alternatives– a complete size, a taken care of width, and a slim installed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s also an alternative for attribution tracking if you wish to ahead UTM criteria for tracking purposes– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the team is servicing updates for these, yet I stated a few concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your checklist to onward your e-mails to good friends and associates and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually appear lots of newsletter firms offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another avenue for expanding your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this short article.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership earnings is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be really rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter has to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that generates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of things I love concerning beehiiv is just how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter Beehiiv Community Round.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber count increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you everything you need to begin and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, personalized domain, polls, and access to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit choice for numerous users.
I’m uncertain exactly how the system business economics deal with this, however beehiiv is certainly less costly (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to establish and start sending out newsletters totally free.
Tidy and modern-day customer analytics.
Lots of versatility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Create costs alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I have not seen one more e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
But naturally, I do not want to be biased so I’m going to point out some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom typefaces.
I use Webflow as my website structure system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much detail why I love Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to find out more.
Today, there actually is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not such as using iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to reduce my web site a little bit. Each time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s really recognizable when you’re on a sluggish web connection. However I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not use a normal Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier but that would just include extra costs that I do not need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the disadvantages here. I’m also confident that Webflow will eventually create a far better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a wonderful option for any person seeking to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform far surpasses numerous that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather cheap of 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 customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t compose review blog posts typically. I only do when I in fact use the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a buddy.
I hope you discovered some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.