Over 2 years back, I was reading among my preferred email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and promptly started destroying Beehiiv Community.
I had not been certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full-time maker is tough. I’m frequently getting pitched different devices and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological since I invested the last six months experimenting with different email and newsletter platforms to assist build my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great choices for composing newsletters. But I could not find one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with many existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it very very easy to write and send e-mails, and provides me tools that help me assess metrics and obtain even more customers.
I think I’ve finally found the appropriate device.
But, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to layout, compose, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the well-known newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist makers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m going to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly go with it as my newsletter platform of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter platform for rather some time currently. I’ve hesitated hard when it concerned lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure lots of newsletter creators respect popular newsletters with numerous subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have wonderful content, tons of clients, and a smart referral program that allows them to get even a lot more subscribers.
So, I went on a search to find out just how these large newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they create a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool truly understand newsletter development and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was going to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker development.
Because, any kind of maker understands, you require development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the best newsletter pile (that scales) typically indicates making use of multiple different devices to aid attain one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was free to begin using, 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 allows them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most successful newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or web content maker, you need to seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to begin and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you actually wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a good sign that individuals love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a terrific system utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv also provides you a web site similar to Substack. However, if you have your own site currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your website subscribers straight to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to utilize different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, outside embed forms, and more. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply beginning (or for those looking for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Community
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand colors and design to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your primary 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 getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning writing,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Start creating is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your clients are (and damage them down into sectors), Grow 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 newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you want to cover, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Begin writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and straightforward interface for composing.
Once you begin writing, you can maximize headings, add links, and style your material just how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of options for different types of web content like video clips, links, photos, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally constantly launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a lot extra content features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to create your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome email to first time clients, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, fonts, photo styles, and more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a great deal. Simply try out the system completely free and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a fantastic publishing system for any kind of e-newsletter designer.
Right here are several of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send out emails. I mentioned over some of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on a website. Consider it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, give you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a customized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is very important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or via embed kinds.
If you already have a site, and desire individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. 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 article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different alternatives– a complete size, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for attribution tracking if you intend to forward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– rather neat.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working on updates for these, but I mentioned 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 service for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your listing to onward your emails to good friends and associates and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your listing, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve appear several e-newsletter business offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you one more method for growing your email list.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this article.
Costs memberships
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration income is definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be very financially rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter needs to use. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of the things I like regarding beehiiv is exactly how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count Beehiiv Community.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you every little thing you require to begin and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for many users.
I’m not sure exactly how the unit business economics service this, however beehiiv is absolutely less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are some of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending newsletters for free.
Tidy and modern client analytics.
Lots of versatility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce costs choices to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I have not seen another newsletter platform that has been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
However naturally, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I have actually located while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my web site structure system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive detail why I like Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow evaluation if you want to discover more.
Right now, there really is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site apart from making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not such as using iframe’s because they often tend to reduce my website a bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s very recognizable when you’re on a slow net link. However I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not use a normal Webflow kind (which I enjoy using). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would certainly simply add added costs that I do not require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the cons right here. I’m also confident that Webflow will ultimately create a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is a great remedy for any individual looking to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system much outweighs several that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather inexpensive of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t compose evaluation blog posts typically. I just do when I actually make use of the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a friend.
I hope you located some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.