Over 2 years ago, I was reading one of my favored e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and instantly began wrecking Beehiiv Concierge Onboarding.
I wasn’t certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time developer is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched different devices and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological because I spent the last 6 months trying out various e-mail and newsletter platforms to help develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic alternatives for creating e-newsletters. However I could not find one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with many existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me totally tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it incredibly very easy to create and send e-mails, and provides me tools that aid me assess metrics and get even more subscribers.
I think I’ve finally discovered the ideal tool.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to layout, create, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help designers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m going to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly opt for it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter platform for fairly time now. I’ve postponed hard when it involved lastly releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain several e-newsletter makers respect prominent e-newsletters with millions of subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have great web content, tons of customers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get even more customers.
So, I went on a hunt to find out exactly how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they develop a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to answer all of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this tool really comprehend e-newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on creator development.
Since, any type of creator recognizes, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the right newsletter pile (that scales) commonly indicates making use of numerous different devices to aid accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to set up referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that desires a system that enables them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most successful newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or material maker, you need to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to begin and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indication that people love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific platform used by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your very own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also offers you an internet site similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own website currently, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your website customers right to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow people to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to leverage different marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
Exactly how to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, external embed forms, and a lot more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Concierge Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise choose your brand name colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described info on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start creating,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you create and release e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down right into segments), Expand is where you have access to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you wish to discuss, I suggest just mosting likely to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and user-friendly interface for writing.
When you begin creating, you can maximize headings, add web links, and style your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of options for various kinds of web content like video clips, web links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal much more content features relying on when you read this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to design your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, font styles, image styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever solitary point you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a whole lot. Simply try out the system free of charge and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a terrific posting system for any newsletter designer.
Right here are some of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely very easy to compose and send out emails. I stated over a few of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a site. Think of 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 individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, give you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is essential. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or through embed kinds.
If you currently have a site, and want individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I use on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three various alternatives– a full width, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– quite neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make sure the group is dealing with updates for these, however I pointed out a couple of worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your list to onward your emails to pals and colleagues and if they obtain other people to sign up for your list, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve seem several newsletter firms give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you an additional method for growing your email list.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership earnings is most definitely a monster of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be extremely lucrative relying on what your newsletter needs to offer. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that produces millions in income a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of the things I enjoy about beehiiv is how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter Beehiiv Concierge Onboarding.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer count go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you everything you require to get going and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for lots of users.
I’m unsure how the unit economics service this, yet beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters totally free.
Clean and modern-day client analytics.
Lots of flexibility with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Produce costs alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
However naturally, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the cons I have actually discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site building platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in too much information why I like Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow testimonial if you want to learn more.
Now, there really is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as utilizing iframe’s since they have a tendency to reduce my site a little bit. Every single time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s very obvious when you get on a slow internet link. However I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not utilize a regular Webflow form (which I love using). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply add additional prices that I do not need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I believed I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point create a much better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a terrific service for any person wanting to study the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform much exceeds numerous that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively cheap for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t write review messages typically. I just do when I really utilize the device myself and would advise it to a pal.
I hope you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.