Over 2 years earlier, I read one of my favored 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 quickly began destroying Beehiiv Customer Success Manager.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m usually obtaining pitched various devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I invested the last 6 months checking out various email and e-newsletter systems to assist develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent options for composing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me fully customize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly very easy to create and send out e-mails, and provides me devices that assist me analyze metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I assume I’ve ultimately discovered the ideal tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv may not be for everyone. 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 platform that makes it very easy to layout, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by previous workers at the famous newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid developers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately choose it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for fairly some time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it pertained to finally releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of newsletter creators appreciate preferred newsletters with countless customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have great material, lots of subscribers, and a clever referral program that permits them to get back at more subscribers.
So, I went on a hunt to determine how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more clients? How do they create a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device actually recognize e-newsletter development and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter system. One that’s focused on developer growth.
Since, any type of maker understands, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the ideal e-newsletter pile (that ranges) usually means using multiple various tools to help attain one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can get costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was cost-free to start making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that wants a platform that enables them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most effective newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, start-up, or material designer, you must seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you actually end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great indicator that individuals love reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great platform used by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own website and utilize the system as your all-in-one option for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a website comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own website already, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your web site subscribers right to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to permit individuals to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
Just how to begin utilizing beehiiv email 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 “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, exterior embed forms, and extra. It’s a really generous offering for those just beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Customer Success Manager
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also select your brand name design and colors to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning composing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot above), Start creating is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down into sections), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you develop your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you intend to cover, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and easy to use user interface for creating.
As soon as you begin writing, you can maximize headings, include web links, and design your web content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of options for different types of web content like video clips, links, images, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a whole lot extra material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your email template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to first time clients, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, image formats, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before single point you can maximize with your e-mail template because it’s a whole lot. Just try out the platform absolutely free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of impressive features that make it a terrific publishing platform for any newsletter creator.
Below are some of the necessary features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very easy to write and send out emails. I pointed out over several of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) reside on a site. Think of it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, offer you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom-made domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or through embed types.
If you currently have a website, and want people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed form. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various choices– a full size, a taken care of width, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also an alternative for attribution tracking if you wish to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
However, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the group is servicing updates for these, however I mentioned a few problems I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your list to ahead your emails to close friends and colleagues and if they get other people to sign up for your listing, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I’ve appear several e-newsletter firms offer 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– giving you one more avenue for growing your e-mail checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this short article.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription earnings is certainly a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” issues of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be extremely profitable depending on what your e-newsletter has to offer. For example, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that produces millions in profits a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the things I like concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and easy the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count Beehiiv Customer Success Manager.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you whatever you require to start and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain, surveys, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for lots of customers.
I’m unsure just how the system business economics work with this, but beehiiv is absolutely less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
Easy to set up and begin sending out newsletters totally free.
Clean and contemporary customer analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce costs alternatives to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen an additional newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
But certainly, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my site building platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much information why I love Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you would love to discover more.
Now, there really is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site apart from using an iframe embed. I personally do not like utilizing iframe’s since they have a tendency to decrease my site a bit. Whenever a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s very visible when you get on a slow-moving internet connection. However I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow form (which I love utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would simply include extra costs that I do not need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the cons below. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will at some point develop a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a great service for any person wanting to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform far outweighs lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively cheap for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write review posts frequently. I only do when I really utilize the device myself and would recommend it to a pal.
I wish you discovered some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.