Over 2 years ago, I was reading among my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and promptly began destroying Beehiiv Demo.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m typically getting pitched various devices and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last six months trying different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific options for composing newsletters. However I couldn’t locate one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me totally customize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it very easy to create and send out emails, and offers me devices that aid me evaluate metrics and obtain even more customers.
I think I’ve lastly discovered the best tool.
Yet, I understand beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it very easy to layout, compose, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the well-known newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly opt for it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter system for rather some time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it concerned lastly launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous e-newsletter designers admire preferred e-newsletters with numerous customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have terrific content, tons of subscribers, and a clever referral program that permits them to get even a lot more subscribers.
So, I went on a search to find out just how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more clients? How do they create a newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device really recognize newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker development.
Due to the fact that, any type of maker knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the ideal newsletter pile (that ranges) commonly means making use of multiple different tools to help attain one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish referrals. It can get pricey.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was complimentary to begin utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that desires a platform that enables them to send custom newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or material creator, you must seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to get going and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent indicator that individuals enjoy reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful platform made use of by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your own internet site and use the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv also gives you an internet site similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own site already, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your website clients right to your beehiiv email checklist. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable individuals to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to utilize various marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack option.
Exactly how to begin making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Sign up 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” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you access to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, outside embed forms, and more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those seeking a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Demo
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll then produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll likewise choose your brand name colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning writing,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Beginning writing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your clients are (and damage them down into sectors), Grow is where you have access 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, Style is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you wish to discuss, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and user-friendly interface for composing.
When you start creating, you can maximize headings, include links, and style your web content just how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for various types of web content like video clips, links, images, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is additionally constantly releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot extra content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, image formats, and much more. I’m not going to go through ever solitary thing you can enhance with your email template because it’s a whole lot. Simply try out the platform absolutely free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any type of newsletter designer.
Here are several of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it very easy to create and send emails. I stated over several of things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) live on a website. Consider it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, give you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is very important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv web site or with embed forms.
If you currently have a website, and want individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I make use of on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various alternatives– a complete size, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution tracking if you intend to onward UTM parameters for tracking functions– pretty neat.
However, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is dealing with updates for these, yet I discussed a couple of concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a service for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your listing to forward your e-mails to close friends and coworkers and if they get other people to register for your checklist, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve seem several e-newsletter business give incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you another method for expanding your e-mail listing.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs registrations
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration earnings is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying clients. This can be really rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter needs to use. For instance, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of the things I love about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter Beehiiv Demo.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client matter go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you need to get started and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit option for several individuals.
I’m unsure how the device economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are a few of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters completely free.
Clean and modern client analytics.
Lots of flexibility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Create costs options to generate income from.
Polls.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen another newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet naturally, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I have actually located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized fonts.
I use Webflow as my website building system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive detail why I enjoy Webflow so much but you can read my Webflow review if you wish to discover more.
Right now, there truly is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not like using iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to slow down my internet site a bit. Whenever a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s very obvious when you get on a slow-moving net link. Yet I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t use a normal Webflow type (which I like using). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply include additional prices that I don’t require. To be honest, 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 exceed the disadvantages right here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a fantastic solution for anyone aiming to dive into the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter system much surpasses many that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather cheap for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t write review posts frequently. I just do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would recommend it to a pal.
I hope you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.