Over two years earlier, I read one of my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantly started tearing up Beehiiv Design.
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full time developer is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last six months trying out different email and e-newsletter platforms to aid develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great options for composing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The issue with several existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter layouts, makes it super very easy to create and send out emails, and gives me devices that assist me assess metrics and obtain even more customers.
I believe I have actually finally located the right device.
However, I recognize beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to style, create, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous workers at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist makers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m going to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly choose it as my newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter platform for fairly a long time currently. I’ve hesitated hard when it involved ultimately releasing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain lots of e-newsletter developers admire preferred newsletters with numerous clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have great content, lots of clients, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even extra subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to figure out how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they create a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device really understand e-newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on designer development.
Since, any type of designer recognizes, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the appropriate newsletter pile (that ranges) often means utilizing numerous various tools to assist accomplish one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish references. It can get costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was cost-free to start utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content maker that wants a platform that permits them to send custom-made newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media company, startup, or material creator, you ought to seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s totally free to get started and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you in fact end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indication that individuals enjoy reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great platform made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a website similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own internet site already, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your site customers straight to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow individuals to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to leverage various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack choice.
Just how to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, exterior embed types, and extra. It’s a really charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Design
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally pick your brand name colors and design to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning composing,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot over), Begin composing is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your customers are (and damage them down right into sections), Expand is where you have access 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 newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you intend to write about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and straightforward interface for creating.
Once you start composing, you can optimize headings, include links, and design your material just how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of options for various kinds of material like videos, links, photos, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a lot much more content features relying on when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your e-mail template and change some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a description, add your logo, turn 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 edit background shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, image formats, and much more. I’m not going to undergo ever single point you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Just try out the platform for free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a great posting system for any newsletter creator.
Here are some of the necessary features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it very very easy to compose and send out emails. I stated above some of the things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the much better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive a website. Consider it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and an area where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, provide you a website. However, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or via embed forms.
If you already have an internet site, and want individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize 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 types, you have three different choices– a complete size, a dealt with width, and a slim installed. I directly use 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 monitoring if you intend to forward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the group is dealing with updates for these, yet I discussed a couple of problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your listing to onward your emails to good friends and coworkers and if they obtain other people to sign up for your checklist, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve seem numerous newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you one more method for growing your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this article.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership profits is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be really rewarding depending upon what your newsletter has to supply. For example, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among things I love concerning beehiiv is exactly how tidy and basic the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Beehiiv Design.
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 control panel and seeing that client count go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to get started and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the very same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit alternative for numerous customers.
I’m not exactly sure how the unit economics service this, yet beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are several of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
Easy to establish and begin sending out newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and contemporary customer analytics.
Great deals of versatility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Develop premium alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter platform that has had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet certainly, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m going to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my internet site structure platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow review if you wish to learn more.
Right now, there actually is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not like making use of iframe’s since they tend to reduce my internet site a little bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s really obvious when you’re on a slow net link. Yet I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow kind (which I enjoy utilizing). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would simply add extra prices that I don’t need. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the cons right here. I’m also confident that Webflow will at some point produce a far better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful option for any individual seeking to study the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter system much exceeds lots of that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather economical for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review blog posts commonly. I only do when I really utilize the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a close friend.
I wish you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.