Over two years back, I read one of my preferred email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and quickly started destroying Beehiiv Design Lab.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full-time creator is difficult. I’m typically getting pitched various tools and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last six months checking out different email and e-newsletter platforms to help build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful options for writing e-newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my newsletter designs, makes it extremely very easy to compose and send emails, and provides me tools that aid me analyze metrics and get more subscribers.
I assume I’ve finally discovered the right tool.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually 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 simple to design, create, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former staff members at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately select it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter system for fairly a long time now. I have actually postponed hard when it concerned ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure many e-newsletter makers respect prominent newsletters with millions of customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have terrific content, tons of clients, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get back at a lot more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to find out just 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 get more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device really understand newsletter production and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the very first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Since, any creator knows, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the ideal e-newsletter pile (that scales) often indicates using multiple various devices to assist attain one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up referrals. It can obtain expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was complimentary to start using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that desires a system that enables them to send custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or web content designer, you need to seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you actually wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a great indicator that people love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a wonderful system made use of by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own site and utilize the system as your all-in-one option for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you an internet site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own internet site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your web site clients straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow individuals to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to leverage various marketing channels to get your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack alternative.
How to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, outside embed kinds, and more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those searching for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Design Lab
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand design and colors to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have described details on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin writing,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot above), Begin writing is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your customers are (and damage them down right into sections), Grow is where you have access to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with ads, Layout is where you develop your newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you want to write about, I suggest simply going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and easy to use user interface for creating.
As soon as you start creating, you can optimize headings, add links, and style your web content how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of options for various sorts of web content like video clips, links, images, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is also regularly launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot more material features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and change some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history colors, borders, spacing, fonts, photo styles, and a lot more. I’m not going to experience ever solitary thing you can maximize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply try out the platform completely free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it an excellent posting system for any kind of e-newsletter creator.
Here are several of the crucial 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 discussed above several of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the far better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) reside on a site. Think of it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, provide you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a customized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is essential. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or with embed types.
If you already have an internet site, and desire individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different alternatives– a complete size, a repaired width, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise a choice for acknowledgment tracking if you want to ahead UTM specifications for tracking functions– quite neat.
However, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the group is dealing with updates for these, but I pointed out a couple of worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your checklist to forward your e-mails to close friends and colleagues and if they get other individuals to register for your listing, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I’ve appear numerous e-newsletter business offer incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional avenue for growing your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this article.
Costs memberships
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership earnings is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” issues of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be really profitable depending upon what your newsletter has to use. For example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter Beehiiv Design Lab.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client 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 offers you whatever you require to start and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and access to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for lots of customers.
I’m not sure just how the unit business economics service this, however beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are several of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters totally free.
Clean and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Produce costs alternatives to generate income from.
Polls.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
Yet naturally, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to point out some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I have actually found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site structure platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter too much detail why I enjoy Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you want to discover more.
Right now, there truly is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website aside from making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not such as making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to decrease my internet site a bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s extremely noticeable when you’re on a slow-moving internet link. But I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not make use of a routine Webflow form (which I enjoy using). There are methods around this by using a device like Zapier however that would certainly just include additional prices that I do not require. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I thought I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will ultimately develop a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is a great remedy for any person aiming to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform much outweighs numerous that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively affordable of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not create testimonial blog posts often. I just do when I actually use the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a pal.
I hope you discovered some clarity on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.