Over 2 years back, I was reading among my favored email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and instantly began destroying Beehiiv Email Automation.
I had not been certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full time developer is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched various tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last six months experimenting with different e-mail and newsletter platforms to help construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic options for creating e-newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it extremely easy to create and send e-mails, and offers me tools that help me assess metrics and get even more subscribers.
I believe I’ve ultimately discovered the appropriate tool.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact best 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 style, compose, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former staff members at the popular newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this article, I’m going to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter system for rather some time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it concerned finally introducing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of newsletter designers appreciate popular newsletters with countless customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have excellent web content, tons of subscribers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even much more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to figure out exactly how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they create an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device actually recognize e-newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Because, any type of maker recognizes, you require growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the right e-newsletter stack (that scales) often suggests utilizing multiple various tools to help accomplish one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can get expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to start making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content creator that wants a platform that permits them to send custom e-newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, start-up, or content maker, you must seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to begin and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you really wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good indication that individuals enjoy reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic platform made use of by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your own site and use the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a website similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own website already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your web site subscribers straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to utilize different marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack choice.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software program.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, external embed forms, and a lot more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Email Automation
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll likewise choose your brand colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning composing,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Begin writing is where you create and publish newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down right into sections), Grow is where you have accessibility 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you create your newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you want to discuss, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and user-friendly user interface for creating.
Once you begin creating, you can enhance headings, add web links, and style your web content how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for different kinds of content like video clips, links, photos, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise constantly releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a lot much more content features relying on when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to design your email template and change some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a description, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to first time clients, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo layouts, and extra. I’m not going to experience ever single point you can maximize with your e-mail template because it’s a great deal. Simply try out the system free of cost and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any newsletter maker.
Below are a few of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely simple to compose and send out e-mails. I mentioned above some of the important things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely one of the far better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) reside on a site. Consider it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, give you a web site. However, the free plan areas your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is very important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have a web site, and want people to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I utilize on this web 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 various choices– a complete size, a dealt with size, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM parameters for tracking functions– quite cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the team is working with updates for these, however I stated a couple of concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your checklist to onward your emails to good friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your list, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually appear numerous newsletter firms offer benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you one more method for expanding your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs registrations
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership revenue is definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be extremely profitable relying on what your newsletter has to provide. For example, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
One of the things I like concerning beehiiv is just how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count Beehiiv Email Automation.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you everything you need to start and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit choice for many individuals.
I’m not exactly sure just how the unit economics service this, however beehiiv is most definitely less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics.
Lots of flexibility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop costs choices to generate income from.
Polls.
To be honest, I haven’t seen another newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
However certainly, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the cons I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my site structure system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive information why I like Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow review if you ‘d like to find out more.
Right now, there actually is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as using iframe’s since they often tend to reduce my internet site a little bit. Whenever a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s very recognizable when you’re on a slow web link. But I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not make use of a routine Webflow kind (which I like utilizing). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just add additional costs that I do not require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I believed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the cons here. I’m also confident that Webflow will at some point develop a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a fantastic option for anyone wanting to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system far surpasses many that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather economical wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t write evaluation blog posts typically. I only do when I in fact use the device myself and would certainly advise it to a buddy.
I hope you located some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.