Over two years earlier, I read one of my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and promptly started destroying Beehiiv Email Capture.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time creator is difficult. I’m frequently obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I spent the last 6 months trying different email and newsletter systems to aid develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent options for creating e-newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me completely personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it very simple to write and send e-mails, and gives me devices that aid me evaluate metrics and get more subscribers.
I think I’ve finally located the ideal device.
But, I understand beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it very easy to design, compose, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous workers at the famous e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally go with it as my newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a modern e-newsletter system for fairly time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it involved finally introducing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make certain lots of e-newsletter designers respect preferred newsletters with numerous clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have terrific material, tons of subscribers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even extra clients.
So, I took place a quest to figure out just how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more customers? How do they create a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool actually comprehend e-newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator development.
Since, any kind of developer recognizes, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the best e-newsletter stack (that scales) typically suggests utilizing multiple different devices to help achieve one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up references. It can get expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was free to begin making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that wants a system that allows them to send custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most effective newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or content maker, you should seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a good indicator that individuals like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific system made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your own web site and use the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a web site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own internet site currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site customers directly to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow individuals to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to take advantage of various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack choice.
Exactly how to begin making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, external embed forms, and more. It’s a really charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those looking for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Email Capture
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll then create a name and link for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have outlined information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin creating,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into sectors), Expand 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 newsletter with ads, Design is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you want to blog about, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Begin writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and user-friendly user interface for composing.
When you begin creating, you can enhance headings, add links, and design your material how you like.
beehiiv offers you lots of alternatives for different sorts of material like videos, web links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is also continuously launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a lot a lot more material features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to create your email template and readjust some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture layouts, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before solitary point you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply try the platform free of cost and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any type of e-newsletter maker.
Here are several of the important features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very simple to write and send out emails. I discussed over some of the important things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll spare you some added reading.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) survive a web site. Consider it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, give you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a personalized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter straight from your beehiiv web site or with embed kinds.
If you already have a site, and desire people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed type. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different choices– a complete size, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s also an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to onward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– quite cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the group is working on updates for these, however I mentioned a couple of worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your checklist to forward your emails to buddies and associates and if they obtain other individuals to register for your checklist, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever form you want. I’ve seem many e-newsletter firms provide incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you an additional method for growing your e-mail listing.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this article.
Costs memberships
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership income is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be extremely financially rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter needs to use. For instance, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the things I like concerning beehiiv is just how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter Beehiiv Email Capture.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on just how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you need to begin and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with addition 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 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for lots of customers.
I’m not sure exactly how the system economics work with this, however beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Right here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters for free.
Clean and modern subscriber analytics.
Lots of versatility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce premium choices to generate income from.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet naturally, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom fonts.
I use Webflow as my site building platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much information why I love Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow testimonial if you would love to discover more.
Right now, there actually is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t like making use of iframe’s since they tend to slow down my site a little bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s really visible when you’re on a slow net link. But I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not make use of a regular Webflow form (which I like utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly just include additional prices that I don’t require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I thought I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the disadvantages here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will ultimately develop a better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful solution for any individual looking to study the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system far exceeds numerous 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 additionally rather economical wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t create evaluation messages often. I just do when I in fact use the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a friend.
I hope you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.