Over two years ago, I read one of my preferred e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and instantly began destroying Beehiiv Email Marketing.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m commonly obtaining pitched different tools and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional since I invested the last six months checking out various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to aid construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful alternatives for writing newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me offer a definite “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me completely personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it very easy to write and send out e-mails, and gives me tools that aid me analyze metrics and obtain even more customers.
I assume I have actually finally located the best tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right 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 layout, create, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the renowned e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly choose it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day e-newsletter system for fairly a long time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it pertained to lastly releasing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous e-newsletter designers appreciate popular e-newsletters with numerous clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have excellent web content, lots of clients, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at much more subscribers.
So, I went on a search to figure out how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more customers? 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 individuals that constructed this tool truly comprehend e-newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I understood this was going to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Because, any kind of developer recognizes, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the best newsletter stack (that scales) typically means utilizing several different tools to help achieve one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to establish referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was totally free to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that wants a system that allows them to send customized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
The most effective newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, startup, or material creator, you must seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s entirely complimentary to start and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you really wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indicator that people love reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is an excellent system utilized by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own site and utilize the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also offers you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your site clients directly to your beehiiv email list. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to utilize various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
Just how to begin making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Enroll in a free plan
The primary step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you accessibility to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those just beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Email Marketing
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your main control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin writing,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Analyze.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you create and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your clients are (and damage them down into segments), 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 design your newsletter landing page and message template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you want to blog about, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly user interface for writing.
As soon as you start writing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and style your content how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for various sorts of content like video clips, links, images, and more.
The group at beehiiv is also frequently launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot extra material features relying on when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to create your e-mail template and change some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture layouts, and more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before single thing you can maximize with your e-mail template because it’s a lot. Just experiment with the system totally free and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it an excellent posting system for any e-newsletter designer.
Here are a few of the necessary features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it super easy to write and send e-mails. I pointed out above a few of the important things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) live on a web site. Consider it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can sign up for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, provide you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a personalized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is very important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or through embed types.
If you currently have a web site, and want individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to use an embed form. This is what I make use of on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 various choices– a full width, a repaired width, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s also a choice for attribution monitoring if you intend to ahead UTM criteria for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the team is dealing with updates for these, yet I mentioned a few problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your checklist to onward your e-mails to friends and coworkers and if they get other people to sign up for your list, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever type you want. I have actually appear several e-newsletter companies offer incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you an additional opportunity for growing your email listing.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this short article.
Premium memberships
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership income is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be very profitable depending on what your e-newsletter needs to supply. For example, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is how clean and basic the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Beehiiv Email Marketing.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer matter go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you everything you need to begin and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for several individuals.
I’m unsure exactly how the unit economics work with this, yet beehiiv is definitely more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters free of cost.
Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Lots of adaptability with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Develop premium choices to monetize.
Polls.
To be honest, I have not seen another newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet obviously, I do not wish to be biased so I’m going to point out some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are some of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my web site structure system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much information why I love Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow review if you ‘d like to learn more.
Now, there actually is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site apart from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not like utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to reduce my internet site a little bit. Whenever a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s really visible when you’re on a sluggish web link. Yet I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a routine Webflow type (which I enjoy utilizing). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would simply add extra prices that I do not require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually produce a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is a terrific service for any individual looking to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform much outweighs lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively inexpensive of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not create evaluation blog posts frequently. I only do when I really make use of the device myself and would certainly advise it to a friend.
I hope you discovered some quality on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.