Over 2 years back, I read among my preferred e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and promptly began destroying Beehiiv Enterprise Plan.
I had not been certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time creator is difficult. I’m typically obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological since I invested the last six months checking out different email and e-newsletter platforms to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great options for composing e-newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The issue with several existing newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully customize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it extremely easy to create and send e-mails, and gives me devices that help me analyze metrics and obtain more customers.
I believe I have actually ultimately discovered the right device.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to design, compose, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the famous e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m going to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly opt for it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern newsletter platform for quite time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it pertained to ultimately introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure lots of newsletter makers appreciate preferred e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have fantastic material, tons of subscribers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get even more clients.
So, I went on a quest to determine how these huge newsletters established their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool actually understand newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the very first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer growth.
Because, any kind of maker recognizes, you need development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the ideal e-newsletter stack (that scales) frequently indicates utilizing multiple various tools to assist achieve one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish referrals. It can get expensive.
So when I learnt 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 web content maker that desires a platform that enables them to send custom-made e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or web content creator, you need to seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s totally free to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you actually wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indication that people enjoy reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a fantastic system used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one option for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a site similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own web site currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site subscribers straight to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to take advantage of different marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, outside embed kinds, and extra. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting (or for those looking for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Enterprise Plan
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand name design and colors to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed information on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning composing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Examine.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you create and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and break 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 e-newsletter with ads, Style is where you design your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you want to write about, I recommend just going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and easy to use interface for creating.
As soon as you begin creating, you can maximize headings, include links, and style your web content how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for different sorts of content like video clips, links, images, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise constantly releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a whole lot extra content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your e-mail template and change some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to first time customers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture styles, and more. I’m not going to experience ever before solitary thing you can maximize with your email template since it’s a great deal. Just try out the system completely free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it a terrific publishing system for any kind of e-newsletter developer.
Right here are a few of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it very very easy to compose and send out e-mails. I discussed over some of things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some added reading.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely among the far better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on an internet site. Think about it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a place where people can register for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, provide you an internet site. However, the free plan areas your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a personalized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is very important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or through embed kinds.
If you currently have a web site, and desire people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various options– a full size, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution monitoring if you wish to onward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– quite neat.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working with updates for these, yet I discussed a couple of concerns I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your listing to forward your emails to close friends and coworkers and if they get other people to register for your listing, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve appear numerous e-newsletter business give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you an additional opportunity for expanding your email checklist.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs registrations
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership revenue is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter needs to provide. For example, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that produces millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among the important things I like about beehiiv is just how tidy and simple the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Beehiiv Enterprise Plan.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client count rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you everything you require to get going and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit option for several customers.
I’m unsure how the unit economics work with this, but beehiiv is definitely less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are several of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters for free.
Tidy and contemporary client analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Create premium choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen an additional newsletter platform that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet of course, I do not want to be biased so I’m going to point out some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I have actually located while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my site structure platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much information why I love Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to learn more.
Now, there really is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not such as utilizing iframe’s since they have a tendency to reduce my web site a bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s extremely recognizable when you get on a slow-moving internet link. Yet I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not use a normal Webflow form (which I enjoy utilizing). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would certainly simply add additional costs that I do not require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I thought I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the cons right here. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point develop a much better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for anyone aiming to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system far exceeds many that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly inexpensive wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unheard of. 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 per month.
Anyways, I do not compose testimonial messages commonly. I just do when I actually make use of the device myself and would certainly advise it to a good friend.
I wish you located some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.