Over 2 years back, I was reading one of my preferred email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and instantly began wrecking Beehiiv Facebook Pixel.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full time creator is difficult. I’m frequently obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological because I spent the last six months checking out different e-mail and newsletter platforms to assist construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great choices for creating newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it super very easy to create and send out emails, and offers me tools that aid me evaluate metrics and get more customers.
I assume I’ve finally found the best device.
However, I recognize beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it simple to design, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous workers at the popular e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short article, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly go with it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually watched for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for quite a long time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it pertained to ultimately launching my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make certain many newsletter developers appreciate popular e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have great material, tons of clients, and a smart referral program that allows them to get even much more customers.
So, I took place a hunt to determine just how these big newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool truly comprehend e-newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the very first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker growth.
Since, any kind of maker understands, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the appropriate e-newsletter pile (that scales) typically means making use of multiple different tools to help achieve one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that desires a platform that permits them to send personalized newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or material developer, you ought to seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to get going and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you actually end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent sign that people love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a fantastic platform made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own internet site and use the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a website similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own site already, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your internet site subscribers directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow individuals to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Exactly how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, outside embed types, and more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those seeking a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Facebook Pixel
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise choose your brand name design and colors to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning composing,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Evaluate.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Begin composing is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and break them down into sectors), Expand is where you have access to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Layout is where you develop your newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you wish to cover, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning writing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and straightforward user interface for composing.
As soon as you start writing, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your material just how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for different kinds of material like videos, web links, images, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is also constantly releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a great deal much more material features relying on when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and change some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to first time customers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo formats, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before single thing you can maximize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the system totally free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a fantastic publishing system for any type of e-newsletter developer.
Below are several of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it super simple to create and send e-mails. I mentioned over several of the things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the much better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive on a site. Think about it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, give you a web site. However, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is essential. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter straight from your beehiiv web site or via embed forms.
If you already have a website, and desire individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed form. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 various options– a complete size, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s also a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to forward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– quite neat.
However, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the group is dealing with updates for these, yet I stated a couple of worries I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your checklist to ahead your emails to close friends and associates and if they get other people to sign up for your list, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I have actually seem numerous newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you one more avenue for expanding your e-mail checklist.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this short article.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership revenue is definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be really profitable depending on what your e-newsletter has to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that creates millions in income a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the important things I love regarding beehiiv is exactly how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count Beehiiv Facebook Pixel.
You get access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer count rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to get started and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for lots of customers.
I’m uncertain exactly how the system economics service this, yet beehiiv is most definitely less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks 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 system of option:
Easy to establish and begin sending newsletters free of cost.
Clean and contemporary client analytics.
Lots of adaptability with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce premium alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen one more newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But of course, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my web site building platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much detail why I love Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to learn more.
Right now, there actually is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as making use of iframe’s because they often tend to slow down my website a little bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s very noticeable when you’re on a slow-moving web connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a routine Webflow form (which I like using). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier but that would certainly just include extra costs that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the cons below. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point develop a much better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent remedy for any individual seeking to dive into the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform far exceeds several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly inexpensive of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not compose review messages typically. I just do when I in fact use the tool myself and would advise it to a close friend.
I hope you located some quality on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.