Over 2 years ago, I read among my favorite e-mail e-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 instantaneously started wrecking Beehiiv For Blog.
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time developer is tough. I’m frequently getting pitched various tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months checking out various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful options for composing newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me completely customize my newsletter designs, makes it very simple to compose and send out emails, and offers me devices that help me analyze metrics and get more customers.
I assume I’ve finally discovered the ideal device.
However, I understand beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it very easy to design, create, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly select it as my newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve watched for a contemporary e-newsletter system for fairly some time now. I’ve procrastinated hard when it concerned finally launching my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make sure several newsletter designers admire prominent e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have terrific content, lots of customers, and a creative referral program that permits them to get back at more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to determine how these big newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more customers? How do they produce a newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool actually understand e-newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Since, any type of designer knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the right e-newsletter stack (that scales) often indicates utilizing multiple different devices to assist accomplish one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up references. It can get expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was free to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content maker that wants a system that allows them to send out customized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or web content creator, you should seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you really wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indication that people enjoy reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great platform used by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own site and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a website similar to Substack. However, if you have your own site currently, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your website customers right to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow people to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Exactly how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance personalization, analytics, outside embed types, and much more. It’s a very charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those searching for a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv For Blog
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise pick your brand design and colors to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined information on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start composing,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot over), Beginning creating is where you develop and release newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your subscribers are (and damage them down into segments), Grow 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 newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you develop your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you wish to discuss, I advise simply going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin writing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and easy to use user interface for creating.
Once you begin writing, you can enhance headings, add links, and style your material just how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for different types of content like video clips, links, images, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally constantly launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot much more material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture styles, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever solitary point you can maximize with your e-mail template because it’s a great deal. Just try out the platform absolutely free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a terrific publishing platform for any e-newsletter maker.
Below are a few of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely easy to write and send emails. I stated above a few of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) live on a site. Think of it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, offer you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a personalized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is necessary. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or with embed types.
If you currently have a web site, and want individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different alternatives– a complete width, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s also a choice for acknowledgment tracking if you want to onward UTM criteria for tracking functions– quite neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the group is working with updates for these, yet I mentioned a few issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your checklist to ahead your e-mails to close friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to register for your listing, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I’ve seem many e-newsletter firms provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you an additional opportunity for growing your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this article.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription income is certainly a beast 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 “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be very rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter needs to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that creates millions in profits a year just by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the things I like about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter Beehiiv For Blog.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you everything you require to get started and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, customized domain, polls, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for many users.
I’m unsure how the unit economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is certainly less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and start sending out e-newsletters for free.
Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Lots of adaptability with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Develop costs options to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter platform that has had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
However certainly, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are some of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom fonts.
I use Webflow as my site structure platform of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive information why I like Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow evaluation if you want to learn more.
Now, there actually is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site besides making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to reduce my internet site a little bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s really noticeable when you get on a sluggish web link. But I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a regular Webflow type (which I enjoy utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would certainly simply include extra costs that I do not need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I thought I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the disadvantages right here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will ultimately create a much better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a great option for any individual looking to study the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter platform much surpasses numerous that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather inexpensive wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing 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 right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t create evaluation blog posts commonly. I just do when I really use the device myself and would advise it to a buddy.
I wish you found some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.