Over two years back, I was reading among my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and quickly began wrecking Beehiiv For Content Creators.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time creator is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched various tools and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months checking out different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to aid develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific alternatives for creating e-newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The issue with several existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me fully customize my newsletter styles, makes it incredibly very easy to write and send e-mails, and provides me devices that assist me examine metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I believe I’ve lastly found the appropriate tool.
But, I understand beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal 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 style, write, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the popular e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m going to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a modern e-newsletter platform for rather time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it came to ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain many e-newsletter creators appreciate preferred e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have fantastic material, lots of clients, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get even much more customers.
So, I took place a search to identify just how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they produce a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address all of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device really comprehend e-newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the initial marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I recognized this was going to be a various newsletter system. One that’s focused on developer development.
Due to the fact that, any maker knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the appropriate e-newsletter pile (that ranges) commonly implies making use of numerous various tools to help accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to set up referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was cost-free to begin utilizing, 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 enables them to send custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or material maker, you need to seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s totally free to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indication that people enjoy reviewing your things.
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 platform utilized by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own website and utilize the platform as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally gives you an internet site similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own website already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your website clients straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to register for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to leverage various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
Exactly how to begin using beehiiv email 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 “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you access to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, outside embed kinds, and more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those looking for a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv For Content Creators
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that produce 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 “Baking Cakes,” your website link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll likewise choose your brand design and colors to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your major 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 where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin creating,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Examine.” And at the really lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Start creating is where you create and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your clients are (and break them down right into segments), Grow 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you develop your newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you wish to write about, I suggest simply going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly user interface for creating.
When you start writing, you can enhance headings, include links, and style your material just how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for various types of web content like video clips, web links, photos, and more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise regularly launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a lot more content features depending on when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to create your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, image formats, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before single thing you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply try the platform free of cost and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a wonderful posting system for any newsletter designer.
Right here are a few of the essential features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it very easy to compose and send emails. I mentioned above some of things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive on a web site. Think about it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, give you an internet site. However, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a personalized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or with embed types.
If you currently have a web site, and desire individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of 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 forms, you have 3 various alternatives– a full size, a fixed width, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim installed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for attribution monitoring if you wish to forward UTM specifications for tracking functions– rather neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the group is working on updates for these, however I discussed a few concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your listing to onward your emails to good friends and colleagues 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 appear several newsletter business provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you one more opportunity for expanding your email listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this post.
Costs registrations
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration revenue is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be very profitable depending upon what your e-newsletter has to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that generates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the things I enjoy about beehiiv is how tidy and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count Beehiiv For Content Creators.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you everything you require to get going and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for many users.
I’m uncertain how the unit economics work on this, however beehiiv is definitely less expensive (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are several of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters free of charge.
Clean and contemporary client analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Develop premium choices to monetize.
Polls.
To be truthful, I have not seen another e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However certainly, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized font styles.
I use Webflow as my web site building platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much detail why I love Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow evaluation if you want to discover more.
Today, there actually is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from using an iframe embed. I personally don’t like making use of iframe’s because they have a tendency to reduce my site a bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s really recognizable when you’re on a slow-moving net link. But I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow form (which I love utilizing). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would just include extra costs that I do not require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I assumed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the cons right here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point produce a much better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a terrific option for any person wanting to study the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform much outweighs lots of 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 additionally fairly inexpensive for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t write evaluation messages commonly. I only do when I really make use of the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a pal.
I wish you discovered some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.