Over 2 years ago, I was reading 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 immediately began wrecking Beehiiv For Food Creators.
I had not been certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched various devices and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last six months checking out various email and e-newsletter platforms to help build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic alternatives for composing e-newsletters. However I could not locate one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The problem with several existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me totally customize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it very easy to create and send e-mails, and offers me devices that aid me examine metrics and get more clients.
I think I’ve ultimately located the right tool.
But, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it very easy to layout, create, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous staff members at the well-known newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help designers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m going to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter system of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a modern newsletter system for fairly time now. I have actually postponed hard when it involved finally launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure many e-newsletter designers respect prominent newsletters with countless clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have excellent material, tons of subscribers, and a clever referral program that allows them to get even extra customers.
So, I went on a search to identify how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they create a newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this device really understand e-newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the initial marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on designer development.
Because, any type of maker knows, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the appropriate newsletter pile (that ranges) typically implies using several various tools to help attain one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to set up referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that wants a platform that enables them to send custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or material designer, you need to seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely free to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indication that people love reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a great platform used by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own website and utilize the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv also gives you an internet site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own web site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site clients right to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to utilize different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
Just how to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you access to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, outside embed types, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv For Food Creators
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise pick your brand name design and colors to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin writing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the really lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot over), Begin writing is where you develop and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your customers are (and break them down right into sectors), Expand is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with ads, Style is where you make your newsletter landing page and post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you want to cover, I suggest simply going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Start composing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and straightforward user interface for composing.
As soon as you begin composing, you can enhance headings, add links, and design your content just how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for different types of content like videos, links, photos, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise frequently launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a whole lot more material features relying on when you read this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
Once you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your email template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, image styles, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever solitary point you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Simply check out the system for free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any type of e-newsletter developer.
Below are some of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it super simple to write and send out emails. I discussed over some of things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the much better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) survive on a site. Think of it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, offer you a website. However, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish 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 essential. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter right from your beehiiv site or through embed kinds.
If you already have an internet site, and desire individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed kind. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different choices– a full size, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution monitoring if you want to ahead UTM criteria for tracking objectives– quite cool.
However, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the group is servicing updates for these, yet I discussed a few issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages 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 producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your checklist to onward your e-mails to pals and colleagues and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your listing, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem several e-newsletter business offer incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your customers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– offering you an additional method for growing your email listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this write-up.
Costs registrations
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription earnings is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be really profitable depending upon what your e-newsletter has to use. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among the important things I like concerning beehiiv is how clean and easy the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Beehiiv For Food Creators.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter increase 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 provides you every little thing you need to start and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing 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.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for numerous customers.
I’m not sure how the unit business economics deal with this, but beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Right here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and start sending newsletters for free.
Clean and modern subscriber analytics.
Lots of versatility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce costs alternatives to generate income from.
Polls.
To be honest, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However of course, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I’ve located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my website building platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow review if you want to find out more.
Now, there really is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site other than making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as making use of iframe’s because they have a tendency to slow down my internet site a bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s very obvious when you get on a sluggish net link. However I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t use a routine Webflow type (which I like using). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly simply add added expenses that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the cons below. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately create a much better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a great remedy for anyone wanting to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far surpasses numerous that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather inexpensive of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unusual. 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 don’t write evaluation posts often. I just do when I really use the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a pal.
I wish you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.