Over 2 years ago, I read one of my favored e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and instantly started wrecking Beehiiv For Journalism.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time creator is tough. I’m typically obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional because I invested the last six months experimenting with different email and newsletter platforms to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent options for writing newsletters. But I could not find one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me completely personalize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it very simple to write and send e-mails, and offers me tools that help me examine metrics and get even more subscribers.
I assume I’ve finally discovered the best tool.
Yet, I understand beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to layout, write, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly go with it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter platform for rather time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it concerned ultimately introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain lots of e-newsletter makers appreciate popular newsletters with countless subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have great content, tons of clients, and a clever referral program that permits them to get back at much more clients.
So, I took place a search to find out exactly how these large newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they create a newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this device truly understand e-newsletter production and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer growth.
Because, any type of designer recognizes, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the right newsletter pile (that ranges) often means utilizing numerous various tools to help attain one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can get expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was cost-free to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that wants a system that allows them to send custom-made newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or web content maker, you need to seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to get going and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you actually end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indicator that people enjoy reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great platform used by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your very own website and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a web site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site currently, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your site clients directly to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to utilize various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
How to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, external embed types, and extra. It’s a really charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those trying to find a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv For Journalism
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally pick your brand name design and colors to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have described details on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning composing,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Analyze.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into sectors), 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 newsletter with ads, Design is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you want to write about, I recommend just going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Start creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and user-friendly user interface for writing.
Once you start creating, you can optimize headings, add links, and style your material exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of alternatives for various kinds of material like video clips, web links, pictures, and more.
The team at beehiiv is also regularly launching item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a great deal extra material features relying on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your email template and change some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, image styles, and more. I’m not going to experience ever before solitary point you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just try out the system for free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it an excellent posting system for any type of e-newsletter creator.
Right here are some of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it incredibly easy to write and send e-mails. I discussed above a few of the important things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) live on a web site. Think about it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, provide you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a personalized domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is very important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or via embed forms.
If you already have a web site, and desire individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed form. This is what I utilize on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different options– a full size, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution monitoring if you intend to forward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the team is dealing with updates for these, but I mentioned a couple of worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your checklist to onward your e-mails to buddies and associates and if they obtain other people to sign up for your list, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve seem numerous newsletter firms give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional opportunity for expanding your e-mail listing.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this short article.
Premium memberships
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription earnings is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” problems of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely financially rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that creates millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the important things I enjoy about beehiiv is how tidy and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count Beehiiv For Journalism.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer count rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you everything you require to get going and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for several customers.
I’m not sure exactly how the system business economics service this, yet beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending out newsletters completely free.
Clean and modern client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Develop costs options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I have not seen one more newsletter system that has actually been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
However of course, 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 found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my site building platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much detail why I love Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow evaluation if you want to discover more.
Right now, there actually is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site besides making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not like utilizing iframe’s because they tend to decrease my web site a little bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s really obvious when you’re on a slow-moving internet link. However I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a routine Webflow type (which I love utilizing). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier but that would certainly simply add added prices that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the cons right here. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually develop a far better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a wonderful service for any individual wanting to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform far outweighs numerous that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly affordable for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create review messages often. I just do when I in fact make use of the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a close friend.
I wish you found some quality on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.