Over two years back, I read among my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and immediately began destroying Beehiiv For Podcasters.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time developer is difficult. I’m typically obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last six months experimenting with different e-mail and newsletter platforms to assist construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great alternatives for composing newsletters. However I could not find one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me fully customize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it extremely very easy to create and send emails, and gives me tools that help me analyze metrics and get more customers.
I assume I’ve finally discovered the ideal tool.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv may not be for every person. 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 newsletter platform that makes it simple to style, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help developers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally opt for it as my newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a modern e-newsletter system for fairly some time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it concerned ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure many newsletter creators appreciate prominent newsletters with millions of customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have fantastic web content, tons of customers, and a creative referral program that enables them to get back at extra subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to determine how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they produce a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool truly understand newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the initial marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I understood this was going to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Since, any type of developer knows, you require growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the appropriate newsletter stack (that scales) commonly suggests making use of multiple various devices to aid attain one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish recommendations. It can obtain expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, 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 desires a platform that enables them to send out personalized newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or material maker, you need to seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you actually wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indicator that individuals love reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great system used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv also offers you a site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own website already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your website subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow people to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to leverage various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack option.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, outside embed kinds, and extra. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting (or for those searching for a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv For Podcasters
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand name design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined details on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start creating,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you create and release e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your customers are (and break them down into segments), Grow is where you have access 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 newsletter with ads, Design is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you intend to blog about, I recommend just going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use interface for composing.
As soon as you start writing, you can maximize headings, add web links, and design your web content exactly how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for various kinds of material like video clips, links, photos, and more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise constantly releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a lot a lot 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 create your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a description, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to first time clients, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, font styles, photo styles, and more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before single thing you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply experiment with the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a terrific publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter creator.
Here are a few of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it super very easy to write and send out e-mails. I discussed above some of the things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll save you some added reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely one of the much better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on an internet site. Consider it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, offer you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is very important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or via embed forms.
If you already have a site, and desire individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed type. This is what I use on this 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 different choices– a complete size, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM parameters for tracking functions– quite cool.
However, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the team is dealing with updates for these, yet I discussed a few concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your checklist to onward your emails to friends and coworkers and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your list, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve seem numerous newsletter firms provide benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you one more avenue for growing your email list.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration revenue is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” problems of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely rewarding relying on what your newsletter needs to offer. For example, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that produces millions in profits a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count Beehiiv For Podcasters.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you everything you require to start and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for several individuals.
I’m unsure just how the system business economics work on this, yet beehiiv is most definitely less costly (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are some of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters completely free.
Tidy and contemporary client analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Create costs alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I have not seen another e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
Yet certainly, I do not intend to be biased so I’m going to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site building system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much detail why I like Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to discover more.
Now, there truly is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t like using iframe’s because they have a tendency to reduce my web site a bit. Each time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s really visible when you get on a slow-moving web link. But I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t use a normal Webflow form (which I like making use of). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would just include additional expenses that I do not require. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the cons right here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately produce a far better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful option for anybody looking to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system far outweighs several 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 also fairly cheap wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create testimonial posts usually. I just do when I really use the tool myself and would advise it to a close friend.
I hope you found some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.