Over two years ago, I read among my favored email 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 promptly began wrecking Beehiiv For Pop Culture.
I wasn’t certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent maker is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched various devices and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological since I invested the last six months trying different email and newsletter platforms to aid construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific alternatives for composing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t locate one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it super simple to write and send out e-mails, and offers me tools that assist me assess metrics and obtain more clients.
I assume I have actually lastly located the right tool.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to design, compose, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous staff members at the popular e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally opt for it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter platform for fairly a long time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it concerned ultimately releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make certain lots of newsletter makers admire popular e-newsletters with numerous clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have excellent web content, tons of customers, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get even a lot more customers.
So, I took place a quest to determine exactly how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more clients? How do they produce a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer all of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool actually comprehend newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I knew this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator growth.
Due to the fact that, any designer recognizes, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the right newsletter pile (that ranges) typically means utilizing numerous different tools to assist achieve one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points 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 web content designer that desires a platform that enables them to send personalized newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or material developer, you ought to seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s completely free to begin 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 good sign that individuals like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is an excellent system utilized by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your own internet site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own site already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your website clients right to your beehiiv email list. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to permit individuals to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to take advantage of different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
Just how to start using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, outside embed forms, and much more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those trying to find a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv For Pop Culture
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise choose your brand name design and colors to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have described details on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning writing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot above), Begin composing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your customers are (and damage them down into sections), 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 e-newsletter with ads, Layout is where you create your newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you intend to blog about, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and straightforward user interface for writing.
Once you start writing, you can optimize headings, include web links, and design your content just how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for different types of web content like video clips, links, images, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot more content features depending on when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your email template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, picture styles, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever single thing you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply experiment with the system totally free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a terrific posting platform for any newsletter maker.
Right here are several of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it super easy to create and send out e-mails. I stated above some of the things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The thing 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 written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) reside on an internet site. Think of it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a place where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, give you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a personalized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is necessary. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or through embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and want individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different options– a full size, a dealt with size, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to ahead UTM criteria for tracking functions– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the team is working with updates for these, yet I pointed out a couple of issues I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about 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 list to onward your e-mails to close friends and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to register for your list, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve appear many e-newsletter companies give incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you one more avenue for growing your e-mail list.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this short article.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership profits is certainly a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely financially rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the things I love regarding beehiiv is just how tidy and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Beehiiv For Pop Culture.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer count increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you need to get started and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for several users.
I’m uncertain how the unit economics service this, but beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are some of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to set up and start sending newsletters completely free.
Clean and contemporary client analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create premium alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be sincere, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
However of course, I do not wish to be biased so I’m going to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made font styles.
I use Webflow as my website building platform of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive detail why I like Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow review if you ‘d like to discover more.
Right now, there actually is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not like making use of iframe’s because they tend to reduce my site a little bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the page. It’s very noticeable when you’re on a slow-moving internet link. But I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a regular Webflow kind (which I love making use of). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would just include added costs that I do not require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the disadvantages right here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately produce a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful service for anybody looking to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far surpasses numerous that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather affordable of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unusual. 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 monthly.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation articles frequently. I only do when I in fact use the tool myself and would advise it to a friend.
I wish you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.