Over 2 years earlier, I read one of my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and quickly started wrecking Beehiiv For SaaS Founders.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m usually getting pitched different devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional because I spent the last 6 months checking out different email and e-newsletter systems to assist construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific options for creating e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t locate one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me completely personalize my newsletter styles, makes it extremely simple to compose and send out e-mails, and provides me devices that aid me examine metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I think I have actually ultimately found the appropriate device.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best 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 simple to layout, compose, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former workers at the famous newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately choose it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a modern e-newsletter platform for fairly time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it pertained to lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure several e-newsletter creators respect prominent newsletters with countless clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have great material, tons of customers, and a creative referral program that enables them to get back at more subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to figure out exactly how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they produce an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this device truly comprehend newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the initial marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Since, any kind of creator recognizes, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the ideal newsletter pile (that scales) usually indicates using multiple various devices to assist attain one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was totally free to start utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material maker that wants a platform that allows them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or material designer, you must seriously thinking about trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you actually end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a great indication that individuals enjoy reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is an excellent system used by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your own website and make use of the system as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv also gives you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own internet site already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site subscribers straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit people to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you accessibility to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and a lot more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv For SaaS Founders
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you used?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand colors and design to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described information on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin writing,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you develop and release newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into sections), Expand 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you create your newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you intend to write about, I suggest simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning writing”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly interface for composing.
As soon as you begin composing, you can optimize headings, include links, and style your web content just how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of choices for various types of web content like videos, links, photos, and more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally regularly releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal a lot more material features relying on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your e-mail template and change some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time clients, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history colors, borders, spacing, font styles, photo formats, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever solitary point you can optimize with your email template since it’s a great deal. Simply try the system totally free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a wonderful posting system for any e-newsletter developer.
Below are a few of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it very very easy to create and send out emails. I pointed out above some of things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some added reading.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) survive a website. Consider it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, give you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom-made domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is important. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or through embed forms.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed type. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different options– a complete size, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s also a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to ahead UTM criteria for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the team is servicing updates for these, but I stated a few concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your list to forward your e-mails to buddies and coworkers and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your list, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever form you want. I’ve appear many e-newsletter firms provide benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you another opportunity for growing your email checklist.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra superior plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this article.
Costs memberships
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration profits is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be really rewarding depending upon what your newsletter has to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I like concerning beehiiv is exactly how tidy and basic the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Beehiiv For SaaS Founders.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on just how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client matter rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you require to get started and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for numerous individuals.
I’m uncertain how the unit economics work with this, yet beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are a few of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters totally free.
Tidy and contemporary client analytics.
Lots of flexibility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Create premium alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
However certainly, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are some of the disadvantages I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made font styles.
I use Webflow as my site building system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much detail why I like Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow testimonial if you want to find out more.
Right now, there really is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not such as utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to decrease my web site a bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s extremely obvious when you get on a slow-moving web link. However I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not make use of a routine Webflow form (which I like utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would just add extra expenses that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I thought I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point develop a better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent solution for any individual aiming to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system far outweighs numerous that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather low-cost for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not compose evaluation articles often. I just do when I in fact utilize the device myself and would suggest it to a friend.
I wish you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.