Over 2 years earlier, I was reading among my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and quickly began destroying Beehiiv Founder.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time developer is difficult. I’m often getting pitched various devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological because I invested the last 6 months trying out different e-mail and newsletter systems to aid develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific alternatives for composing newsletters. Yet I could not discover one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it extremely easy to create and send out emails, and gives me tools that assist me evaluate metrics and get more customers.
I assume I’ve finally found the right device.
However, I recognize beehiiv may 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 platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to design, create, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the well-known e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short article, I’m going to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly choose it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern newsletter platform for fairly some time now. I’ve hesitated hard when it concerned lastly releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure many newsletter developers respect popular newsletters with numerous subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have excellent web content, tons of subscribers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at a lot more subscribers.
So, I took place a search to determine just how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more clients? How do they create an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool truly recognize newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Due to the fact that, any creator recognizes, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the right newsletter stack (that scales) frequently implies utilizing numerous different devices to assist accomplish one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all 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 material creator that wants a system that allows them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or content developer, you ought to seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to get started and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you actually end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indicator that individuals love reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is an excellent system used by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own internet site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own website currently, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your website clients straight to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit people to register for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to utilize different marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack option.
Just how to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you accessibility to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, outside embed types, and a lot more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those seeking a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Founder
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise pick your brand design and colors to ensure your 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 have detailed info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start composing,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot over), Begin composing is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your customers are (and damage them down right 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 newsletter with ads, Style is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you want to discuss, I advise just mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Begin composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and user-friendly user interface for writing.
As soon as you start creating, you can optimize headings, include links, and design your material how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for various types of web content like video clips, links, pictures, and more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally regularly releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a great deal extra content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and change some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo formats, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before solitary point you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Just try the system absolutely free and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a terrific posting system for any type of e-newsletter developer.
Here are some of the important features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it very easy to create and send emails. I discussed above several of things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive an internet site. Think of it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, provide you a website. However, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or via embed forms.
If you already have an internet site, and want individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed type. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 different options– a full size, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s also an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to forward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the group is dealing with updates for these, yet I discussed a couple of concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your listing to onward your e-mails to pals and associates and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your list, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever form you want. I’ve appear several e-newsletter firms give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional avenue for growing your email listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this article.
Premium registrations
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration income is certainly a monster of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be really rewarding depending on what your newsletter needs to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among things I enjoy about beehiiv is just how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count Beehiiv Founder.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you everything you require to get going and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom domain, polls, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for many users.
I’m unsure how the unit economics service this, but beehiiv is absolutely cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve 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 option:
Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters totally free.
Clean and contemporary client analytics.
Lots of versatility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce costs alternatives to generate income from.
Polls.
To be sincere, I have not seen one more e-newsletter system that has had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
But of course, I do not wish to be biased so I’m going to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the cons I have actually located while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom typefaces.
I use Webflow as my website structure platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow review if you would love to discover more.
Today, there actually is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from using an iframe embed. I personally do not such as using iframe’s since they tend to reduce my site a bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s extremely recognizable when you get on a sluggish net connection. However I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not use a normal Webflow type (which I love utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would certainly just include additional prices that I do not require. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I thought I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately develop a better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent service for anybody seeking to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter platform much exceeds many that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather low-cost of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t write review messages typically. I only do when I really make use of the device myself and would recommend it to a buddy.
I wish you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.