Over 2 years back, I was reading among my preferred email 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 instantly started tearing up Beehiiv Framer.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent developer is difficult. I’m often getting pitched different devices and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional because I spent the last 6 months trying out various email and newsletter platforms to assist construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful options for composing e-newsletters. But I could not discover one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The concern with several existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly simple to compose and send e-mails, and provides me tools that aid me assess metrics and obtain even more customers.
I assume I’ve finally discovered the ideal device.
But, I understand beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it very easy to style, write, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous workers at the famous newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly go with it as my newsletter platform of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter platform for quite time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it involved ultimately releasing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of e-newsletter creators appreciate preferred e-newsletters with countless customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have excellent material, tons of customers, and a creative referral program that permits them to get back at a lot more customers.
So, I took place a hunt to find out just how these big newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they create a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to answer all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device really recognize e-newsletter development and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I knew this was going to be a various newsletter system. One that’s focused on developer development.
Due to the fact that, any type of developer recognizes, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the best e-newsletter stack (that ranges) typically means making use of numerous different devices to assist attain one goal– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to establish references. It can obtain costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was complimentary 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 desires a platform that enables them to send out customized newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or web content designer, you ought to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you really wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good indicator that people enjoy reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful platform utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own site and use the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own site currently, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your internet site clients straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable people to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to leverage different marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
How to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software application.
Enroll in a free plan
The primary step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance personalization, analytics, outside embed kinds, and more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Framer
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also select your brand name colors and design to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed info on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start creating,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the very lower you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning writing is where you produce and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your customers are (and damage them down into segments), Expand is where you have access to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you create your newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you want to blog about, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– focus on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and easy to use interface for composing.
As soon as you begin creating, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your content just how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of options for different types of material like video clips, web links, photos, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is also regularly launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot extra material features depending upon when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to create your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to first time customers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and extra. I’m not going to undergo ever single point you can maximize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Just experiment with the system totally free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a great posting platform for any kind of newsletter developer.
Right here are a few of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it incredibly simple to write and send out e-mails. I pointed out above some of the things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll save you some added analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the much better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) survive on an internet site. Consider it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, provide you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is essential. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv website or with embed forms.
If you already have a site, and desire individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed kind. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different alternatives– a complete width, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
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 objectives– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the team is dealing with updates for these, but I pointed out a few problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks area 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 producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your list to onward your emails to close friends and colleagues and if they get other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually seem numerous newsletter companies offer benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you another avenue for expanding your e-mail list.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs memberships
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration earnings is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” problems of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be really rewarding depending upon what your newsletter has to use. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter content.
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 e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Beehiiv Framer.
You get access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer matter go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you every little thing you require to get going and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit choice for many individuals.
I’m not exactly sure just how the system business economics work on this, but beehiiv is definitely less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to establish and begin sending e-newsletters absolutely free.
Tidy and modern-day customer analytics.
Lots of versatility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Create premium alternatives to generate income from.
Polls.
To be honest, I have not seen one more newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However naturally, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized fonts.
I use Webflow as my web site building platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive detail why I love Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow review if you would love to learn more.
Today, there really is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site besides utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not such as using iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my internet 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 very visible when you get on a sluggish web connection. But I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not use a normal Webflow form (which I enjoy making use of). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would just include additional costs that I do not require. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I thought I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the cons below. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will ultimately develop a much better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a fantastic service for any person wanting to study the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system far surpasses many that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather economical wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is uncommon. 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 do not compose testimonial blog posts commonly. I just do when I in fact utilize the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a friend.
I wish you found some quality on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.