Over 2 years earlier, I read among my preferred email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantaneously began wrecking Beehiiv Funding.
I had not been certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full time developer is difficult. I’m typically obtaining pitched various devices and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological because I spent the last 6 months trying various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to help develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic options for writing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a precise “yes”.
The issue with several existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me completely tailor my newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly easy to compose and send e-mails, and provides me devices that assist me analyze metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I think I have actually ultimately found the ideal device.
Yet, I understand beehiiv might not be for every person. 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 newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to design, compose, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous staff members at the renowned newsletter firm 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 customers.
In this write-up, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally opt for it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a modern e-newsletter platform for quite some time now. I’ve put things off hard when it pertained to lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure many e-newsletter designers look up to preferred newsletters with numerous subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have fantastic web content, tons of customers, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get even more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to figure out how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool really comprehend newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator growth.
Since, any designer knows, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And finding the best newsletter stack (that ranges) typically suggests making use of numerous different devices to aid attain one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish references. It can obtain pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to start making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that wants a system that allows them to send customized newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most successful newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or web content designer, you ought to seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to get going and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a good indicator that people love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful system used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your own web site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a website similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own website currently, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site customers straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable individuals to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to leverage various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack choice.
Exactly how to begin using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, external embed forms, and extra. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those searching for a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Funding
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then create 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 web site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise choose your brand colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning composing,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your major control center (screenshot over), Beginning creating is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your clients are (and break them down into sectors), 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, Design is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Examine 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 simple to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you intend to write about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and straightforward interface for composing.
When you start creating, you can maximize headings, add web links, and design your material how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of choices for various kinds of web content like video clips, web links, images, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise continuously launching item feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a whole lot more material features relying on when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, include your logo, activate 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 style.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, fonts, picture styles, and more. I’m not going to experience ever solitary point you can optimize with your e-mail template because it’s a great deal. Simply try out the system free of charge and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it an excellent posting system for any newsletter developer.
Below are some of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly simple to write and send out e-mails. I discussed over some of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll save you some added analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) reside on a website. Think of it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, provide you a website. However, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is necessary. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv web site or through embed types.
If you already have a web site, and desire people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed form. This is what I utilize on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different options– a full width, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to forward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the team is servicing updates for these, but I stated a few issues I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your list to onward your e-mails to pals and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve seem lots of e-newsletter firms give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you one more avenue for expanding your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this post.
Costs memberships
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership revenue is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be really rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to use. For instance, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that creates millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
One of things I like regarding beehiiv is exactly how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count Beehiiv Funding.
You get access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client matter go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you require to start and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain, polls, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the very same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for several individuals.
I’m unsure exactly how the unit economics work with this, however beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and contemporary customer analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce premium choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But naturally, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to point out some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the cons I’ve located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my website structure platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much detail why I like Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to learn more.
Today, there truly is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to reduce my web site a bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s really noticeable when you’re on a sluggish net connection. However I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can not use a normal Webflow kind (which I like making use of). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would certainly simply add extra prices that I don’t require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I assumed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the cons here. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually create a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent remedy for anybody aiming to study the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform much outweighs several that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather cheap for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t write evaluation messages often. I only do when I actually use the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a close friend.
I hope you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.