Over two years earlier, I was reading one of my preferred email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and instantly started wrecking Beehiiv Fundraising.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m often obtaining pitched various devices and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last six months experimenting with different e-mail and newsletter systems to help construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent alternatives for composing newsletters. However I could not find one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it very simple to compose and send out emails, and provides me devices that assist me examine metrics and get even more clients.
I believe I’ve lastly discovered the ideal device.
However, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to style, create, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the well-known newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly opt for it as my e-newsletter system of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter system for fairly time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it concerned lastly releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure numerous e-newsletter creators appreciate popular newsletters with millions of subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have excellent web content, tons of clients, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to find out exactly how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they create an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this device really recognize e-newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the very first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer growth.
Because, any developer recognizes, you need growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that scales) often means making use of multiple various devices to aid accomplish one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to establish recommendations. It can get expensive.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, 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 content creator that wants a system that allows them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or web content developer, you should seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to start and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you actually wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent sign that people like reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic platform utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your own web site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one option for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a website comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own site already, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your website clients directly to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow people to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack option.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, external embed forms, and extra. It’s a really generous offering for those just starting (or for those seeking a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Fundraising
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also choose your brand design and colors to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your main control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have described information on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start composing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really lower you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Begin creating is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can watch who your clients are (and break them down into segments), Grow is where you have accessibility 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, Design is where you create your newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you intend to write about, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Start creating”.
You can modify your template and designing later– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use interface for writing.
As soon as you begin writing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and style your content just how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of options for various sorts of material like video clips, links, images, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is additionally constantly releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a whole lot much more material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, image layouts, and more. I’m not going to undergo ever single point you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Just experiment with the system completely free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a great publishing system for any newsletter designer.
Right here are several of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely easy to write and send e-mails. I stated over some of the important things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a site. Consider it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you a site. However, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or through embed types.
If you currently have a web site, and desire people to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different alternatives– a complete size, a taken care of width, and a slim installed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for attribution tracking if you wish to onward UTM parameters for tracking functions– quite neat.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the group is working on updates for these, however I pointed out a couple of concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your list to ahead your emails to friends and associates and if they obtain other people to register for your listing, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually appear numerous e-newsletter companies give incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you another method for growing your email list.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this post.
Costs subscriptions
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration profits is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” issues of your newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be really lucrative relying on what your newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among the things I enjoy about beehiiv is how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count Beehiiv Fundraising.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client count go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you everything you require to get going and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom domain, surveys, 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 enhancement of priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for many individuals.
I’m not sure just how the device economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters free of charge.
Clean and modern-day client analytics.
Lots of versatility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Develop costs alternatives to generate income from.
Polls.
To be honest, I have not seen another e-newsletter platform that has had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
But of course, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the disadvantages I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my web site structure platform of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter too much detail why I enjoy Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow evaluation if you want to discover more.
Now, there actually is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site apart from using an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as utilizing iframe’s since they have a tendency to decrease my web site a bit. Each time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s really obvious when you get on a sluggish web connection. However I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t use a routine Webflow type (which I love making use of). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier however that would simply add added prices that I don’t require. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the cons here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point produce a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a great service for anyone aiming to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system much surpasses many that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly low-cost wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review messages often. I just do when I in fact use the tool myself and would advise it to a pal.
I hope you located some quality on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.