Over two years earlier, I read among my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and immediately began wrecking Beehiiv Get a Demo.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m usually obtaining pitched different devices and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last six months trying out various e-mail and newsletter platforms to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic options for creating newsletters. However I couldn’t discover one that made me offer a definite “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my newsletter styles, makes it super simple to compose and send e-mails, and provides me tools that aid me assess metrics and get more customers.
I think I have actually finally located the appropriate device.
However, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal 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 simple to layout, compose, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally go with it as my newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern newsletter platform for rather time now. I have actually postponed hard when it pertained to finally introducing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure several e-newsletter developers admire prominent e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have great web content, lots of clients, and a creative referral program that allows them to get even extra subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to identify how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they develop a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address all of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool really recognize 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 growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s focused on developer growth.
Due to the fact that, any type of creator knows, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the ideal newsletter stack (that scales) commonly indicates utilizing several various devices to assist attain one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to establish references. It can obtain costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was complimentary to begin using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content developer that wants a platform that permits them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media company, startup, or web content developer, you should seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you really end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent indicator that individuals enjoy reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great platform utilized by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own website and make use of the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also provides you a website similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own website already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your site clients right to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to take advantage of different marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, outside embed types, and extra. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those searching for a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Get a Demo
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll likewise pick your brand colors and design to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed info on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start creating,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you create and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and damage them down into sectors), Grow is where you have accessibility 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 ads, Design is where you design your newsletter landing page and post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you intend to write about, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start composing”.
You can modify your template and designing later– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and straightforward user interface for composing.
When you start writing, you can optimize headings, include links, and style your web content how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of alternatives for different sorts of content like videos, links, pictures, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise regularly launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal much more material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to design your e-mail template and change some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to first time customers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, font styles, picture layouts, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before single point you can optimize with your e-mail template because it’s a lot. Simply try out the system for free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it an excellent publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter developer.
Below are some of the essential features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely easy to write and send emails. I pointed out over some of things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll save you some extra reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) survive on an internet site. Think of it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a place where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, give you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is essential. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or through embed kinds.
If you currently have a web site, and want people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed form. This is what I utilize on this internet site (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 3 different options– a complete width, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution tracking if you intend to onward UTM specifications for tracking functions– rather cool.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the team is servicing updates for these, but I pointed out a few concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your list to forward your emails to buddies and colleagues and if they get other individuals to register for your listing, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever type you want. I have actually seem lots of e-newsletter firms offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another opportunity for expanding your e-mail listing.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this post.
Premium registrations
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription earnings is certainly a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be very financially rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter needs to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that produces millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter Beehiiv Get a Demo.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you everything you require to start and grow your newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the very same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit option for numerous users.
I’m unsure exactly how the unit business economics work with this, however beehiiv is absolutely cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are some of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and contemporary client analytics.
Lots of adaptability with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop premium choices to generate income from.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
However obviously, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my site structure system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much detail why I love Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow review if you wish to find out more.
Right now, there truly is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as making use of iframe’s since they often tend to reduce my internet site a little bit. Every time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s really obvious when you’re on a slow-moving net link. But I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not make use of a routine Webflow type (which I enjoy utilizing). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier however that would simply include additional costs that I don’t need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I thought I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately develop a far better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent remedy for anyone wanting to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform much outweighs lots of that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly low-cost of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation messages often. I just do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a friend.
I hope you discovered some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.