Over two years ago, I read one of my favored e-mail 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 it and immediately began tearing up Beehiiv Gif.
I had not been sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m usually getting pitched different devices and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional because I spent the last 6 months trying out different email and newsletter systems to help construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great alternatives for writing newsletters. But I could not discover one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter designs, makes it super simple to create and send e-mails, and gives me tools that help me analyze metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I assume I have actually finally located the appropriate device.
Yet, I understand beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact 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 layout, compose, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former workers at the popular e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m going to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly choose it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter platform for rather time now. I have actually put things off hard when it came to finally introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of newsletter creators appreciate preferred e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have fantastic content, lots of subscribers, and a creative referral program that allows them to get back at much more subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to determine how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they create an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool really understand e-newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I understood this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Since, any kind of developer knows, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the appropriate e-newsletter pile (that ranges) typically implies making use of multiple various tools to help attain one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish references. It can obtain costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was totally free to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that wants a system that permits them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or content designer, you must seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to begin and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you in fact end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a great sign that people like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great system used by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own web site currently, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site customers straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable people to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack choice.
Just how to start using beehiiv email marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, external embed types, and a lot more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just beginning (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Gif
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will live 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 additionally pick your brand design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin writing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Begin writing is where you develop and publish newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into sections), Expand 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 advertisements, Design is where you develop your newsletter landing page and message template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you want to write about, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and easy to use user interface for composing.
Once you begin composing, you can optimize headings, add links, and design your content how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of alternatives for various types of material like video clips, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise regularly launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal more material features depending on when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to design your email template and change some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history shades, borders, spacing, fonts, image styles, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever solitary point you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Just experiment with the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a wonderful publishing platform for any type of newsletter creator.
Below are a few of the essential features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send out e-mails. I pointed out above a few of things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll save you some additional reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the far better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on an internet 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 people can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, give you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom-made domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require 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 subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or through embed kinds.
If you currently have a web site, and desire people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three different options– a full size, a fixed width, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to ahead UTM criteria for tracking objectives– quite cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make sure the team is servicing updates for these, however I mentioned a couple of problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your checklist to ahead your e-mails to pals and colleagues and if they get other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve seem lots of newsletter business offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional opportunity for expanding your email listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this article.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription profits is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be really lucrative depending on what your e-newsletter has to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
One of the things I like concerning beehiiv is just how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count Beehiiv Gif.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client matter go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you require to get going and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 each month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit option for lots of individuals.
I’m unsure how the system economics work on this, yet beehiiv is certainly less expensive (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop costs alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
However of course, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the cons I’ve discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized font styles.
I use Webflow as my website structure system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter too much information why I love Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you would love to find out more.
Now, there actually is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t like making use of iframe’s because they often tend to slow down my internet site a bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the page. It’s very recognizable when you get on a slow web link. Yet I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not make use of a routine Webflow form (which I enjoy utilizing). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier however that would just include extra prices that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I believed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the disadvantages here. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually produce a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a great remedy for any person seeking to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform far surpasses numerous 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 additionally rather affordable wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not create review blog posts often. I only do when I actually make use of the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a pal.
I hope you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.