Over 2 years earlier, I read one of my favored e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and instantly began tearing up Beehiiv Giveaways.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m typically obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional because I spent the last six months trying various email and e-newsletter platforms to assist build my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful choices for creating newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my newsletter styles, makes it incredibly easy to write and send e-mails, and offers me tools that assist me assess metrics and obtain even more clients.
I think I’ve finally discovered the appropriate tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everyone. 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 newsletter platform that makes it very easy to style, create, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former employees at the famous e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely 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 choose it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve watched for a modern newsletter platform for quite time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it concerned finally introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure lots of e-newsletter makers look up to popular e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have wonderful web content, tons of subscribers, and a creative referral program that allows them to get even more clients.
So, I went on a search to identify how these big newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device really recognize newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the very first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on designer growth.
Because, any creator understands, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the right newsletter pile (that ranges) often implies making use of several different devices to help achieve one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish referrals. It can get pricey.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was cost-free 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 platform that permits them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or material developer, you must seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you in fact end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent indication that individuals love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a wonderful system made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own web site and utilize the system as your all-in-one option for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you an internet site similar to Substack. However, if you have your own site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your website clients right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to permit people to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to utilize various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, external embed kinds, and a lot more. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting (or for those looking for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Giveaways
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand design and colors to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have described info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start creating,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Begin composing is where you develop and publish newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and damage 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 newsletter with advertisements, Layout 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 take care of all of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you want to write about, I suggest just mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and straightforward interface for creating.
When you start writing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and design your content how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for various types of web content like videos, web links, pictures, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise frequently releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a lot extra content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your email template and change some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time clients, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo layouts, and more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever single thing you can enhance with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just try out the system for free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a fantastic posting platform for any type of e-newsletter developer.
Here are some of the important features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it super simple to write and send out e-mails. I pointed out over several of the important things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll save you some added analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) survive on a site. Think of it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, give you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is important. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or with embed forms.
If you already have an internet site, and desire individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various choices– a full width, a fixed width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to ahead UTM parameters for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
However, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the team is working on updates for these, but I pointed out a few worries I had in the pros and cons area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your listing to ahead your emails to buddies and colleagues and if they obtain other people to sign up for your checklist, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you desire. I have actually appear numerous newsletter business offer benefits 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 one more avenue for growing your e-mail listing.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this article.
Costs registrations
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription revenue is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be really rewarding depending upon what your newsletter has to provide. For example, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that produces millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among the things I like regarding beehiiv is exactly how clean and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Beehiiv Giveaways.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter increase 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 whatever you need to get going and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and access to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for many customers.
I’m not exactly sure exactly how the system business economics work with this, but beehiiv is definitely more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Right here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters completely free.
Tidy and contemporary client analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Develop premium choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter platform that has had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
However obviously, I do not wish to be biased so I’m going to state some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I have actually found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized font styles.
I use Webflow as my site structure platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter too much information why I like Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow evaluation if you wish to discover more.
Today, there actually is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as utilizing iframe’s since they tend to slow down my website a bit. Every single time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s really recognizable when you’re on a slow web connection. But I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a regular Webflow form (which I enjoy using). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly simply include added prices that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the cons right here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point develop a much better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a great remedy for any person looking to dive into the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform much exceeds lots of that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively low-cost of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not write testimonial articles commonly. I just do when I actually use the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a close friend.
I wish you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.