Over 2 years ago, I was reading among my favored 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 it and instantaneously began destroying Beehiiv Google Analytics.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent developer is tough. I’m frequently obtaining pitched different tools and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological because I invested the last 6 months experimenting with various email and newsletter platforms to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great alternatives for creating newsletters. However I could not locate one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me fully customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it extremely easy to create and send out emails, and provides me devices that assist me examine metrics and get more clients.
I assume I’ve lastly located the appropriate tool.
However, I know beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to style, compose, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former staff members at the renowned newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist designers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly go with it as my newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern newsletter system for quite a long time now. I’ve postponed hard when it involved finally releasing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous newsletter developers look up to popular newsletters with countless clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have wonderful material, tons of clients, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even extra clients.
So, I took place a hunt to figure out how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to answer all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device truly understand newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Since, any kind of developer knows, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the right e-newsletter pile (that scales) commonly indicates using several different devices to help accomplish one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish references. It can get expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was cost-free to start making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that wants a system that enables them to send out customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or content creator, you must seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to get going and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you really end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indicator that individuals love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great system utilized by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your own website and utilize the system as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also provides you a site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own internet site already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site subscribers right to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable people to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack option.
Just how to start using beehiiv email marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, external embed types, and extra. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those searching for a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Google Analytics
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally select your brand name design and colors to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin composing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Assess.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings alternative.
Control panel is your major control center (screenshot above), Begin writing is where you develop and publish newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your clients are (and damage them down into sections), Expand is where you have access to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you make your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you wish to blog about, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and easy to use interface for composing.
As soon as you start composing, you can enhance headings, add links, and style your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of choices for different sorts of material like video clips, web links, photos, and more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally constantly releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a lot a lot more content features relying on when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your email template and change some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a description, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to first time clients, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history shades, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, photo styles, and much more. I’m not going to undergo ever before solitary point you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply experiment with the system completely free and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any type of e-newsletter developer.
Below are a few of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it incredibly easy to create and send emails. I discussed above some of things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) reside on a site. Consider it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, provide you a site. However, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a customized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or through embed types.
If you already have a website, and desire individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to use an embed type. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various choices– a full size, a dealt with size, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM parameters for tracking functions– pretty cool.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the team is working on updates for these, however I stated a couple of concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your list to ahead your e-mails to pals and associates and if they get other people to register for your checklist, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever type you want. I’ve appear many e-newsletter business give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you another avenue for growing your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this article.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription revenue is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” issues of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying clients. This can be very rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter needs to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that produces millions in income a year simply by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among the things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Beehiiv Google Analytics.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client matter go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you every little thing you require to get started and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom domain, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit choice for numerous individuals.
I’m not sure exactly how the system economics deal with this, but beehiiv is absolutely less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are several of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and modern subscriber analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Develop costs alternatives to generate income from.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet obviously, I do not intend to be biased so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the disadvantages I have actually found 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 mosting likely to go in excessive detail why I love Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow review if you want to discover more.
Now, there truly is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not like making use of iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my site a little bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s really visible when you get on a slow net connection. However I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not make use of a normal Webflow type (which I love making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just add additional costs that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the cons right here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will eventually develop a much better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a great solution for any individual seeking to dive into the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far exceeds several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively economical for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not compose review blog posts often. I only do when I really utilize the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a pal.
I hope you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.