Over two years ago, I read one of my favored email 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 immediately started wrecking Beehiiv Greg Isenberg.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m frequently obtaining pitched different devices and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I spent the last six months checking out different e-mail and newsletter systems to help develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful alternatives for writing newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my newsletter styles, makes it incredibly easy to write and send emails, and gives me devices that help me assess metrics and get more customers.
I believe I have actually finally located the ideal tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it simple to design, create, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the renowned e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist makers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally opt for it as my newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter platform for quite a long time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it came to ultimately launching my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of newsletter designers respect preferred e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have terrific web content, tons of customers, and a smart referral program that allows them to get even much more clients.
So, I went on a quest to figure out just how these large newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they develop 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 believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool actually understand e-newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on designer development.
Since, any type of developer knows, you need development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the best newsletter stack (that ranges) commonly suggests making use of several various tools to aid accomplish one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish references. It can get pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was complimentary to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material maker that wants a platform that enables them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, start-up, or web content maker, you must seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely free to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you really wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indicator that individuals like reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a great system used by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own site and use the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv also offers you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own web site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your web site clients right to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit people to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
Exactly how to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, external embed forms, and extra. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those looking for a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Greg Isenberg
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally pick your brand design and colors to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start writing,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very lower you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning writing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and break 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 newsletter with ads, Layout is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you wish to cover, I advise simply going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly interface for writing.
Once you begin creating, you can maximize headings, add links, and design your content just how you like.
beehiiv offers you lots of alternatives for various types of material like video clips, links, photos, and more.
The group at beehiiv is also continuously releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a lot extra content features relying on when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background colors, borders, spacing, fonts, photo layouts, and more. I’m not going to undergo ever single thing you can maximize with your e-mail template because it’s a great deal. Simply experiment with the platform for free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a great publishing platform for any newsletter maker.
Here are several of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very easy to create and send out emails. I pointed out above some of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll save you some extra reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly among the better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a web site. Think of it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, offer you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv website or with embed types.
If you currently have a web site, and desire individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed type. 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 post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various options– a complete width, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you want to onward UTM specifications for tracking functions– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make sure the group is working on updates for these, but I stated a few concerns I had in the pros and cons 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 producing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your listing to onward your e-mails to buddies and associates and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your list, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you want. I have actually seem several newsletter firms offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you an additional method for growing your e-mail list.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this article.
Costs registrations
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration earnings is definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be really financially rewarding relying on what your newsletter needs to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the important things I love regarding beehiiv is how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count Beehiiv Greg Isenberg.
You get access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client count rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various 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 newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, personalized domain, surveys, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit option for several users.
I’m not exactly sure exactly how the system business economics deal with this, however beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are several of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and begin sending e-newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and modern-day client analytics.
Lots of versatility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce premium alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I have not seen an additional newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
However naturally, I do not wish to be biased so I’m going to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I’ve located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my website structure platform of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow review if you would love to learn more.
Right now, there really is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t like utilizing iframe’s because they tend to decrease my website a little bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s extremely recognizable when you’re on a slow net connection. But I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a regular Webflow type (which I enjoy making use of). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would just include additional expenses that I don’t require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the cons below. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually develop a better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is an excellent solution for any person wanting to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system much outweighs several that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather low-cost for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not write testimonial posts often. I just do when I actually make use of the device myself and would suggest it to a close friend.
I wish you discovered some clarity on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.