Over two years earlier, I read one of my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and instantly began destroying Beehiiv Growth.
I had not been certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a permanent maker is tough. I’m typically getting pitched various tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological because I invested the last 6 months trying out various email and e-newsletter systems to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent alternatives for composing e-newsletters. However I could not discover one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me completely personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it super simple to create and send out e-mails, and gives me tools that assist me analyze metrics and get even more customers.
I assume I’ve finally located the right tool.
However, I understand beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it simple to layout, compose, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the well-known e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly select it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter platform for quite a long time currently. I’ve hesitated hard when it pertained to ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make sure numerous newsletter creators look up to popular e-newsletters with numerous customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have excellent web content, tons of subscribers, and a creative referral program that enables them to get even extra subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to identify just how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they develop a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I found 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 actually understand newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer development.
Since, any type of designer knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the best e-newsletter pile (that ranges) often means using multiple different tools to aid achieve one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain expensive.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to start making use of, 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 customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or web content designer, you ought to seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely free to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you in fact wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indicator that individuals love reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is an excellent platform used by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your own internet site and use the platform as your all-in-one option for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a website similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own web site already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site customers directly to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit individuals to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack choice.
Exactly how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting (or for those looking for a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Growth
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand name colors and design to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have described info on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin composing,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Begin writing is where you create and publish newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down right into sections), 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, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you intend to cover, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Begin composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and straightforward interface for composing.
When you begin composing, you can maximize headings, add links, and design your content how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for different types of web content like video clips, web links, photos, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise continuously launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a great deal extra material features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, fonts, image styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever single point you can optimize with your e-mail template because it’s a whole lot. Just experiment with the system free of cost and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any kind of newsletter designer.
Here are several of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very simple to write and send out e-mails. I mentioned above several of things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll save you some additional reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely one of the better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive a website. Consider it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, offer you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a personalized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv website or with embed types.
If you already have a site, and desire individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different choices– a full width, a fixed size, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you want to ahead UTM criteria for tracking functions– quite cool.
However, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the group is working with updates for these, yet I stated a couple of worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your list to forward your emails to buddies and colleagues and if they get other people to register for your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever form you want. I’ve appear numerous e-newsletter firms offer incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you one more opportunity for growing your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this post.
Premium registrations
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration revenue is certainly a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be very lucrative relying on what your e-newsletter has to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that creates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of things I like concerning beehiiv is just how tidy and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Beehiiv Growth.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you require to get going and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain, polls, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for lots of users.
I’m unsure how the system economics service this, yet beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are a few of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to establish and begin sending out newsletters totally free.
Tidy and contemporary customer analytics.
Lots of adaptability with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Create premium alternatives to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I have not seen one more e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
But naturally, I do not want to be biased so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are some of the disadvantages I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site structure system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much information why I like Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow review if you wish to discover more.
Right now, there truly is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides using an iframe embed. I personally do not such as using iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to decrease my internet site a little bit. Each time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s extremely noticeable when you get on a slow internet link. Yet I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a routine Webflow form (which I like making use of). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would certainly just include additional prices that I do not require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I thought I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the cons below. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will at some point produce a far better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is a fantastic service for any person wanting to dive into the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system much exceeds lots of that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly low-cost wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review posts frequently. I just do when I in fact use the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a good friend.
I hope you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.