Over 2 years earlier, I read one of my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and immediately started tearing up Beehiiv Growth Rate.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a full-time developer is difficult. I’m frequently obtaining pitched different devices and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological because I invested the last six months trying different email and newsletter platforms to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic options for composing newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my newsletter styles, makes it very easy to create and send emails, and offers me devices that assist me analyze metrics and get more clients.
I think I have actually ultimately discovered the right tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal 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 very easy to layout, create, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the famous e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist designers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m going to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately choose it as my newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter system for fairly some time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it concerned lastly releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure several e-newsletter developers respect preferred e-newsletters with countless clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have fantastic content, tons of clients, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at more clients.
So, I took place a quest to identify how these large e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device truly recognize e-newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator development.
Because, any maker knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the ideal newsletter stack (that ranges) commonly indicates making use of numerous various tools to assist attain one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to set up references. It can obtain pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these things 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 content developer that desires a platform that permits them to send out customized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or content creator, you need to seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s completely free to get started and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you actually wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good sign that individuals like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is an excellent system used by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own internet site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a website similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your web site customers straight to your beehiiv email list. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to take advantage of different marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack choice.
Just how to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and more. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting (or for those seeking a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Growth Rate
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-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 website URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand name colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have described info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start creating,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down right 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 advertisements, Layout is where you develop your newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you intend to blog about, I suggest just mosting likely to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly user interface for writing.
As soon as you start composing, you can maximize headings, include web links, and style your material just how you like.
beehiiv offers you lots of alternatives for various sorts of web content like video clips, web links, pictures, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is additionally regularly launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a lot extra material features depending 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 create your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history shades, borders, spacing, fonts, photo formats, and much more. I’m not going to experience ever before single point you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just try the platform free of charge and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a terrific publishing platform for any kind of newsletter developer.
Here are several of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it super very easy to compose and send emails. I discussed above some of things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the much better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a site. Consider it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, give you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a personalized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv website or through embed types.
If you already have a website, and want individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed form. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 various alternatives– a complete size, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you want to forward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– quite cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the team is working on updates for these, yet I discussed a couple of problems I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your list to onward your e-mails to pals and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to register for your checklist, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever form you want. I have actually seem numerous e-newsletter firms give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you one more opportunity for expanding your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs memberships
They claim all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration profits is certainly a monster of its very own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” issues of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be extremely profitable depending on what your e-newsletter needs to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that creates millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among the things I like about beehiiv is how tidy and simple the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter Beehiiv Growth Rate.
You get access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer matter go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you everything you require to begin and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for many users.
I’m uncertain exactly how the unit business economics work on this, however beehiiv is definitely less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending out e-newsletters completely free.
Clean and modern customer analytics.
Lots of versatility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Develop premium alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be honest, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
But certainly, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to mention some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom font styles.
I use Webflow as my website structure platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to find out more.
Now, there really is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website aside from making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as using iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to decrease my web site a bit. Whenever a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the web page. It’s very visible when you get on a slow-moving internet connection. Yet I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a routine Webflow kind (which I enjoy using). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would simply include additional expenses that I do not require. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually produce a much better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is a fantastic option for any person seeking to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far exceeds several that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively affordable of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t create review articles commonly. I just do when I really make use of the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a close friend.
I hope you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.