Over 2 years ago, I read among my preferred email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and immediately began destroying Beehiiv Hide From Feed.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent designer is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched different tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I invested the last six months experimenting with various e-mail and newsletter platforms to aid build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific choices for writing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The issue with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me fully tailor my newsletter styles, makes it incredibly easy to compose and send out emails, and provides me devices that help me evaluate metrics and obtain more clients.
I believe I’ve lastly found the ideal tool.
Yet, I understand beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to style, write, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the popular e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m going to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally opt for it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for fairly time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it pertained to lastly releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure numerous newsletter developers look up to prominent e-newsletters with millions of subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have fantastic web content, lots of subscribers, and a smart referral program that allows them to get even extra clients.
So, I took place a search to find out just how these big e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they create a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this tool actually comprehend e-newsletter development and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the very first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Because, any type of creator recognizes, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the appropriate newsletter stack (that scales) commonly suggests using multiple various devices to aid attain one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to establish references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was cost-free to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that wants a platform that allows them to send out personalized newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
The most successful newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or web content maker, you should seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you actually wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent indicator that individuals enjoy reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic platform made use of by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own website and make use of the system 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 much better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv also offers you a web site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site customers right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack alternative.
How to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you access to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Hide From Feed
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand name colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed details on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start creating,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you create and publish newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down right into sectors), Grow is where you have access 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 make your newsletter landing page and article template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you want to blog about, I advise just mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and user-friendly interface for creating.
Once you start composing, you can maximize headings, include links, and style your web content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for different types of material like video clips, links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise frequently releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a great deal much more material features relying on when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to design your email template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, image layouts, and extra. I’m not going to undergo ever before solitary thing you can maximize with your email template because it’s a lot. Just try out the system free of charge and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a great posting system for any type of e-newsletter designer.
Below are several of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it incredibly very easy to create and send out emails. I pointed out over several of things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) survive a site. Think of it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, offer you a web site. However, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is very important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv website or via embed types.
If you already have a website, and desire people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three different alternatives– a complete size, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– quite neat.
However, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the team is servicing updates for these, yet I stated a couple of concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your listing to ahead your emails to buddies and colleagues and if they get other individuals to register for your checklist, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually seem several e-newsletter firms offer benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional method for growing your email listing.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs memberships
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Subscription earnings is definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be extremely profitable relying on what your newsletter has to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that produces millions in profits a year just by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
One of the things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is exactly how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter Beehiiv Hide From Feed.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client matter increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you whatever you require to begin and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom domain name, polls, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for lots of individuals.
I’m unsure how the system economics work on this, but beehiiv is certainly more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Naturally, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and modern client analytics.
Lots of versatility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Create premium choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But obviously, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my website building platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow evaluation if you ‘d like to find out more.
Right now, there really is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not such as making use of iframe’s since they have a tendency to reduce my website a bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s extremely noticeable when you get on a sluggish web connection. But I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t use a normal Webflow form (which I enjoy making use of). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just include extra prices that I do not require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I believed I would state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the cons right here. I’m also confident that Webflow will ultimately produce a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a wonderful solution for anyone looking to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system much exceeds lots of that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly affordable for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t create testimonial messages frequently. I only do when I really make use of the tool myself and would advise it to a friend.
I wish you located some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.