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 very first time. I clicked it and instantly began tearing up Beehiiv iFrame.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time developer is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months checking out various email and newsletter platforms to assist construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful choices for composing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me provide a precise “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 totally tailor my newsletter layouts, makes it super very easy to create and send e-mails, and gives me tools that aid me evaluate metrics and obtain even more customers.
I believe I’ve lastly found the appropriate device.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everybody. 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 e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to design, write, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous staff members at the well-known e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly select it as my newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve watched for a modern newsletter platform for fairly time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it concerned finally launching my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous e-newsletter designers respect preferred e-newsletters with millions of clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have fantastic content, tons of clients, and a clever referral program that allows them to get back at extra clients.
So, I took place a quest to figure out exactly how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device really understand e-newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the very first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Since, any kind of maker understands, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the best e-newsletter stack (that ranges) commonly suggests using numerous different tools to aid achieve one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up references. It can obtain pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was totally free to begin making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content creator that wants a system that enables them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or web content developer, you need to seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you actually end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indicator that people enjoy reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great system made use of by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own website and use the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a website similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own internet site already, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site subscribers straight to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to permit people to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to leverage various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
Just how to begin using beehiiv email marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you accessibility to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, external embed types, and much more. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those trying to find a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv iFrame
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll then create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally choose your brand colors and design to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start composing,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Assess.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot over), Beginning creating is where you develop and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and break them down into sections), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you create your newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you wish to write about, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start writing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and user-friendly interface for writing.
As soon as you begin composing, you can maximize headings, include web links, and design your web content exactly how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of choices for different types of content like video clips, links, photos, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is likewise regularly releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot a lot more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, 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 design.
You can modify background shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo styles, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before solitary point you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the platform free of cost and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a fantastic posting platform for any kind of e-newsletter creator.
Right here are a few of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely easy to create and send e-mails. I discussed over several of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the much better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive on an internet site. Consider it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, offer you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom-made domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or through embed kinds.
If you already have a web site, and desire people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed type. This is what I utilize on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different options– a full width, a fixed width, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s also an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to onward UTM parameters for tracking functions– rather neat.
However, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is dealing with updates for these, but I pointed out a few worries I had in the pros and cons area 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 clients on your list to forward your emails to close friends and colleagues and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve appear lots of e-newsletter companies offer incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you another method for growing your e-mail listing.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this post.
Costs registrations
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration profits is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” problems of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be really lucrative depending on what your e-newsletter needs to offer. For example, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that generates millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among things I love concerning beehiiv is exactly how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter Beehiiv iFrame.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber count go up is certainly 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 need to begin and grow your e-newsletter (up to 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, surveys, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for numerous individuals.
I’m not sure how the device business economics work on this, yet beehiiv is certainly cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are several of the pros and cons 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 platform of option:
Easy to establish and start sending newsletters totally free.
Clean and modern subscriber analytics.
Great deals of versatility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Develop costs alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen another newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet of course, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my web site building platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive information why I love Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to discover more.
Right now, there truly is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not such as making use of iframe’s because they often tend to slow down my site a bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s extremely noticeable when you get on a slow web link. However I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not make use of a routine Webflow kind (which I love using). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier however that would just add added prices that I don’t require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the cons here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately produce a better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is a terrific service for anyone wanting to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far surpasses numerous that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly low-cost of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not compose review posts often. I just do when I really utilize the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a buddy.
I hope you discovered some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.