Over two years earlier, I was reading among my favored email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and quickly began tearing up Beehiiv Inactive.
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full time creator is difficult. I’m frequently obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last six months checking out different e-mail and newsletter systems to assist construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great options for writing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t locate one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The issue with several existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me totally tailor my newsletter styles, makes it very very easy to compose and send out emails, and offers me devices that aid me analyze metrics and obtain more clients.
I believe I’ve ultimately located the ideal tool.
But, I know 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 system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it easy to layout, compose, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the popular newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help designers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles 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 love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly go with it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a modern newsletter system for fairly time now. I have actually postponed hard when it involved ultimately launching my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of e-newsletter designers admire prominent newsletters with numerous clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have fantastic content, tons of subscribers, and a creative referral program that enables them to get back at extra subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to determine exactly how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool truly understand newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and growth workers 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 maker growth.
Since, any maker understands, you need growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the ideal newsletter stack (that scales) often means using multiple different tools to help attain one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to set up recommendations. It can get expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was cost-free to begin utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content maker that desires a system that enables them to send custom newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or content creator, you should seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to start and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you in fact wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indication that people like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great system utilized by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your own internet site and use the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your site customers directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to take advantage of different marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack choice.
Exactly how to begin making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, outside embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting (or for those looking for a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Inactive
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand design and colors to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
Once you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start composing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot over), Begin writing is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your customers are (and break them down into segments), Grow is where you have access 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you make your newsletter landing page and message template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you want to write about, I suggest just going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin composing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and user-friendly user interface for creating.
As soon as you start composing, you can maximize headings, include links, and style your content just how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of options for different kinds of web content like video clips, links, images, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise regularly launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a great deal more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo, activate or off a welcome email to very first time clients, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, photo styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before single thing you can maximize with your e-mail template since it’s a great deal. Just try out the platform for free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a wonderful publishing system for any kind of e-newsletter creator.
Here are several of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send out emails. I pointed out above some of the things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely among the much better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on a website. Consider it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, offer you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom-made domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is necessary. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or through embed forms.
If you already have a website, and desire individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed kind. This is what I use on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various options– a complete size, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution monitoring if you intend to forward UTM specifications for tracking functions– quite cool.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the team is working on updates for these, yet I pointed out a couple of concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your listing to forward your e-mails to pals and associates and if they get other individuals to register for your listing, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve appear numerous newsletter firms give rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you one more avenue for growing your email listing.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra superior plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this article.
Costs memberships
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription earnings is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying clients. This can be extremely financially rewarding depending upon what your newsletter needs to use. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among things I love concerning beehiiv is how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count Beehiiv Inactive.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you require to begin and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers 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.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for several individuals.
I’m not sure just how the unit economics deal with this, but beehiiv is certainly cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are some of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and start sending newsletters completely free.
Clean and modern-day subscriber analytics.
Lots of versatility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop premium options to generate income from.
Polls.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter system that has actually been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet of course, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the cons I have actually discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my web site building platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much information why I like Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to learn more.
Right now, there truly is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not like using iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my internet site a little bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s very visible when you’re on a sluggish web link. However I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not use a normal Webflow kind (which I like utilizing). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier but that would certainly simply include added expenses that I do not need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I thought I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the cons here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will at some point create a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is a terrific service for anybody wanting to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far exceeds many that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly low-cost for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not write review articles typically. I only do when I actually make use of the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a close friend.
I wish you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.