Over 2 years back, I was reading among my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and quickly began wrecking Beehiiv Integrate with Carrd.
I had not been certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full time maker is difficult. I’m frequently obtaining pitched different devices and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional because I invested the last six months trying out various e-mail and newsletter systems to assist build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific alternatives for composing e-newsletters. Yet I could not find one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The issue with several existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it extremely easy to compose and send out emails, and offers me tools that assist me examine metrics and get more clients.
I think I’ve ultimately located the appropriate tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it very easy to layout, write, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous workers at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally choose it as my newsletter system of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern newsletter system for rather a long time now. I have actually postponed hard when it pertained to ultimately introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure many newsletter developers appreciate popular newsletters with countless clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have fantastic content, lots of subscribers, and a creative referral program that permits them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I went on a search to identify just how these big 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 more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool actually comprehend newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the very first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I recognized this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Since, any maker recognizes, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the best newsletter pile (that ranges) frequently indicates utilizing numerous different tools to help attain one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can get pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, 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 material designer that wants a platform that allows them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or content creator, you need to seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to begin and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you actually end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indicator that people enjoy reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic platform made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your own website and make use of the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv also provides you a site similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own web site currently, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your site clients straight to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to leverage different marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
How to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, exterior embed types, and extra. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply beginning (or for those seeking a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Integrate with Carrd
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand name colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed information on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin composing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot above), Begin writing is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market 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 development tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with ads, Layout is where you design your newsletter landing page and post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you want to blog about, I recommend simply going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and easy to use user interface for writing.
When you begin composing, you can enhance headings, include web links, and design your material exactly how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of options for different types of web content like video clips, web links, photos, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally frequently launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a great deal a lot more material features relying on when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to create your e-mail template and change some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to first time customers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, fonts, image styles, and much more. I’m not going to go through ever solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a great deal. Just check out the system free of charge and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of impressive features that make it a wonderful publishing system for any kind of e-newsletter creator.
Below are some of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very simple to write and send emails. I mentioned over several of things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the much better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) live on an internet site. Think about it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a place where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, provide you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan places 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
Getting clients is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and want people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed kind. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 various choices– a complete width, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the group is dealing with updates for these, yet I pointed out a couple of concerns I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your listing to forward your e-mails to buddies and coworkers and if they get other people to register for your listing, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve seem many newsletter companies give rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you another method for growing your e-mail listing.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this short article.
Costs memberships
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership revenue is definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be really financially rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to use. For example, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that creates millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter Beehiiv Integrate with Carrd.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer matter increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you whatever you need to get going and grow your e-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, custom-made domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for numerous users.
I’m uncertain just how the unit economics work on this, but beehiiv is certainly less costly (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are several of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters totally free.
Tidy and contemporary customer analytics.
Lots of adaptability with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce premium choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I have not seen one more e-newsletter system that has had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
However naturally, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the disadvantages I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my web site building system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive detail why I enjoy Webflow so much but you can read my Webflow review if you want to learn more.
Today, there actually is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as using iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to reduce my internet site a little bit. Each time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s extremely visible when you’re on a slow web link. Yet I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow form (which I love using). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would simply include additional expenses that I do not require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I thought I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the cons below. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point create a better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is an excellent option for anybody looking to study the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter platform much exceeds lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly economical for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not write testimonial articles usually. I just do when I really utilize the device myself and would certainly advise it to a good friend.
I hope you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.