Over two years back, I read one of my favored e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and immediately started destroying Beehiiv Knowledge Base.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m frequently obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I invested the last 6 months experimenting with different email and e-newsletter systems to assist construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic options for composing e-newsletters. But I could not find one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter layouts, makes it extremely very easy to create and send e-mails, and gives me devices that aid me examine metrics and obtain even more clients.
I assume I have actually lastly discovered the ideal device.
Yet, I understand beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to design, create, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former employees at the popular newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist makers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m going to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately opt for it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter system for fairly a long time now. I have actually put things off hard when it concerned lastly releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure many newsletter developers admire popular newsletters with countless subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have wonderful material, tons of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to find out exactly how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool truly recognize newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the very first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I knew this was going to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Because, any designer understands, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the best newsletter stack (that scales) often suggests utilizing multiple different tools to assist attain one goal– one system for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to establish references. It can get expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was free to start making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material maker that wants a system that enables them to send custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most successful newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or content designer, you need to seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you in fact end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great sign that people enjoy reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic platform utilized by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own site and make use of the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally gives you an internet site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own website currently, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your website clients straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit individuals to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack option.
Exactly how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, outside embed types, and more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those trying to find a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Knowledge Base
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise choose your brand name design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning writing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Begin writing is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your clients are (and damage them down into sectors), Expand is where you have access 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 newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you make your newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you want to write about, I advise just mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start writing”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and straightforward user interface for composing.
Once you begin creating, you can optimize headings, add links, and style your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for different sorts of content like videos, links, photos, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally constantly releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a lot much more material features relying on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background colors, borders, spacing, font styles, image styles, and more. I’m not going to experience ever before single thing you can optimize with your e-mail template because it’s a lot. Just try out the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a wonderful posting system for any kind of newsletter creator.
Here are a few of the necessary features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it super simple to compose and send emails. I stated over a few of things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely among the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) survive on a website. Think of it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a customized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is essential. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv web site or via embed forms.
If you currently have a site, and desire individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various choices– a complete width, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to forward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– quite neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the group is dealing with updates for these, yet I discussed a few worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a service for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your checklist to forward your e-mails to friends and associates and if they obtain other people to register for your checklist, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem numerous e-newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you one more avenue for expanding your email checklist.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this post.
Costs subscriptions
They claim all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership income is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be really lucrative depending on what your e-newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that generates millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among things I love regarding beehiiv is exactly how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count Beehiiv Knowledge Base.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer count rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you everything you need to begin and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit choice for lots of users.
I’m unsure exactly how the unit economics work on this, yet beehiiv is absolutely less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are some of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters completely free.
Tidy and modern subscriber analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create costs choices to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet naturally, I don’t want to be biased so I’m going to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I have actually located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my internet site building system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive detail why I enjoy Webflow so much but you can read my Webflow review if you wish to discover more.
Now, there truly is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as making use of iframe’s because they tend to decrease my site a little bit. Each time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s really noticeable when you’re on a sluggish net connection. But I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow form (which I enjoy making use of). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just add added prices that I do not require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the cons here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually create a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a terrific service for any person seeking to dive into the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system far exceeds several that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly low-cost of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation articles commonly. I just do when I in fact utilize the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a buddy.
I wish you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.