Over 2 years earlier, I was reading one of my favored e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and promptly started destroying Beehiiv Languages.
I had not been certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m typically obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological because I spent the last 6 months trying out different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic options for composing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me totally tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it very simple to compose and send out e-mails, and offers me devices that assist me examine metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I think I have actually finally located the right device.
But, I recognize beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to design, create, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by previous staff members at the famous e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately choose it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a modern-day newsletter platform for fairly a long time now. I’ve postponed hard when it involved finally releasing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of e-newsletter creators respect prominent e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have wonderful material, tons of customers, and a creative referral program that enables them to get back at more subscribers.
So, I went on a search to find out just how these big e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool actually understand newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the initial marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was going to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker growth.
Because, any kind of designer understands, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And finding the right e-newsletter stack (that ranges) commonly implies using several different tools to help accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up recommendations. It can get expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was cost-free to start making use of, 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 personalized newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or web content creator, you ought to seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you actually wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a great sign that people like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic system made use of by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your own website and make use of the platform as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a web site similar to Substack. However, if you have your own website already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your web site subscribers straight to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable people to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to utilize various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack option.
How to start using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, outside embed types, and more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just beginning (or for those seeking a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Languages
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise select your brand colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described information on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start creating,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot over), Start writing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and damage them down right into segments), Grow is where you have access to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Design is where you create your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you intend to blog about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly user interface for creating.
Once you start composing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and design your web content how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for different types of material like video clips, web links, pictures, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise constantly launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a great deal extra material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your email template and readjust some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, photo layouts, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before solitary point you can optimize with your email template since it’s a lot. Just try out the system totally free and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a great publishing platform for any kind of newsletter maker.
Here are some of the important features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely very easy to create and send out emails. I mentioned above some of things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll save you some added reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly among the better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a website. Think of it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can sign up for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, offer you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is very important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have a web site, and want people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed type. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different choices– a complete size, a repaired width, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution monitoring if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– quite cool.
However, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the group is dealing with updates for these, but I mentioned a few concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your listing to ahead your e-mails to pals and associates and if they get other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually seem numerous newsletter business offer rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you an additional opportunity for growing your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this short article.
Premium memberships
They claim all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership earnings is certainly 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 produce “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be extremely rewarding relying on what your newsletter needs to provide. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that produces millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of the things I like concerning beehiiv is just how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Beehiiv Languages.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you everything you need to get started and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for numerous customers.
I’m uncertain exactly how the unit business economics service this, however beehiiv is absolutely less expensive (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Right here are some of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending newsletters absolutely free.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce premium choices to generate income from.
Polls.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen one more newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
But certainly, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are some of the disadvantages I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my web site building platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow review if you wish to discover more.
Today, there really is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site besides making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t like making use of iframe’s because they often tend to reduce my site a 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 page. It’s very recognizable when you’re on a sluggish internet link. However I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not make use of a regular Webflow form (which I like utilizing). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly simply include additional prices that I don’t need. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the cons below. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually produce a much better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a fantastic solution for anyone wanting to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system far surpasses several that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather low-cost of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not compose review posts often. I just do when I actually use the device myself and would certainly advise it to a close friend.
I wish you discovered some quality on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.