Over two years earlier, I was reading one of my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and quickly began wrecking Beehiiv Lifetime Offer.
I had not been sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a permanent creator is tough. I’m typically getting pitched different tools and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological because I invested the last 6 months experimenting with various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to assist build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent alternatives for creating e-newsletters. Yet I could not find one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter designs, makes it super easy to write and send emails, and offers me tools that assist me assess metrics and get more customers.
I think I’ve lastly located the right tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to layout, compose, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former employees at the famous e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m going to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately choose it as my e-newsletter system of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter system for fairly time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it involved ultimately introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure many e-newsletter makers respect preferred e-newsletters with countless clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have excellent web content, lots of customers, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get back at a lot more customers.
So, I took place a hunt to identify how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they produce a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool truly understand newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the very first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Due to the fact that, any kind of creator recognizes, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the ideal newsletter stack (that ranges) frequently means making use of numerous various tools to aid accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to establish references. It can get costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content maker that wants a platform that enables them to send customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or web content designer, you need to seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s totally free to get going and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you actually end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indicator that individuals like reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a great platform used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your own internet site and make use of the system as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv also offers you an internet site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own internet site currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your website clients directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow people to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to leverage various marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
Just how to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The first 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 allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you accessibility to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, external embed types, and a lot more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those looking for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Lifetime Offer
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that create a name and URL 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 “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally pick your brand design and colors to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have outlined information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin writing,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Examine.” And at the really lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your customers are (and break them down into sectors), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you want to cover, I suggest just mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Begin creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and easy to use interface for creating.
When you start writing, you can enhance headings, include web links, and style your content exactly how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for different kinds of material like videos, web links, photos, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is additionally regularly releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a whole lot a lot more material features relying on when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to design your email template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time clients, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history shades, borders, spacing, font styles, image styles, and extra. I’m not going to experience ever before solitary thing you can enhance with your email template since it’s a great deal. Just check out the system absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any newsletter creator.
Below are a few of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely easy to compose and send out e-mails. I pointed out above some of the things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on an internet site. Consider it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, give you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom-made domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or through embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and want individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I make use of on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different options– a complete size, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to onward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make sure the team is working on updates for these, yet I stated a few concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks section 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 producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your listing to forward your e-mails to close friends and associates and if they get other people to sign up for your listing, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually seem several e-newsletter business give rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you an additional opportunity for growing your email listing.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this short article.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration revenue 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 “costs” issues of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be really profitable depending on what your newsletter has to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
One of the things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is just how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count Beehiiv Lifetime Offer.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you require to get started and grow your newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and access to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit alternative for many customers.
I’m unsure exactly how the system economics work with this, but beehiiv is absolutely less expensive (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Naturally, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters totally free.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce costs alternatives to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter platform that has had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet certainly, I do not wish to be biased so I’m going to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my site building platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much information why I love Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow testimonial if you would love to learn more.
Right now, there really is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t like utilizing iframe’s because they tend to slow down my website a little bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s very visible when you’re on a sluggish internet connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow type (which I enjoy making use of). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply include extra expenses that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the cons right here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point create a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a wonderful option for any person wanting to study the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform much surpasses many that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly cheap wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create evaluation posts often. I just do when I actually use the tool myself and would recommend it to a friend.
I wish you located some clarity on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.