Over two years ago, I read one of my favored e-mail e-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 promptly began wrecking Beehiiv Lifetime Subscriptions.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m often obtaining pitched different devices and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological because I spent the last 6 months checking out different email and e-newsletter platforms to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful choices for writing newsletters. But I could not discover one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me fully tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it very easy to compose and send out e-mails, and offers me devices that aid me assess metrics and get more customers.
I assume I have actually ultimately discovered the right tool.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right 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 style, compose, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous staff members at the popular e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m going to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly choose it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern newsletter platform for quite time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it came to finally releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure many e-newsletter developers look up to preferred newsletters with numerous customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have great web content, lots of subscribers, and a creative referral program that enables them to get even much more customers.
So, I went on a quest to figure out 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 get even more customers? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool actually comprehend e-newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the very first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator development.
Because, any kind of maker knows, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the right e-newsletter stack (that scales) commonly implies using numerous different devices to help achieve one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can get pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was complimentary to begin utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content creator that desires a system that permits them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
The most effective newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or content creator, you must seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you really end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indication that individuals love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a great system made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own website and use the platform 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 devotion to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv also gives you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own site currently, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your internet site clients directly to your beehiiv email listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit people to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to leverage various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack option.
Exactly how to begin making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, exterior embed forms, and much more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply starting (or for those seeking a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Lifetime Subscriptions
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also select your brand design and colors to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have described information on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning creating,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the really lower you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Start creating is where you develop and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers 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 ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Design is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you intend to blog about, I advise just mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– focus on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and straightforward user interface for creating.
As soon as you begin writing, you can optimize headings, include web links, and style your web content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for different sorts of content like videos, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise constantly releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a lot more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify background colors, borders, spacing, fonts, photo layouts, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever solitary thing you can maximize with your email template because it’s a whole lot. Simply experiment with the platform completely free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it an excellent posting system for any kind of e-newsletter creator.
Right here are several of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely very easy to write and send out emails. I stated over a few of things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll save you some extra reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely among the better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a website. Think of it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can sign up for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, provide you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a personalized domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is very important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or with embed kinds.
If you already have a website, and desire people to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I make use of 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 forms, you have 3 various choices– a full size, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also a choice for attribution monitoring if you intend to forward UTM parameters for tracking functions– quite cool.
However, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the team is working with updates for these, however I mentioned a few issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your list to onward your emails to pals and coworkers and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your listing, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever form you want. I’ve appear numerous e-newsletter companies provide incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you another opportunity for expanding your e-mail list.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this write-up.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Subscription income is definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” issues of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying subscribers. This can be extremely lucrative depending on what your e-newsletter needs to offer. For example, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among the things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter Beehiiv Lifetime Subscriptions.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer count go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you everything you need to start and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit option for many individuals.
I’m not exactly sure how the system business economics service this, but beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are a few of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and contemporary customer analytics.
Lots of adaptability with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create costs choices to monetize.
Polls.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen another e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However certainly, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m going to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my website building system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much detail why I like Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow evaluation if you wish to discover more.
Right now, there really is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not like using iframe’s since they often tend to slow down my website a bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s extremely recognizable when you’re on a slow net link. However I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow kind (which I love utilizing). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier however that would certainly simply include additional costs that I don’t need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the cons below. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a far better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a fantastic option for any person aiming to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system much surpasses many that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively economical 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 can cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation articles typically. I just do when I actually utilize the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a close friend.
I hope you discovered some clarity on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.