Over two years back, I was reading one of my preferred 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 it and immediately started tearing up Beehiiv Local Newsletter Accelerator.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time maker is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched various tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months experimenting with different email and newsletter systems to aid develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great choices for creating e-newsletters. Yet I could not find one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with several existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter designs, makes it super simple to create and send out emails, and offers me devices that help me examine metrics and get even more clients.
I believe I’ve ultimately discovered the right tool.
However, I know beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to style, write, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the well-known e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally opt for it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day newsletter system for rather time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it came to ultimately introducing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure lots of e-newsletter designers respect prominent newsletters with numerous clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have terrific material, lots of customers, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get even extra customers.
So, I took place a quest to find out just how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they create an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool actually comprehend newsletter development and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I understood this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Because, any kind of developer recognizes, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the best e-newsletter stack (that scales) typically suggests making use of numerous different tools to help attain one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can get pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that wants a system that permits them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most effective newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, startup, or material maker, you must seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s totally free to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you really wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent indication that individuals love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic system utilized by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your own site and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a web site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your website subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable individuals to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to utilize various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, outside embed types, and a lot more. It’s a really generous offering for those just beginning (or for those looking for a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Local Newsletter Accelerator
After developing an account, you’ll go through 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 paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise select your brand design and colors to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have outlined information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin creating,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Analyze.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your major control center (screenshot over), Beginning composing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your clients are (and damage them down into sections), 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 e-newsletter with ads, Layout is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze 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 friction. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you wish to blog about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Begin composing”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and easy to use interface for composing.
As soon as you begin writing, you can optimize headings, add links, and style your web content just how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for various sorts of web content like video clips, links, images, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is also regularly releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot a lot more content features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and change some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, photo formats, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever single thing you can maximize with your email template because it’s a lot. Just try out the platform for free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it an excellent publishing system for any newsletter developer.
Here are some of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely easy to compose and send e-mails. I discussed above some of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll save you some extra reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly among the much better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) reside on a website. Think about it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, provide you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a personalized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is essential. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and desire individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed type. This is what I use on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different choices– a complete size, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim installed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to forward UTM specifications for tracking purposes– pretty cool.
However, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working with updates for these, but I discussed a few worries I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your checklist to forward your e-mails to friends and associates and if they get other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve seem lots of newsletter business give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you another avenue for expanding your e-mail listing.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription revenue is certainly a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be really rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter needs to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among the important things I like regarding beehiiv is just how tidy and easy the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter Beehiiv Local Newsletter Accelerator.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you everything you need to begin and expand your newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain, surveys, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for many customers.
I’m not sure just how the system economics work on this, however beehiiv is certainly cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are several of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to establish and begin sending newsletters completely free.
Clean and modern-day customer analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce premium choices to generate income from.
Polls.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen one more newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
However of course, I do not wish to be biased so I’m going to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the cons I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made font styles.
I use Webflow as my website structure system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive detail why I love Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow evaluation if you want to learn more.
Right now, there truly is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as using iframe’s since they tend to slow down my internet site a bit. Every time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s very noticeable when you’re on a sluggish internet connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow form (which I enjoy making use of). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would just add extra prices that I do not need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I thought I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the disadvantages below. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will at some point develop a better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is an excellent option for any person wanting to dive into the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform far outweighs numerous that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather inexpensive wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write review blog posts often. I only do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would suggest it to a good friend.
I hope you located some quality on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.