Over two years back, I read one of my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and promptly began wrecking Beehiiv Mailchimp.
I had not been certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent maker is tough. I’m often getting pitched different tools and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological because I invested the last six months experimenting with different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to aid build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful alternatives for creating e-newsletters. However I could not discover one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The concern with several existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it extremely simple to compose and send out emails, and gives me devices that help me assess metrics and get even more customers.
I assume I have actually ultimately located the right tool.
But, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it very easy to design, create, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous staff members at the famous e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately choose it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve watched for a modern-day newsletter platform for fairly some time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it concerned lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain several newsletter developers respect preferred e-newsletters with millions of customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have terrific material, lots of subscribers, and a creative referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more customers.
So, I took place a quest to determine exactly how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool actually understand e-newsletter creation and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was going to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Since, any maker recognizes, you need development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And finding the best newsletter stack (that ranges) typically means utilizing numerous various devices to help achieve one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was free to begin making use of, 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 platform that permits them to send personalized newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or web content maker, you need to seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely free to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you in fact end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great indicator that individuals love reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a terrific system used by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also gives you an internet site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own web site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site customers right to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit people to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack alternative.
Exactly how to begin using beehiiv email marketing software.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, external embed types, and more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply starting (or for those looking for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Mailchimp
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise select your brand colors and design to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have outlined information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start composing,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you develop and publish newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and break them down right into segments), Grow is where you have accessibility 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 advertisements, Style is where you make 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 simple to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you intend to discuss, I suggest just mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and easy to use interface for writing.
As soon as you start writing, you can maximize headings, add web links, and design your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of alternatives for various types of material like video clips, links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is also continuously releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a lot a lot more content features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to create your email template and change some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background shades, borders, spacing, fonts, image formats, and extra. I’m not going to undergo ever before single thing you can maximize with your email template since it’s a lot. Simply try the platform free of charge and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any kind of newsletter creator.
Right here are several of the necessary features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it extremely very easy to compose and send emails. I mentioned above a few of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the much better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) live on a website. Think about it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, offer you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom-made domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or through embed types.
If you already have a website, and desire people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three different alternatives– a complete size, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s also an alternative for attribution tracking if you want to onward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– rather cool.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working on updates for these, however I mentioned a couple of concerns I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your listing to onward your e-mails to buddies and associates and if they get other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually seem lots of e-newsletter firms give incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you another opportunity for expanding your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs registrations
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration earnings is certainly a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be extremely lucrative relying on what your newsletter has to offer. For example, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that creates millions in income a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among the things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is just how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter Beehiiv Mailchimp.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you whatever you need to begin and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for many users.
I’m not exactly sure just how the device business economics deal with this, however beehiiv is definitely less expensive (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters for free.
Clean and modern-day subscriber analytics.
Great deals of versatility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce costs alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen another newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet of course, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I’ve found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized typefaces.
I use Webflow as my site building platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter too much detail why I like Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow testimonial if you wish to learn more.
Now, there really is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not such as utilizing iframe’s since they tend to decrease my web site a bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s really visible when you get on a slow internet connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a regular Webflow type (which I love using). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply include extra costs that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I believed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the cons below. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will eventually create a better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a great option for anybody wanting to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system much exceeds lots of that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively low-cost for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not compose testimonial posts usually. I only do when I really utilize the device myself and would certainly advise it to a buddy.
I hope you discovered some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.