Over 2 years ago, I was reading among my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and immediately started tearing up Beehiiv Marketer Milk.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological since I invested the last six months trying various email and newsletter systems to help build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great options for creating e-newsletters. However I couldn’t discover one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with many existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my newsletter designs, makes it super very easy to create and send out e-mails, and gives me tools that help me assess metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I assume I’ve lastly located the ideal tool.
But, I know beehiiv may 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 platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to design, create, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the famous newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly choose it as my newsletter system of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve watched for a modern newsletter system for quite a long time now. I have actually postponed hard when it concerned finally introducing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure lots of newsletter makers admire popular e-newsletters with millions of subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have fantastic content, tons of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get back at a lot more clients.
So, I took place a quest to determine how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that built this device truly understand newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Due to the fact that, any kind of maker understands, you need growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the best e-newsletter stack (that scales) frequently indicates utilizing multiple various devices to assist attain one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up references. It can obtain costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was cost-free to begin using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that desires a system that enables them to send out personalized newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or web content creator, you should seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indication that individuals enjoy reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a wonderful platform used by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a website similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own web site already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your website customers straight to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow individuals to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
Just how to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The initial 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 allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you accessibility to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, external embed forms, and more. It’s a very charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Marketer Milk
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll likewise choose your brand name colors and design to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined information on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning writing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very lower you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Begin writing is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your customers are (and damage 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 newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you make your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you intend to discuss, I advise just mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and user-friendly interface for composing.
As soon as you begin composing, you can optimize headings, include links, and design your content exactly how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for various sorts of web content like video clips, web links, pictures, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is likewise frequently launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a whole lot a lot more material features relying on when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your e-mail template and change some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, picture styles, and more. I’m not going to go through ever single thing you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply experiment with the system totally free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it an excellent publishing system for any newsletter creator.
Below are a few of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely simple to compose and send e-mails. I discussed above a few of things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) live on a web site. Consider it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can register for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, provide you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom-made domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or via embed kinds.
If you currently have a site, and desire individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I make use of on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various choices– a complete width, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim installed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also a choice for attribution tracking if you wish to ahead UTM parameters for tracking functions– rather cool.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the team is servicing updates for these, however I stated a couple of problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your listing to onward your emails to pals and coworkers and if they get other individuals to sign up for your list, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I have actually seem many e-newsletter companies give benefits 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– providing you an additional opportunity for growing your e-mail list.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this post.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription profits is certainly a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be really rewarding depending upon what your newsletter needs to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among things I love about beehiiv is just how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count Beehiiv Marketer Milk.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to begin and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, personalized domain, surveys, and access to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for several users.
I’m unsure how the device business economics work on this, however beehiiv is definitely cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are some of the benefits and drawbacks 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 e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and start sending out e-newsletters free of cost.
Clean and modern-day client analytics.
Lots of flexibility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce costs options to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet naturally, I don’t want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the cons I have actually discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized fonts.
I use Webflow as my web site structure system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in too much information why I like Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow review if you ‘d like to learn more.
Today, there truly is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t like using iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my site a little bit. Each time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s really visible when you’re on a slow-moving web connection. However I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow kind (which I like using). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would just add additional prices that I do not require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I believed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately produce a much better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for any individual looking to study the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform much outweighs numerous that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively cheap wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is uncommon. 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 per month.
Anyways, I don’t write evaluation articles commonly. I only do when I actually make use of the device myself and would advise it to a buddy.
I wish you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.