Over two years ago, I read among my favored email 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 immediately started wrecking Beehiiv Merch.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full-time creator is tough. I’m frequently getting pitched different devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological because I spent the last six months experimenting with different email and e-newsletter systems to aid develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific alternatives for composing newsletters. However I could not find one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The problem with many existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me completely customize my e-newsletter designs, makes it extremely very easy to write and send emails, and offers me devices that help me assess metrics and obtain more customers.
I think I have actually finally discovered the right device.
However, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everybody. 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 newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to layout, write, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous staff members at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately go with it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter platform for quite time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it pertained to ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of newsletter developers look up to popular newsletters with numerous clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have fantastic material, tons of subscribers, and a clever referral program that permits them to get even extra customers.
So, I took place a search to figure out just how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool really comprehend e-newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Because, any kind of creator understands, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the best newsletter stack (that ranges) frequently means making use of multiple different tools to help achieve one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to set up references. It can obtain costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was cost-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 material maker that wants a system that permits them to send customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or content developer, you should seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s entirely free to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you in fact wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indicator that individuals like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic platform made use of by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your own website and make use of the system as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to obtain the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a site similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your web site subscribers straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow people to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to leverage different marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
Just how to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you accessibility to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, outside embed forms, and a lot more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those looking for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Merch
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally pick your brand design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed info on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start composing,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the settings alternative.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Begin writing is where you produce and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can watch who your customers are (and break them down into sectors), Expand is where you have access 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, Design is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you want to cover, I recommend simply going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Begin creating”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and user-friendly user interface for creating.
When you begin creating, you can optimize headings, include links, and style your content how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for various kinds of web content like video clips, links, pictures, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is also continuously releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a lot much more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background shades, borders, spacing, font styles, picture formats, and much more. I’m not going to undergo ever before single point you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply experiment with the platform completely free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any kind of e-newsletter creator.
Here are some of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it incredibly easy to compose and send out e-mails. I mentioned above several of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on an internet site. Consider it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can sign up for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, offer you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or through embed types.
If you already have an internet site, and desire people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed kind. This is what I use 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 forms, you have three various options– a complete size, a fixed width, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to ahead UTM criteria for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the team is working with updates for these, yet I pointed out a couple of issues I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your listing to onward your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they get other individuals to sign up for your list, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve seem several e-newsletter companies offer incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you one more opportunity for growing your email checklist.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this post.
Costs subscriptions
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership profits is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying clients. This can be very lucrative relying on what your e-newsletter needs to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among things I like concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter Beehiiv Merch.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to start and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and access to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 each month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for several individuals.
I’m uncertain how the unit business economics work with this, however beehiiv is absolutely less expensive (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and start sending newsletters for free.
Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Lots of versatility with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop costs alternatives to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I have not seen one more newsletter system that has actually been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet obviously, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the disadvantages I’ve found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized typefaces.
I use Webflow as my internet site structure system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in too much detail why I love Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to learn more.
Now, there really is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as making use of iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my website a little bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s very visible when you’re on a slow-moving internet connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow type (which I enjoy making use of). There are methods around this by using a device like Zapier however that would certainly just include extra expenses that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the cons right here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will ultimately develop a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent option for any individual looking to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system far surpasses several that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly affordable for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing 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 each month.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation posts usually. I just do when I really use the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a buddy.
I wish you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.