Over two years earlier, 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 very first time. I clicked on it and promptly started destroying Beehiiv Mission.
I wasn’t certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time developer is tough. I’m typically obtaining pitched various tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last six months checking out various email and e-newsletter systems to aid develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great alternatives for creating e-newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The problem with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it extremely easy to write and send e-mails, and offers me devices that assist me analyze metrics and get more customers.
I assume I’ve lastly discovered the right tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact best 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 simple to design, compose, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former workers at the well-known newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid developers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly opt for it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a modern newsletter system for fairly a long time now. I’ve put things off hard when it involved ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure many e-newsletter developers appreciate preferred newsletters with numerous subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have great web content, lots of clients, and a creative referral program that allows them to get back at extra subscribers.
So, I took place a hunt to figure out just how these huge newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to answer all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool truly comprehend e-newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Due to the fact that, any kind of designer knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the ideal newsletter pile (that scales) usually suggests making use of numerous different devices to assist accomplish one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up recommendations. It can obtain expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was cost-free to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that wants a platform that allows them to send out customized newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, startup, or material maker, you must seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to start and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indicator that individuals love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is an excellent system utilized by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your own web site and utilize the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise provides you an internet site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your 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 clients straight to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit individuals to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing channels to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
Exactly how to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, outside embed kinds, and extra. It’s a really generous offering for those just starting (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Mission
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise pick your brand colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described info on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning writing,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you create and publish newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into sectors), 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, Layout is where you create your newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you intend to cover, I recommend just going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start writing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and straightforward interface for creating.
Once you begin composing, you can enhance headings, include web links, and style your material just how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for different kinds of material like videos, links, pictures, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal more material features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, include your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history shades, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, picture styles, and extra. I’m not going to experience ever solitary point you can enhance with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Just experiment with the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a great posting platform for any type of e-newsletter designer.
Below are some of the necessary features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly easy to compose and send e-mails. I pointed out above some of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on an internet site. Consider it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, provide you a website. However, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom-made domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is very important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv site or with embed forms.
If you already have a website, and want individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have 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 blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three various alternatives– a full size, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim installed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to ahead UTM specifications for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the team is working on updates for these, yet I pointed out a couple of worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your checklist to forward your emails to friends and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to register for your listing, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem several e-newsletter business give rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you one more avenue for growing your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this post.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration income is absolutely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely profitable depending upon what your newsletter needs to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that produces millions in profits a year just by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of things I enjoy about beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count Beehiiv Mission.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on just how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client count go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you everything you require to begin and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
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, polls, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 each month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for numerous customers.
I’m not sure how the system business economics work with this, however beehiiv is most definitely more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Below are some of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters totally free.
Clean and modern customer analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce costs alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I have not seen another newsletter system that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
But obviously, I do not want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my website structure platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive detail why I love Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to discover more.
Right 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 personally don’t like using iframe’s since they tend to reduce my web site a bit. Each time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s extremely obvious when you get on a sluggish web link. But I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a regular Webflow kind (which I enjoy making use of). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just add extra expenses that I do not require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I assumed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the disadvantages right here. I’m also confident that Webflow will at some point create a better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is a wonderful solution for anyone wanting to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform much surpasses lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively economical for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose evaluation posts frequently. I only do when I actually make use of the tool myself and would advise it to a pal.
I wish you located some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.