Over 2 years earlier, I was reading among my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and quickly started destroying Beehiiv Mobile App.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent developer is difficult. I’m often obtaining pitched various tools and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last six months trying out different email and newsletter systems to assist develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful choices for writing newsletters. Yet I could not discover one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me totally tailor my newsletter layouts, makes it very very easy to write and send out e-mails, and gives me tools that aid me analyze metrics and get more clients.
I think I’ve ultimately discovered the best tool.
However, I understand beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to style, compose, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former employees at the popular newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally choose it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter system for quite some time now. I’ve postponed hard when it involved finally launching my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous newsletter creators admire prominent e-newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have terrific content, lots of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get back at extra clients.
So, I went on a hunt to identify exactly how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they create an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device actually understand e-newsletter development and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I understood this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Because, any type of maker recognizes, you need growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the appropriate newsletter pile (that scales) often indicates utilizing several different tools to assist attain one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish references. It can get costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to start 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 maker that wants a platform that permits them to send customized newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most successful newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or content creator, you ought to seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to begin and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you actually end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indication that individuals like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a wonderful platform utilized by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own website and make use of the platform as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also gives you a web site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own site currently, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your web site clients directly to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow people to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to take advantage of different marketing channels to get your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
Exactly how to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software program.
Register for a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, external embed kinds, and a lot more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those seeking a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Mobile App
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise select your brand design and colors to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have outlined info on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start creating,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Assess.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot over), Beginning composing is where you create and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down into sectors), Grow is where you have access to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Style is where you create your newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you want to cover, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin writing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and easy to use user interface for composing.
Once you begin creating, you can optimize headings, add links, and style your web content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for various sorts of material like videos, web links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise regularly launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal more content features relying on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to design your email template and adjust some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, photo styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before single point you can maximize with your e-mail template because it’s a whole lot. Just experiment with the platform totally free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it an excellent publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter creator.
Below are several of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it incredibly simple to create and send out e-mails. I stated above several of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely among the much better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one 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 all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, give you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or via embed types.
If you currently have a web site, and desire individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize 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 types, you have 3 various alternatives– a full size, a dealt with size, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to onward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the team is dealing with updates for these, but I stated a couple of worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your list to forward your e-mails to buddies and associates and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your checklist, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually appear several e-newsletter companies offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you an additional method for expanding your e-mail checklist.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this write-up.
Premium registrations
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership earnings is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” issues of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be really rewarding depending upon what your newsletter has to supply. For example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that produces millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
One of things I like regarding beehiiv is exactly how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count Beehiiv Mobile App.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you need to start and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium 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 priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for lots of individuals.
I’m not sure exactly how the device business economics service this, but beehiiv is definitely cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are several of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters free of cost.
Clean and contemporary customer analytics.
Lots of flexibility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce premium alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be honest, I have not seen another newsletter platform that has 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 point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the cons I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my internet site building system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow testimonial if you want to learn more.
Right now, there actually is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not like making use of iframe’s because they tend to slow down my site a little bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s extremely noticeable when you’re on a sluggish internet connection. However I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t use a routine Webflow type (which I love making use of). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would just include additional expenses that I do not need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the disadvantages below. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately develop a better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent remedy for any person aiming to study the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform far outweighs several that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly cheap for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write review posts commonly. I just do when I in fact use the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a close friend.
I hope you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.