Over 2 years back, I read one of 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 it and quickly started destroying Beehiiv Monetization.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time maker 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 6 months trying different email and newsletter systems to aid construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great options for writing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t locate one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me totally tailor my e-newsletter layouts, makes it extremely very easy to create and send emails, and provides me devices that aid me evaluate metrics and get even more clients.
I believe I’ve lastly found the ideal tool.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to style, create, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous workers at the famous e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately select it as my newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve watched for a contemporary newsletter platform for rather a long time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it involved finally launching my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make certain several newsletter creators appreciate prominent e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have wonderful material, lots of subscribers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at extra subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to find out exactly how these large newsletters established their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they create an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device really comprehend newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the very first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I knew this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Since, any type of creator knows, you require development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the ideal e-newsletter pile (that scales) frequently suggests using multiple various tools to assist attain one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to set up referrals. It can get costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was complimentary to begin utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content developer that desires a platform that enables them to send out custom newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or web content maker, you must seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to get started and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you really wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indication that people enjoy reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a wonderful platform made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and use the platform as your all-in-one service for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a website similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own website currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site customers straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit individuals to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
Just how to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software application.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you access to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, outside embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a very charitable offering for those just starting (or for those looking for a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Monetization
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll likewise choose your brand design and colors to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin creating,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into sections), Expand is where you have accessibility 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 design your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you intend to cover, I advise just going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly interface for composing.
As soon as you start writing, you can maximize headings, add web links, and design your material exactly how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for various types of material like video clips, web links, pictures, and more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally frequently releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a great deal a lot more content features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your email template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time clients, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, picture formats, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever single thing you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a great deal. Simply try out the system free of charge and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it a terrific posting platform for any newsletter designer.
Here are several of the important features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send out emails. I discussed over several of the important things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely one of the much better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) live on a web site. Consider it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can sign up for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a customized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is essential. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or with embed forms.
If you currently have a web site, and want individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed kind. This is what I use on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different options– a complete size, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for attribution monitoring if you want to ahead UTM specifications for tracking purposes– pretty cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working on updates for these, however I discussed a few concerns 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 newsletter system, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your checklist to forward your emails to good friends and associates and if they get other people to sign up for your listing, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually seem several newsletter firms give rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you an additional method for growing your e-mail listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this post.
Premium registrations
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription income is definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” problems of your newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be very profitable relying on what your newsletter needs to use. For example, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that creates millions in profits a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the important things I enjoy about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter Beehiiv Monetization.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client count go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you need to get started and expand your 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, customized domain name, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for several individuals.
I’m not sure just how the device economics work with this, however beehiiv is most definitely less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Naturally, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Below are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly 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 option:
Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics.
Lots of versatility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop costs alternatives to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen one more newsletter platform that has had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet certainly, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the cons I have actually located while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my web site structure platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much detail why I enjoy Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to learn more.
Right now, there really is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not such as utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my internet site a little bit. Every single time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s very noticeable when you’re on a slow-moving web link. Yet I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not use a routine Webflow kind (which I like using). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would simply add added expenses that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I thought I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the cons below. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately produce a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a terrific remedy for anyone seeking to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform much outweighs numerous that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively cheap for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t write evaluation blog posts often. I just do when I really utilize the device myself and would certainly advise it to a close friend.
I hope you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.