Over two years back, I was reading one of my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and immediately started tearing up Beehiiv Network.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time creator is tough. I’m usually getting pitched various devices and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional since I spent the last six months checking out different email and newsletter platforms to assist construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great choices for composing e-newsletters. However I could not discover one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me fully tailor my newsletter designs, makes it very very easy to compose and send out emails, and offers me devices that assist me analyze metrics and get more customers.
I assume I have actually ultimately found the best device.
However, I know beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to design, compose, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former workers at the famous e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly opt for it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern newsletter system for fairly time now. I have actually put things off hard when it concerned finally launching my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure lots of newsletter designers respect prominent newsletters with millions of subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have great content, lots of clients, and a clever referral program that permits them to get back at much more subscribers.
So, I went on a search to find out just how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they create a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this device truly understand e-newsletter production and growth.” I questioned 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 workers at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator growth.
Due to the fact that, any kind of creator recognizes, you need growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the best newsletter stack (that ranges) frequently means utilizing numerous various devices to assist achieve one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish referrals. It can get pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, 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 desires a system that allows them to send custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or web content developer, you ought to seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely free to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you really wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a good sign that people enjoy reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is an excellent system used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you an internet site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own web site currently, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your site subscribers directly to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow people to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
How to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, outside embed kinds, and a lot more. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those searching for a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Network
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand name design and colors to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start composing,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Examine.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you create and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and break them down into segments), Grow is where you have access to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you want to discuss, I advise just mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and straightforward user interface for composing.
Once you begin composing, you can optimize headings, include web links, and style your material how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for various sorts of web content like videos, links, photos, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is also constantly launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a whole lot extra material features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, image styles, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template because it’s a whole lot. Simply try the system absolutely free and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it a terrific posting system for any e-newsletter designer.
Right here are several of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it super easy to compose and send e-mails. I pointed out over some of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll save you some additional reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive a web site. Think of it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can register for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, give you a web site. However, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a customized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is necessary. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv web site or via embed types.
If you already have a website, and want individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different options– a full width, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for attribution tracking if you want to ahead UTM criteria for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the group is dealing with updates for these, however I pointed out a few concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your list to onward your emails to good friends and colleagues and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your checklist, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever form you want. I have actually seem numerous e-newsletter companies offer rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you one more method for expanding your email checklist.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this short article.
Premium registrations
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership profits is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be very lucrative relying on what your e-newsletter has to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that generates millions in profits a year just by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is just how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Beehiiv Network.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you require to start and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for numerous customers.
I’m unsure how the unit business economics deal with this, but beehiiv is certainly cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
Easy to set up and begin sending e-newsletters free of charge.
Clean and modern client analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create costs options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter system that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
Yet naturally, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m going to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made typefaces.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site building platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive information why I like Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow testimonial if you want to discover more.
Now, there actually is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from using an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as using iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to reduce my website a little bit. Every single time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s really noticeable when you’re on a sluggish web link. However I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not make use of a normal Webflow type (which I love utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would just add extra costs that I do not require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the cons here. I’m also confident that Webflow will eventually create a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a fantastic service for any person seeking to study the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform much surpasses numerous that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly inexpensive for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t create evaluation posts often. I only do when I really use the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a close friend.
I wish you found some quality on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.