Over 2 years back, I was reading one of my favored email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and instantaneously began wrecking Beehiiv News.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m frequently obtaining pitched various tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last six months checking out various email and newsletter systems to help build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful choices for composing e-newsletters. However I could not find one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me totally customize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it very simple to compose and send out emails, and offers me devices that help me assess metrics and obtain even more clients.
I assume I have actually lastly located the appropriate device.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to style, create, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former workers at the well-known newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly choose it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a modern newsletter system for rather time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it involved lastly releasing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of newsletter makers appreciate preferred e-newsletters with countless clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have fantastic web content, tons of subscribers, and a creative referral program that allows them to get even a lot more customers.
So, I went on a hunt to find out exactly how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they create an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this tool really recognize e-newsletter creation 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 very first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was going to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Due to the fact that, any developer knows, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the appropriate e-newsletter pile (that ranges) typically suggests using multiple various tools to help attain one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to set up references. It can obtain pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was cost-free to begin utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content creator that wants a platform that enables them to send custom-made e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or web content maker, you ought to seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a good sign that people love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a terrific platform used by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your very own web site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally offers you an internet site similar to Substack. But, if you have your own internet site currently, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your internet site customers right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack alternative.
How to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you accessibility to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, exterior embed types, and a lot more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those looking for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv News
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your main control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed info on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start creating,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Examine.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot over), Beginning writing is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your clients are (and damage them down into sectors), Expand 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 newsletter with ads, Design is where you develop 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 things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you wish to write about, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and straightforward interface for creating.
Once you begin creating, you can maximize headings, include web links, and style your web content just how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of alternatives for different types of material like videos, links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is additionally constantly releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot extra material features depending upon when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and change some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify background colors, borders, spacing, fonts, image layouts, and much more. I’m not going to go through ever before single thing you can enhance with your email template because it’s a whole lot. Just check out the platform absolutely free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a wonderful posting system for any type of newsletter designer.
Below are some of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very very easy to write and send e-mails. I pointed out above a few of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) live on a website. Think of it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, give you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom-made domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or through embed kinds.
If you already have an internet site, and desire people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed type. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different alternatives– a full width, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to forward UTM specifications for tracking purposes– pretty cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the team is dealing with updates for these, but I discussed a couple of problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed 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 encourage existing customers on your list to onward your emails to close friends and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to register for your listing, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve appear lots of newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you an additional method for growing your email checklist.
However, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to an extra premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this article.
Costs memberships
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration earnings is definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” issues of your newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be really profitable depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the important things I love regarding beehiiv is exactly how tidy and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count Beehiiv News.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you every little thing you require to get going and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the very same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for lots of users.
I’m unsure just how the unit business economics work with this, but beehiiv is definitely cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Right here are several of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters for free.
Clean and modern client analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce costs options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen an additional newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features together so well.
But of course, I don’t want 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 using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized font styles.
I use Webflow as my internet site building system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow evaluation if you want to find out more.
Right now, there truly is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t like utilizing iframe’s because they often tend to slow down my web site a little bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s extremely visible when you’re on a slow-moving web connection. However I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not utilize a normal Webflow form (which I love utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would just add additional expenses that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I thought I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the disadvantages below. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will at some point produce a far better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
In general, beehiiv is a great option for any individual looking to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform far outweighs many that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively cheap wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t create review posts usually. I only do when I actually make use of the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a buddy.
I hope you found some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.