Over two years ago, 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 first time. I clicked it and instantly started wrecking Beehiiv Newsletter Ads.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time maker is tough. I’m typically obtaining pitched various devices and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I spent the last 6 months trying various email and newsletter systems to help build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful alternatives for writing e-newsletters. However I could not find one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter styles, makes it incredibly simple to create and send emails, and offers me devices that aid me analyze metrics and get more subscribers.
I believe I’ve finally found the best tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to design, write, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous staff members at the well-known e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly select it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter system for fairly some time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it pertained to lastly launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain many e-newsletter creators look up to preferred newsletters with millions of subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have fantastic content, lots of subscribers, and a clever referral program that permits them to get back at a lot more subscribers.
So, I took place a search to figure out exactly how these huge 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 customers? How do they create a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to answer all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this device actually understand e-newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the initial marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Since, any kind of designer recognizes, you need development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the ideal newsletter stack (that scales) commonly indicates utilizing numerous various tools to help accomplish one goal– one system for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was complimentary to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that desires a system that enables them to send customized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or web content designer, you should seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indicator that people love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a terrific platform made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What sets 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, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you an internet site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own website already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site customers straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable individuals to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to leverage different marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack choice.
How to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software program.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and much more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Newsletter Ads
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll then produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also pick your brand name design and colors to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin composing,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and break them down right into sections), 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 create your newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you want to cover, I advise just mosting likely to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start writing”.
You can modify your template and designing later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and easy to use interface for creating.
As soon as you begin creating, you can optimize headings, add web links, and style your web content just how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of options for different sorts of content like video clips, web links, pictures, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise frequently launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot a lot more material features depending 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 e-mail template and change some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo formats, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Just try the platform free of charge and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a wonderful publishing platform for any newsletter designer.
Right here are some of the important features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send out emails. I discussed above several of things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the far better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) reside on a website. Think about it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, provide you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a customized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is essential. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or through embed forms.
If you already have an internet site, and want people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed form. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various choices– a complete width, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s also an option for attribution tracking if you wish to forward UTM specifications for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the group is working with updates for these, yet I pointed out a few issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your listing to ahead your emails to close friends and coworkers and if they get other individuals to register for your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually appear many e-newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you another method for expanding your email listing.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this post.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership revenue is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be very lucrative depending on what your newsletter needs to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that creates millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
One of the important things I enjoy about beehiiv is just how tidy and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter Beehiiv Newsletter Ads.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber count go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you everything you require to begin and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and accessibility to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for lots of users.
I’m not exactly sure just how the system business economics deal with this, however beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are some of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending e-newsletters completely free.
Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics.
Lots of adaptability with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce premium alternatives to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen another e-newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
However obviously, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m mosting likely to discuss some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the cons I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my website building system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive information why I enjoy Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow review if you want to learn more.
Today, there actually is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not such as using iframe’s since they often tend to slow down my web site a bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s extremely noticeable when you get on a slow web connection. But I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a regular Webflow type (which I like utilizing). There are methods around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would certainly just include added prices that I don’t require. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will at some point create a much better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a wonderful remedy for any person looking to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform much 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 likewise fairly inexpensive for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not create testimonial posts typically. I just do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would advise it to a pal.
I hope you located some clarity on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.