Over two years earlier, I read among my favored email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and immediately started destroying Beehiiv Nicholas Agardy.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time creator is difficult. I’m frequently getting pitched various devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months trying out various email and newsletter systems to help develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great choices for writing e-newsletters. Yet I could not discover one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely customize my newsletter styles, makes it incredibly simple to create and send e-mails, and gives me tools that aid me evaluate metrics and get more subscribers.
I think I’ve lastly located the right tool.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everyone. 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 platform that makes it simple to design, write, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former workers at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, 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 determined to ultimately select it as my newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a contemporary newsletter system for fairly some time now. I have actually put things off hard when it came to ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure many newsletter creators admire prominent newsletters with millions of clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have excellent material, lots of subscribers, and a smart referral program that allows them to get even extra customers.
So, I went on a search to determine how these large newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more customers? How do they create an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to answer every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool actually recognize e-newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the very first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker growth.
Because, any kind of maker knows, you need growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the ideal e-newsletter pile (that ranges) often suggests utilizing numerous various tools to help achieve one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary 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 content maker that wants a platform that permits them to send out customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or web content creator, you should seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s entirely free to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you really wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a good sign that people love reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic platform made use of by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own website and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv also provides you a web site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site already, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site clients right to your beehiiv email checklist. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to leverage various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, outside embed forms, and a lot more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just beginning (or for those searching for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Nicholas Agardy
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and much more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand name colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed details on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start writing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you develop and publish newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your customers are (and break them down right into sections), Expand is where you have accessibility 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, Layout is where you create your newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you intend to write about, I advise just going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin composing”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and easy to use interface for writing.
Once you begin composing, you can enhance headings, include links, and style your content exactly how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for different kinds of content like video clips, web links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is additionally frequently releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot a lot more material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to design your email template and readjust some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to very first time clients, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture styles, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever solitary point you can enhance with your email template because it’s a whole lot. Simply try out the system absolutely free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it a fantastic posting system for any newsletter creator.
Below are several of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely very easy to write and send out emails. I discussed above several of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely one of the much better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) reside on a web site. Think of it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a location where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, offer you a site. However, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is necessary. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or via embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and want individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I make use of on this 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 three various options– a complete size, a fixed width, 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 setups.
There’s also an alternative for attribution tracking if you want to forward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– pretty neat.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the team is working on updates for these, but I pointed out a few problems I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your checklist to ahead your emails to good friends and coworkers and if they obtain other people to register for your listing, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever form you want. I have actually seem many newsletter companies offer benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– offering you one more avenue for growing your email list.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium registrations
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription earnings is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be really lucrative relying on what your e-newsletter has to use. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that produces millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the important things I like concerning beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Beehiiv Nicholas Agardy.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you whatever you need to start and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and access to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for several users.
I’m uncertain just how the device business economics work on this, yet beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are several of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Lots of flexibility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create premium options to monetize.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen one more newsletter system that has actually been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet naturally, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the cons I have actually located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site building platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive detail why I love Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow review if you would love to find out more.
Today, there really is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than using an iframe embed. I directly don’t like making use of iframe’s since they often tend to decrease my web site a bit. Every time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s extremely recognizable when you get on a slow internet link. Yet I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a regular Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just include additional expenses that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the disadvantages below. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point produce a better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is an excellent service for anyone wanting to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform much exceeds many that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly affordable of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not compose review posts frequently. I only do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would recommend it to a friend.
I wish you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.