Over 2 years ago, I was reading one of my favored email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and immediately started destroying Beehiiv Open Banker.
I had not been certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a permanent creator is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched different tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months trying different email and e-newsletter platforms to assist build my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful alternatives for writing e-newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with many existing newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it super simple to compose and send out emails, and provides me devices that aid me analyze metrics and obtain more clients.
I assume I’ve finally discovered the appropriate tool.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for everybody. 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 e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it very easy to layout, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the popular e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist designers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m going to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly go with it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter system for fairly a long time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it involved finally releasing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain lots of e-newsletter creators look up to preferred newsletters with millions of subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have great content, lots of clients, and a smart referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more subscribers.
So, I took place a search to identify how these big newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they produce a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool actually understand e-newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I knew this was going to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator growth.
Due to the fact that, any kind of creator understands, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the ideal newsletter stack (that scales) commonly suggests utilizing multiple different tools to help attain one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up referrals. It can get costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was totally free to begin utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that wants a platform that allows them to send customized newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, start-up, or content creator, you need to seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you in fact end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indication that individuals enjoy reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific platform used by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own internet site and use the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise provides you an internet site similar to Substack. But, if you have your own site already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your website customers straight to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow people to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
How to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The primary step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch 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, advance customization, analytics, outside embed forms, and much more. It’s a very charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those trying to find a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Open Banker
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand name colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have outlined information on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin composing,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the really lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Begin composing is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your customers are (and damage them down into sectors), Grow is where you have access to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Layout is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you intend to discuss, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Start creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and straightforward user interface for composing.
Once you start creating, you can maximize headings, include web links, and design your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for various types of content like video clips, links, images, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a great deal extra material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your e-mail template and change some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to first time customers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, photo formats, and more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before solitary thing you can maximize with your email template since it’s a great deal. Just experiment with the platform completely free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a terrific posting platform for any type of newsletter maker.
Right here are some of the essential features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely simple to compose and send out emails. I pointed out above a few of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely among the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) reside on a site. Think about it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, give you an internet site. However, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is very important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or via embed kinds.
If you already have a site, and desire people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I make use of on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 various choices– a full width, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an option for attribution monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM criteria for tracking purposes– rather neat.
However, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the team is working with updates for these, but I stated a couple of worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a service for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your list to onward your emails to pals and coworkers and if they get other individuals to register for your checklist, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually appear numerous e-newsletter companies give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional opportunity for expanding your e-mail listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this article.
Costs registrations
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership revenue is absolutely 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 produce “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely profitable depending upon what your e-newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that produces millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I love about beehiiv is just how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Beehiiv Open Banker.
You get access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you whatever you need to get started and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, surveys, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit choice for lots of customers.
I’m not sure just how the system business economics service this, yet beehiiv is certainly less expensive (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are a few of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters for free.
Clean and contemporary customer analytics.
Lots of adaptability with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Produce costs options to monetize.
Polls.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen one more newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet certainly, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the cons I have actually found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my internet site building platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow review if you wish to discover more.
Today, there truly is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site besides utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t like making use of iframe’s since they often tend to reduce my website a bit. Each time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the web page. It’s very obvious when you get on a slow-moving net connection. However I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t use a normal Webflow kind (which I like utilizing). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would certainly simply include additional expenses that I do not require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the cons below. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will eventually create a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful service for any individual aiming to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far exceeds many that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly cheap wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers 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 can cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t create evaluation messages typically. I just do when I really use the device myself and would recommend it to a close friend.
I hope you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.