Over two years ago, I read one of my preferred e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and instantly started wrecking Beehiiv Open Rate.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time maker is tough. I’m often getting pitched different devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological because I spent the last 6 months trying out different e-mail and newsletter platforms to assist develop my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent options for composing e-newsletters. But I could not find one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me fully customize my e-newsletter designs, makes it extremely very easy to create and send out e-mails, and offers me devices that aid me evaluate metrics and get even more clients.
I believe I have actually finally found the appropriate tool.
Yet, I understand beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it very easy to layout, compose, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the renowned e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid makers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally select it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually watched for a modern-day newsletter platform for rather time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it came to lastly introducing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of e-newsletter creators respect preferred e-newsletters with numerous clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have fantastic content, lots of clients, and a smart referral program that permits them to get even a lot more clients.
So, I took place a quest to find out how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool actually comprehend newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the initial marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on developer development.
Because, any creator understands, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that ranges) frequently suggests utilizing several various devices to assist accomplish one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish references. It can obtain pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was totally free to begin making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that wants a system that permits them to send custom-made newsletters with or without requiring 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 devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or content creator, you need to seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s entirely complimentary to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you really wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent sign that people like reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a terrific system utilized by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your own website and utilize the system as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a web site similar to Substack. However, if you have your own website currently, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your web site clients straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to leverage different marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
Just how to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, outside embed kinds, and more. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those trying to find a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Open Rate
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand name colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start composing,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Examine.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the settings alternative.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down into segments), Grow 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 newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you want to cover, I recommend simply going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and easy to use interface for writing.
Once you start composing, you can enhance headings, include links, and design your material how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of options for different sorts of web content like video clips, links, images, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is additionally constantly launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a whole lot more material features relying on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your e-mail template and change some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image formats, and more. I’m not going to undergo ever solitary thing you can maximize with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Just check out the platform free of cost and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a fantastic posting platform for any e-newsletter creator.
Here are some of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it extremely very easy to compose and send emails. I discussed above several of the important things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll save you some extra reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the much better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive a web site. Think about it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, provide you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is necessary. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or through embed types.
If you already have a site, and want people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed type. This is what I use 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 kinds, you have 3 different choices– a complete width, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution monitoring if you intend to forward UTM specifications for tracking functions– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working on updates for these, yet I stated a few issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your list to onward your e-mails to friends and coworkers and if they get other people to subscribe to your list, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever form you want. I’ve appear several e-newsletter business give rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional method for expanding your email listing.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this article.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription income is certainly a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely profitable relying on what your e-newsletter needs to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that generates millions in income a year simply by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
One of the important things I like about beehiiv is just how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count Beehiiv Open Rate.
You get access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client matter go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you everything you need to start and expand your newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for several individuals.
I’m not sure how the unit economics service this, however beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending e-newsletters totally free.
Tidy and contemporary customer analytics.
Lots of flexibility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop costs options to generate income from.
Polls.
To be honest, I have not seen an additional newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
But of course, I don’t want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized typefaces.
I use Webflow as my website building system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter too much information why I like Webflow so much yet you can review my Webflow evaluation if you ‘d like to discover more.
Right now, there truly is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site apart from using an iframe embed. I personally do not such as utilizing iframe’s since they have a tendency to decrease my web site a little bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the page. It’s extremely obvious when you get on a sluggish web connection. However I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow form (which I enjoy using). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would simply add added prices that I do not need. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the cons here. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually produce a far better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a great option for anyone looking to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter platform much exceeds lots of that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather cheap for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not create testimonial articles often. I just do when I really utilize the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a close friend.
I hope you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.