Over 2 years ago, I read one of my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and immediately began destroying Beehiiv Open Source.
I wasn’t certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a permanent developer is difficult. I’m frequently obtaining pitched different devices and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological since I invested the last 6 months checking out various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to help develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great options for writing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me provide a precise “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me fully personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it super very easy to write and send out e-mails, and provides me tools that assist me assess metrics and get even more customers.
I believe I’ve ultimately located the right device.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everyone. 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 e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to style, write, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous employees at the renowned e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist makers 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 mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly go with it as my e-newsletter system of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve watched for a contemporary newsletter platform for quite a long time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it concerned lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of newsletter makers respect preferred e-newsletters with numerous customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have terrific web content, lots of clients, and a creative referral program that enables them to get even much more clients.
So, I went on a search to figure out exactly how these large newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they produce an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool actually understand e-newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the very first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was going to be a various newsletter system. One that’s focused on developer development.
Since, any maker knows, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the best newsletter pile (that scales) usually means utilizing multiple different tools to help attain one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points 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 maker that wants a platform that enables them to send out customized newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or content maker, you ought to seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to begin and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you actually end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a good sign that individuals enjoy reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great platform utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your own internet site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a site similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own internet site already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your internet site customers straight to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to leverage different marketing channels to get your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
Just how to start using beehiiv email marketing software.
Register for 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 certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you accessibility to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, external embed types, and extra. It’s a really charitable offering for those just starting (or for those searching for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Open Source
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally pick your brand design and colors to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
Once you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start composing,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Assess.” And at the very lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Start creating is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down into sections), Expand is where you have accessibility 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 e-newsletter with ads, Design is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you wish to cover, I suggest just going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin writing”.
You can modify your template and designing later– focus on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and easy to use interface for writing.
Once you start composing, you can optimize headings, include web links, and design your web content exactly how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of alternatives for various sorts of material like videos, links, pictures, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise frequently launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a lot more material features relying on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your email template and readjust some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, include your logo, activate or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, font styles, picture styles, and more. I’m not going to go through ever solitary point you can maximize with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Just check out the platform free of cost and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any kind of e-newsletter designer.
Here are a few 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 very very easy to write and send out e-mails. I mentioned above a few of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) live on a web site. Think of it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can register for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, provide you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a customized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv web site or with embed forms.
If you already have a website, and want people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed form. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three various alternatives– a complete width, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also a choice for attribution monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM parameters for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working with updates for these, but I mentioned a few issues I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a service for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your checklist to onward your e-mails to good friends and colleagues and if they get other people to register for your list, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve seem lots of newsletter firms give rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you one more method for expanding your e-mail list.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this short article.
Premium memberships
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription earnings is most definitely 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 “premium” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be very lucrative depending on what your newsletter needs to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of things I love regarding beehiiv is how tidy and easy the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count Beehiiv Open Source.
You get access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer matter go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you whatever you need to get going and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for numerous users.
I’m uncertain how the unit economics deal with this, but beehiiv is definitely less expensive (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters absolutely free.
Tidy and contemporary client analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce premium choices to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
However certainly, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m going to state some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the disadvantages I have actually located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom typefaces.
I make use of Webflow as my web site building system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive detail why I love Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to learn more.
Right now, there really is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides using an iframe embed. I personally do not such as making use of iframe’s since they have a tendency to decrease my web site a bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s really visible when you’re on a sluggish internet connection. However I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a regular Webflow kind (which I enjoy utilizing). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier however that would just add extra expenses that I do not need. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the disadvantages below. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will at some point produce a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a terrific option for any person looking to dive into the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system far exceeds several that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather affordable wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review blog posts frequently. I only do when I really make use of the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a friend.
I hope you discovered some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.