Over 2 years ago, I read among my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and instantly started wrecking Beehiiv Overview.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m frequently obtaining pitched different devices and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I spent the last 6 months trying different email and newsletter platforms to aid construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific options for writing e-newsletters. But I could not discover one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me totally tailor my newsletter styles, makes it incredibly simple to compose and send out e-mails, and gives me devices that assist me examine metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I believe I’ve finally located the right device.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to layout, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous staff members at the well-known e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly go with it as my newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern newsletter system for fairly some time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it involved finally introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of e-newsletter makers look up to preferred e-newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have great content, tons of subscribers, and a clever referral program that permits them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I went on a search to identify how these large e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they develop a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool really recognize e-newsletter production and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the very first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I understood this was going to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on designer development.
Because, any kind of creator recognizes, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the ideal e-newsletter stack (that ranges) usually implies using numerous different devices to assist attain one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish recommendations. It can get pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was cost-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 maker that desires a system that enables them to send customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or material designer, you need to seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely complimentary to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you actually wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent indicator that individuals like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a terrific platform made use of by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own site already, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your web site subscribers right to your beehiiv email list. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to utilize different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack choice.
Exactly how to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, exterior embed types, and a lot more. It’s a very generous offering for those just beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Overview
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site URL 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.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed details on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning composing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Begin composing is where you create and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your customers are (and damage them down into sectors), Expand is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with ads, Layout is where you make your newsletter landing page and post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin stuff.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you intend to write about, I recommend simply going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning writing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and user-friendly interface for composing.
Once you begin writing, you can enhance headings, include links, and style your content how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of options for various types of content like video clips, links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is also constantly launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a whole lot much more content features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history colors, borders, spacing, fonts, picture layouts, and much more. I’m not going to go through ever single point you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Just experiment with the platform totally free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it an excellent posting platform for any type of e-newsletter maker.
Right here are several of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it extremely very easy to compose and send e-mails. I mentioned above several of the important things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll save you some added analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the much better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on an internet site. Consider it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, offer you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a personalized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or via embed kinds.
If you already have a site, and want people to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed form. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various options– a full size, a repaired size, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the group is dealing with updates for these, however I mentioned a couple of concerns I had in the pros and cons area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your list to onward your e-mails to friends and coworkers and if they get other individuals to sign up for your list, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually seem numerous newsletter firms offer incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you one more avenue for expanding your email listing.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this post.
Premium registrations
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription income is definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be very lucrative depending on what your e-newsletter needs to offer. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
One of the things I like concerning beehiiv is how tidy and simple the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter Beehiiv Overview.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you everything you require to get going and expand your 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 domain name, surveys, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for several users.
I’m uncertain how the device business economics service this, but beehiiv is absolutely less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are several of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and start sending out e-newsletters for free.
Tidy and modern-day customer analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce costs choices to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
But certainly, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my website structure system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to learn more.
Right now, there actually is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than using an iframe embed. I directly don’t like using iframe’s since they often tend to decrease my internet site a bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s really visible when you get on a slow internet connection. But I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow form (which I enjoy utilizing). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would just include added costs that I don’t need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the cons right here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will eventually produce a much better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a great solution for anyone aiming to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform much surpasses lots of that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively low-cost of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not write review articles usually. I only do when I actually use the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a good friend.
I wish you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.