Over 2 years back, I was reading one of my preferred email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and promptly started destroying Beehiiv Payments.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a permanent developer is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched different devices and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last six months checking out various email and newsletter systems to help construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful alternatives for writing newsletters. However I could not find one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send emails, and provides me tools that aid me assess metrics and get more clients.
I think I have actually ultimately located the best tool.
But, I understand beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal 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 style, write, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the well-known newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally go with it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter system for quite some time now. I have actually postponed hard when it concerned finally launching my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure lots of newsletter designers appreciate popular e-newsletters with millions of clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have great web content, lots of subscribers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at a lot more subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to identify how these huge newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they create an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool truly understand e-newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer development.
Due to the fact that, any kind of designer recognizes, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the ideal newsletter stack (that scales) commonly indicates making use of numerous various tools to assist accomplish one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was free to start utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content designer that desires a platform that enables them to send out customized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or material maker, you need to seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely free to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you really wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent sign that individuals enjoy reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic platform utilized by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also gives you a web site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own web site currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site customers straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit people to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to leverage various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack option.
Exactly how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you accessibility to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance personalization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Payments
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise select your brand colors and design to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined details on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning writing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot over), Beginning writing is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down into sectors), Grow is where you have access 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 ads, Layout is where you design your newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you wish to discuss, I recommend just going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and straightforward interface for creating.
Once you begin writing, you can optimize headings, include web links, and style your content exactly how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of alternatives for different sorts of web content like videos, links, photos, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally regularly launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a great deal extra material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, image layouts, and much more. I’m not going to undergo ever single point you can optimize with your email template since it’s a great deal. Just experiment with the platform for free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a terrific posting system for any kind of newsletter developer.
Right here are several of the important features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely simple to create and send e-mails. I pointed out above a few of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the far better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a site. Consider it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you a web site. However, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or through embed types.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed form. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different alternatives– a full size, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment tracking if you want to forward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is servicing updates for these, but I pointed out a couple of problems 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 system, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your list to ahead your emails to pals and associates and if they obtain other people to sign up for your checklist, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve seem lots of e-newsletter companies offer incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional avenue for expanding your email list.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this post.
Premium registrations
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription income is certainly a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be very profitable depending on what your newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is exactly how tidy and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count Beehiiv Payments.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to begin and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for many users.
I’m uncertain exactly how the system economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is certainly less expensive (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending e-newsletters for free.
Tidy and modern-day customer analytics.
Lots of adaptability with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop premium options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I have not seen an additional newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
However naturally, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m going to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the disadvantages I have actually found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my site structure system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow review if you ‘d like to learn more.
Now, there actually is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t like using iframe’s because they have a tendency to slow down my internet site a little bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the web page. It’s very noticeable when you get on a sluggish net link. But I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow kind (which I like making use of). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier but that would simply add added prices that I do not need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I believed I would state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the disadvantages right here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will at some point create a far better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a terrific service for anybody wanting to study the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system much exceeds several that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather affordable wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is uncommon. 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 do not create evaluation messages typically. I just do when I in fact use the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a pal.
I hope you discovered some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.