Over 2 years earlier, I read among my favored email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantaneously started tearing up Beehiiv PitchBook.
I had not been certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time maker is tough. I’m commonly obtaining pitched various devices and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months trying various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to help build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic choices for composing e-newsletters. But I could not find one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter styles, makes it incredibly simple to create and send out e-mails, and offers me devices that help me examine metrics and get more customers.
I believe I’ve ultimately located the ideal tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv might 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 system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to design, compose, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the renowned newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help developers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m going to explain my individual 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 platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter system for rather time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it pertained to lastly launching my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous e-newsletter creators look up to popular newsletters with millions of subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have terrific web content, tons of customers, and a clever referral program that permits them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I took place a search to figure out how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this device truly comprehend e-newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I recognized this was going to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Because, any kind of creator understands, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And finding the ideal newsletter pile (that scales) commonly implies making use of numerous different tools to help accomplish one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was totally free to begin making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material maker that desires a system that permits them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or content designer, you need to seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you actually wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indication that individuals love reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is an excellent platform used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own website and make use of the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv also gives you a site similar to Substack. But, if you have your own internet site already, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your website customers straight to your beehiiv email checklist. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit people to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to utilize different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
How to start using beehiiv email marketing software.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, outside embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a very charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those searching for a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv PitchBook
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, 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 certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand name design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed information on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start creating,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning writing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down into segments), Expand is where you have access to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you want to cover, I suggest simply going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and easy to use interface for composing.
As soon as you begin composing, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your content exactly how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of alternatives for various kinds of content like videos, links, pictures, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is additionally frequently launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a lot extra material features relying on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your email template and change some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background colors, borders, spacing, font styles, picture styles, and more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever single thing you can maximize with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Simply check out the platform free of charge and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of impressive features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any newsletter maker.
Below are a few of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it very very easy to compose and send emails. I pointed out above a few of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some added reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) survive a site. Consider it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, provide you an internet site. However, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom-made domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is very important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or through embed forms.
If you already have a site, and desire individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different choices– a complete width, a repaired width, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to ahead UTM parameters for tracking functions– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the team is dealing with updates for these, however I pointed out a couple of problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your list to onward your e-mails to close friends and associates and if they obtain other people to sign up for your list, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I have actually seem many e-newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you one more avenue for growing your email listing.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this post.
Costs registrations
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration earnings is certainly a beast of its very own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be extremely financially rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to use. For example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of things I like regarding beehiiv is how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Beehiiv PitchBook.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on just how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you whatever you need to begin and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for lots of customers.
I’m uncertain exactly how the device economics service this, however beehiiv is certainly more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are some of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters for free.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Lots of flexibility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Create premium choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
But naturally, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the cons I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site structure platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much information why I like Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow review if you ‘d like to find out more.
Now, there actually is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not such as using iframe’s since they have a tendency to decrease my internet site a little bit. Every single time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s very visible when you get on a slow-moving internet connection. However I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow form (which I enjoy making use of). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would simply include added expenses that I don’t need. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I thought I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the cons right here. I’m also confident that Webflow will ultimately create a far better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a great solution for anyone looking to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system much exceeds several that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly low-cost of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review posts often. I only do when I in fact make use of the device myself and would advise it to a buddy.
I wish you discovered some quality on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.