Over 2 years earlier, I was reading one of my preferred email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and quickly started tearing up Beehiiv Plans.
I had not been certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m often getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional since I spent the last six months trying different email and e-newsletter systems to aid build my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful alternatives for writing newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me fully tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it very easy to write and send emails, and provides me devices that aid me examine metrics and get more customers.
I believe I have actually lastly located the right device.
However, I understand beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to style, create, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous staff members at the famous newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately select it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve watched for a modern-day e-newsletter system for fairly time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it involved finally launching my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure several e-newsletter makers admire prominent e-newsletters with countless customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have great content, lots of clients, and a smart referral program that allows them to get even much more clients.
So, I went on a search to identify exactly how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more customers? How do they produce a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this device really understand e-newsletter development and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on creator development.
Because, any kind of developer understands, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And finding the best newsletter stack (that scales) frequently implies using several different tools to help attain one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to establish referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was complimentary to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content developer that wants a platform that enables them to send customized newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or material maker, you must seriously thinking about experimenting with 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 actually wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great indication that people like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is an excellent system utilized by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own site and use the system as your all-in-one service for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv also offers you a web site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own internet site currently, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your web site clients right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit people to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to take advantage of different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
How to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Enroll in a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, external embed forms, and much more. It’s a very charitable offering for those just starting (or for those seeking a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Plans
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and much more.
You’ll then develop a name and link 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 web site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin composing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot over), Start writing is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your clients are (and damage them down into sectors), Expand 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 ads, Design is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you intend to cover, I recommend just going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can modify your template and designing later– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and user-friendly user interface for creating.
As soon as you start writing, you can enhance headings, include web links, and design your web content just how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for different types of content like video clips, web links, photos, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is also frequently launching item feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a whole lot more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your email template and change some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome email to first time customers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, font styles, picture formats, and much more. I’m not going to undergo ever before single thing you can optimize with your email template since it’s a great deal. Simply try the system for free and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a wonderful posting system for any kind of newsletter creator.
Here are some of the crucial features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it very easy to write and send out emails. I discussed over a few of the things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll save you some additional reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the far better email editors I have actually 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 about it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, provide you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is necessary. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter right from your beehiiv site or through embed types.
If you already have an internet site, and want people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed form. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different options– a complete size, a taken care of width, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to forward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– rather cool.
However, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the team is working on updates for these, yet I discussed a few issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your checklist to ahead your e-mails to friends and coworkers and if they get other people to sign up for your listing, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve seem several e-newsletter firms offer rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you another avenue for expanding your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium memberships
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration profits is certainly a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be extremely financially rewarding depending on what your newsletter has to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that produces millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
One of the important things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is how clean and basic the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter Beehiiv Plans.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client matter increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you everything you require to begin and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain, polls, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for numerous individuals.
I’m uncertain exactly how the system business economics service this, however beehiiv is definitely less costly (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to establish and begin sending e-newsletters completely free.
Clean and modern-day customer analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create premium options to generate income from.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I have not seen another newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features together so well.
Yet obviously, I don’t want to be biased so I’m going to point out some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I have actually located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my internet site structure platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow review if you want to discover more.
Now, there actually is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site besides making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as utilizing iframe’s because they tend to reduce my site a little bit. Each time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s very obvious when you get on a slow internet connection. Yet I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a regular Webflow kind (which I love utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would simply include additional expenses that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the cons right here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately develop a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a wonderful option for anybody looking to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system much outweighs numerous that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively 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 an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation messages often. I only do when I in fact use the tool myself and would suggest it to a close friend.
I hope you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.