Over two years back, I read one of my preferred e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and instantly began wrecking Beehiiv Posts.
I had not been sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time creator is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched various devices and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I invested the last 6 months experimenting with various email and e-newsletter platforms to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful options for composing newsletters. However I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully personalize my newsletter styles, makes it very easy to write and send out e-mails, and gives me devices that aid me assess metrics and obtain more clients.
I assume I’ve lastly discovered the best device.
But, I recognize beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it easy to style, create, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous workers at the popular e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m going to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly go with it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve watched for a modern newsletter system for rather some time now. I have actually postponed hard when it concerned ultimately releasing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of e-newsletter developers respect prominent newsletters with countless clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have terrific content, tons of subscribers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get even extra customers.
So, I went on a hunt to figure out how these big newsletters established their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they create an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool really comprehend e-newsletter development and development.” I examined who these designers 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 mind exploded.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Because, any type of developer recognizes, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the ideal e-newsletter stack (that ranges) usually means utilizing several different devices to aid accomplish one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish references. It can get pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was complimentary to start 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 custom-made newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
The most successful newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or content maker, you must seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you really wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a great sign that people love reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a fantastic platform used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your own website and use the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv also offers you a web site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own website currently, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your web site customers right to your beehiiv email listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit individuals to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to leverage different marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and extra. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those trying to find a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Posts
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand name design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have outlined details on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start writing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Evaluate.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot over), Begin creating is where you produce and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down right into sections), Grow 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 advertisements, Style is where you make your newsletter landing page and article template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you wish to blog about, I suggest just going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– focus on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly user interface for creating.
As soon as you start creating, you can optimize headings, add links, and style your material how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for different kinds of material like video clips, web links, pictures, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is also constantly launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a great deal more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your email template and readjust some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a description, include your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, font styles, photo styles, and more. I’m not going to go through ever before single point you can maximize with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Just try out the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it an excellent publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter developer.
Below are a few of the important features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely simple to write and send emails. I mentioned over some of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely one of the better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive an internet site. Consider it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, give you a site. However, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed form. This is what I make use of on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 different options– a full size, a dealt with size, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to ahead UTM criteria for tracking objectives– quite cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is dealing with updates for these, however I discussed a few problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your listing to onward your e-mails to good friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your listing, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I have actually appear numerous newsletter firms give rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you one more opportunity for expanding your email listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this short article.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration profits is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” issues of your newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be extremely rewarding depending upon what your newsletter needs to supply. For example, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter Beehiiv Posts.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer count go up is absolutely 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 get started and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, surveys, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for several customers.
I’m uncertain exactly how the device economics deal with this, but beehiiv is most definitely more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and begin sending out newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Great deals of versatility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce costs choices to monetize.
Polls.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet naturally, I don’t want to be biased so I’m going to state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I have actually found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my internet site structure platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much information why I like Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow testimonial if you want to discover more.
Right now, there actually is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not like using iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my internet site a bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s very visible when you get on a slow web link. Yet I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow kind (which I love utilizing). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would just add extra expenses that I do not require. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I thought I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the cons right here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will eventually produce a much better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is a great service for anybody wanting to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform far exceeds many that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively affordable wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t compose review posts typically. I just do when I in fact use the tool myself and would recommend it to a buddy.
I hope you found some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.