Over two years back, I was reading one of my preferred e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and instantaneously started wrecking Beehiiv Premium Subscriptions.
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full time designer is tough. I’m often obtaining pitched various devices and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I spent the last 6 months checking out various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to assist develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific choices for creating newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it incredibly easy to write and send out e-mails, and offers me devices that aid me examine metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I think I’ve finally located the right device.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to style, create, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by previous staff members at the renowned e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally choose it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day e-newsletter system for fairly a long time now. I have actually postponed hard when it concerned lastly releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make sure lots of e-newsletter makers appreciate preferred newsletters with countless clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have terrific content, lots of customers, and a clever referral program that allows them to get back at much more customers.
So, I took place a search to find out just how these big newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more customers? How do they produce a newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool truly understand e-newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the very first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was going to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator development.
Because, any kind of maker recognizes, you need development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the appropriate newsletter pile (that ranges) typically indicates making use of several various devices to assist accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was free to start using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that wants a system that enables them to send personalized newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or content maker, you must seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you in fact end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent sign that people love reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is an excellent system made use of by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and make use of the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a web site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own site already, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site customers right to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to leverage various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
How to begin using beehiiv email marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and extra. It’s a very generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those looking for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Premium Subscriptions
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside 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 procedure, you’ll likewise pick your brand name colors and design to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your main control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning writing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the really lower you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your clients are (and damage them down right 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 advertisements, Style is where you design your newsletter landing page and post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you wish to discuss, I recommend simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Start creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly interface for creating.
Once you begin writing, you can optimize headings, add links, and design your material just how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of options for various kinds of material like video clips, links, images, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise continuously launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a great deal a lot more material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to design your email template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time clients, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, font styles, photo formats, and more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever single thing you can enhance with your email template because it’s a great deal. Simply check out the system free of charge and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a fantastic posting platform for any type of newsletter maker.
Right here are some of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it super simple to create and send out e-mails. I discussed over some of the things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the far better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on an internet site. Think of it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, provide you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a customized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv website or through embed forms.
If you already have a website, and desire individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I make use of on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different choices– a complete width, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for attribution tracking if you want to forward UTM criteria for tracking functions– pretty cool.
However, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the team is servicing updates for these, yet I mentioned a few problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your checklist to onward your emails to pals and associates and if they get other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve appear lots of e-newsletter business provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you another opportunity for growing your email checklist.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this article.
Costs registrations
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription revenue is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be very financially rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the important things I like about beehiiv is how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Beehiiv Premium Subscriptions.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber count rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan gives you everything you require to get started and expand your newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain, polls, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit choice for several users.
I’m not sure how the device economics service this, yet beehiiv is definitely less expensive (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are several of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters completely free.
Tidy and modern client analytics.
Lots of flexibility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop premium choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I have not seen another e-newsletter system that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
But of course, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my site structure platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow testimonial if you want to discover more.
Today, there really is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site apart from making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t like making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to decrease my site a bit. Each time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the page. It’s really visible when you’re on a sluggish web connection. But I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not make use of a normal Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly just include extra expenses that I do not need. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I thought I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will ultimately produce a better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a terrific solution for any person aiming to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform far surpasses numerous that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly low-cost wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t create review posts usually. I just do when I really utilize the tool myself and would recommend it to a pal.
I wish you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.