Over 2 years ago, I read among my preferred email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantaneously started tearing up Beehiiv Product Updates.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time maker is tough. I’m typically obtaining pitched different devices and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional since I spent the last six months trying out various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to aid build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful choices for writing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me totally customize my newsletter styles, makes it super very easy to create and send emails, and provides me tools that assist me evaluate metrics and get even more clients.
I assume I’ve lastly found the best device.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it very easy to design, compose, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous staff members at the famous e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally opt for it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter system for quite a long time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it pertained to finally releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure numerous e-newsletter designers appreciate popular newsletters with millions of subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have excellent content, lots of customers, and a creative referral program that permits them to get back at more subscribers.
So, I took place a hunt to identify exactly how these huge newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device truly comprehend e-newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the initial marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Because, any kind of designer recognizes, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the right newsletter pile (that scales) frequently indicates making use of multiple different tools to help accomplish one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can get costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these things 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 content maker that desires a platform that enables them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
The most successful newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or material creator, you need to seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you in fact end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good sign that individuals love reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a wonderful system made use of by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own website and use the platform as your all-in-one option for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv also provides you a web site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own internet site currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your site clients directly to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable people to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
How to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, outside embed forms, and extra. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Product Updates
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll then create a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also pick your brand colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have described info on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start composing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really lower you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Begin writing is where you create and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your customers are (and damage them down into segments), Grow is where you have access 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 newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you make your newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you intend to discuss, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– focus on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and easy to use user interface for creating.
As soon as you begin creating, you can enhance headings, include web links, and design your material just how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of options for different sorts of web content like video clips, web links, images, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a great deal a lot more content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to create your email template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time clients, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image formats, and a lot more. I’m not going to experience ever before single point you can optimize with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Simply experiment with the system free of charge and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it an excellent posting platform for any kind of newsletter developer.
Right here are a few of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely simple to write and send e-mails. I pointed out above several of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll save you some added reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) live on a website. Think about it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, offer you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a customized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is necessary. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv site or via embed kinds.
If you already have a website, and want individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed type. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various alternatives– a complete width, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution monitoring if you intend to forward UTM specifications for tracking functions– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make sure the group is dealing with updates for these, but I pointed out a few concerns I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your list to onward your e-mails to pals and associates and if they get other individuals to sign up for your listing, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever type you want. I have actually seem numerous e-newsletter companies offer incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you another method for growing your e-mail listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs registrations
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription profits is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely financially rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter has to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that creates millions in profits a year just by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
One of the things I like concerning beehiiv is just how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber matter Beehiiv Product Updates.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer count rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you need to start and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, personalized domain, surveys, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for several individuals.
I’m not sure how the device business economics service this, but beehiiv is absolutely cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are a few of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
Easy to establish and begin sending e-newsletters totally free.
Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics.
Lots of versatility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create premium options to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen another newsletter platform that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet obviously, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my site structure platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much but you can read my Webflow testimonial if you would love to learn more.
Today, there truly is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site apart from using an iframe embed. I personally don’t like using iframe’s since they tend to reduce my internet site a bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s very recognizable when you’re on a slow web connection. However I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a regular Webflow type (which I like utilizing). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would just add extra prices that I don’t require. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the disadvantages right here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will at some point produce a much better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a wonderful option for anybody wanting to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system far exceeds numerous that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather inexpensive wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not create review articles typically. I only do when I in fact make use of the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a friend.
I hope you located some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.