Over two years ago, I was reading among my favorite e-mail e-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 promptly started wrecking Beehiiv Publisher Agreement.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m often obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last six months trying out various e-mail and newsletter platforms to assist build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific options for composing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me offer a definite “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me totally personalize my e-newsletter styles, makes it incredibly simple to write and send out emails, and gives me devices that aid me examine metrics and obtain even more customers.
I believe I’ve finally found the best device.
However, I know 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 newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it easy to style, compose, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former staff members at the renowned e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally opt for it as my newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter platform for rather some time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it concerned finally introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain many e-newsletter developers respect prominent newsletters with countless clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have excellent content, tons of clients, and a smart referral program that permits them to get back at extra clients.
So, I took place a search to figure out how these big 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 create a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this device actually comprehend newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the initial marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I knew this was going to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s focused on designer development.
Because, any developer understands, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the appropriate e-newsletter pile (that ranges) typically suggests utilizing numerous various tools to help achieve one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish references. It can get expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things 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 designer that wants a platform that enables them to send customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or web content developer, you need to seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to get started and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you really end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a good sign that individuals like reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific system made use of by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and make use of the system as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a website similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your site clients directly to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit people to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to utilize various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail 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 “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, external embed kinds, and more. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply beginning (or for those searching for a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Publisher Agreement
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally select your brand colors and design to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning creating,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Examine.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot over), Start creating is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your customers are (and damage them down right into sectors), 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 newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you intend to write about, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– focus on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and straightforward user interface for creating.
Once you start writing, you can enhance headings, add web links, and style your content just how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for various types of web content like videos, web links, pictures, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is also regularly releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a lot a lot more material features relying on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
Once you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, photo formats, and much more. I’m not going to experience ever before single thing you can optimize with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Just try the platform free of cost and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any kind of newsletter maker.
Below are several of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely very easy to compose and send out emails. I stated above several of the important things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll save you some added reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive a site. Think about it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, offer you an internet site. However, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom-made domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or with embed types.
If you currently have a website, and desire people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. This is what I utilize on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various choices– a full size, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an alternative for attribution tracking if you want to ahead UTM specifications for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the group is working with updates for these, yet I stated a few worries I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your checklist to onward your emails to pals and colleagues and if they obtain other people to sign up for your listing, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem lots of newsletter firms give incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– offering you another opportunity for growing your e-mail listing.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this short article.
Costs registrations
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration revenue is certainly a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying subscribers. This can be extremely profitable depending upon what your e-newsletter has to supply. For example, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that produces millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
One of the things I like regarding beehiiv is exactly how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count Beehiiv Publisher Agreement.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to start and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain, surveys, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the very same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit choice for numerous users.
I’m uncertain just how the system business economics work with this, yet beehiiv is certainly less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Right here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters absolutely free.
Tidy and contemporary client analytics.
Lots of versatility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Produce premium choices to monetize.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen another newsletter system that has had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
But obviously, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I’ve found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized fonts.
I use Webflow as my internet site building platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive information why I like Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to discover more.
Now, there truly is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not such as using iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to reduce my site a bit. Whenever a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s really noticeable when you’re on a slow-moving web link. But I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow kind (which I enjoy utilizing). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would simply add added prices that I don’t require. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I assumed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will eventually create a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is an excellent solution for any person seeking to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system much outweighs lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly inexpensive of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not create evaluation articles usually. I just do when I in fact utilize the device myself and would certainly advise it to a buddy.
I wish you discovered some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.