Over 2 years back, I was reading among my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and promptly began destroying Beehiiv Q4 Beach Club.
I had not been sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m often obtaining pitched different devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months trying various email and newsletter systems to help build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent options for creating newsletters. However I could not discover one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my newsletter designs, makes it incredibly simple to write and send out emails, and gives me devices that help me assess metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I assume I have actually ultimately discovered the right device.
But, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate 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, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the famous newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly choose it as my newsletter system of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day newsletter platform for fairly time currently. I’ve postponed hard when it pertained to finally introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure several newsletter designers admire preferred newsletters with countless clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have fantastic material, lots of customers, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get back at much more clients.
So, I took place a hunt to find out how these big newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool actually recognize newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the very first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer growth.
Since, any type of designer understands, you need development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the ideal newsletter pile (that ranges) often suggests making use of multiple various devices to help accomplish one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up references. It can obtain pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was complimentary to begin making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that wants a system that allows them to send custom-made e-newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or material maker, you ought to seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indicator that individuals enjoy 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 wonderful platform made use of by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own website and make use of the platform as your all-in-one option for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own site currently, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your web site subscribers straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to leverage various marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
Exactly how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software program.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, external embed kinds, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those seeking a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Q4 Beach Club
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise choose your brand name colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have described information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin composing,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Analyze.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you develop and release newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your clients are (and break them down into sections), 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 e-newsletter with ads, Design is where you make your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you want to blog about, I suggest just going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use interface for composing.
Once you start creating, you can maximize headings, add web links, and style your material just how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of options for different types of web content like video clips, web links, photos, and more.
The group at beehiiv is also regularly releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot a lot more content features relying on when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, photo styles, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Simply check out the system for free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a fantastic publishing system for any newsletter maker.
Right here are some of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely very easy to create and send e-mails. I discussed over a few of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the much better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a site. Think about it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, offer you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter right from your beehiiv site or via embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and desire individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed form. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different alternatives– a full width, a dealt with width, and a slim installed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for attribution monitoring if you wish to forward UTM parameters for tracking functions– pretty cool.
However, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the group is dealing with updates for these, however I mentioned a few issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your listing to forward your e-mails to close friends and associates and if they obtain other individuals to register for your list, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve appear lots of newsletter companies provide incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional method for expanding your e-mail checklist.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs subscriptions
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription profits is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be really profitable depending upon what your newsletter has to provide. For example, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that produces millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the important things I enjoy about beehiiv is how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count Beehiiv Q4 Beach Club.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client matter go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you everything you require to start and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for several customers.
I’m not sure just how the system economics work with this, but beehiiv is certainly less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop costs options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I have not seen another e-newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
But obviously, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I have actually found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made fonts.
I use Webflow as my site building system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much information why I like Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow evaluation if you want to discover more.
Right now, there actually is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as utilizing iframe’s since they have a tendency to reduce my internet site a bit. Every time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s extremely obvious when you’re on a slow-moving net connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a normal Webflow type (which I enjoy utilizing). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly simply include added expenses that I don’t require. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I believed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the disadvantages below. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will ultimately develop a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is a terrific solution for any individual aiming to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system much surpasses many that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather affordable for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not create review blog posts commonly. I just do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a buddy.
I hope you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.