Over 2 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 very first time. I clicked it and instantaneously began tearing up Beehiiv QR Code.
I had not been certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m frequently obtaining pitched various devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months trying various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to assist construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent options for composing newsletters. But I could not discover one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me totally personalize my newsletter styles, makes it incredibly simple to compose and send out e-mails, and offers me tools that assist me analyze metrics and get even more clients.
I believe I have actually lastly located the appropriate device.
However, I understand beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to design, create, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former staff members at the well-known e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately choose it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a modern e-newsletter platform for quite time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it pertained to lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure lots of newsletter makers look up to preferred e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have excellent web content, tons of subscribers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get even a lot more subscribers.
So, I took place a hunt to identify how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this tool really recognize newsletter development and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Since, any type of maker knows, you need development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the best newsletter pile (that ranges) usually indicates making use of multiple different devices to assist attain one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to set up referrals. It can get pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was complimentary to start using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content developer that desires a system that allows them to send out custom newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or material designer, you need to seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a good indicator that people enjoy reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful system used by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own website and utilize the system as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own web site currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your internet site clients straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to take advantage of various marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
How to start using beehiiv email marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you accessibility to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, exterior embed forms, and extra. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those seeking a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv QR Code
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand colors and design to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have described info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start composing,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Evaluate.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you create and release e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down right into segments), 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, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you intend to cover, I advise just going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and user-friendly user interface for composing.
As soon as you start composing, you can optimize headings, include web links, and design your content exactly how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of options for different types of content like video clips, links, images, and more.
The team at beehiiv is also continuously launching item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a great deal much more material features relying on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history shades, borders, spacing, fonts, photo layouts, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever single thing you can optimize with your email template because it’s a lot. Simply check out the system free of cost and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any e-newsletter designer.
Right here are a few of the essential features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to create and send e-mails. I pointed out over a few of the important things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) live on an internet site. Think about it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, provide you a web site. However, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom-made domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or via embed forms.
If you currently have a site, and desire individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed type. This is what I use 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 alternatives– a full width, a repaired size, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM parameters for tracking purposes– quite neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make sure the group is working with updates for these, but I discussed a couple of concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your checklist to ahead your emails to friends and coworkers and if they get other people to sign up for your checklist, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve seem several e-newsletter business offer benefits 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 avenue for expanding your email listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this write-up.
Costs memberships
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription income is absolutely a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be extremely financially rewarding depending on what your newsletter has to offer. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that generates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of the important things I love about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter Beehiiv QR Code.
You get access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on just how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you require to start and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
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 accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for several customers.
I’m uncertain how the device economics service this, yet beehiiv is certainly less costly (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are several 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 system of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and modern customer analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce costs choices to generate income from.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen another e-newsletter system that has had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
Yet certainly, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized typefaces.
I make use of Webflow as my web site building platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter too much information why I love Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you would love to discover more.
Today, there truly is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as making use of iframe’s because they often tend to reduce my website a little bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the web page. It’s extremely recognizable when you’re on a slow-moving net link. Yet I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a routine Webflow form (which I enjoy using). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would certainly simply include added costs that I don’t need. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I thought I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the cons here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will ultimately create a much better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a fantastic option for any person aiming to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter system far exceeds several that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather affordable for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation articles usually. I only do when I really utilize the device myself and would recommend it to a close friend.
I hope you discovered some clarity on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.