Over two years back, I was reading one of my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and instantly started destroying Beehiiv Referral Program.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time creator is difficult. I’m usually getting pitched various tools and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional since I invested the last 6 months trying out various email and e-newsletter platforms to assist construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful alternatives for composing newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The issue with several existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me completely customize my newsletter designs, makes it very easy to compose and send out emails, and provides me tools that help me examine metrics and obtain more customers.
I think I have actually ultimately discovered the ideal tool.
However, I know beehiiv might not be for everybody. 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 e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it very easy to style, compose, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous employees at the renowned newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist designers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately go with it as my newsletter platform of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a contemporary e-newsletter system for fairly some time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it pertained to finally introducing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure many e-newsletter developers respect popular e-newsletters with numerous clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have great material, lots of clients, and a clever referral program that enables them to get even more clients.
So, I took place a quest to determine just how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they produce a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool really comprehend newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the initial marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I knew this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker growth.
Because, any kind of designer knows, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the best newsletter pile (that scales) commonly suggests making use of multiple different devices to help attain one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, 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 web content designer that wants a platform that allows them to send out custom newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or content developer, you should seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you in fact end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good sign that people like reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a wonderful platform used 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 emails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own internet site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your website clients straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable people to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to leverage different marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Just how to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, external embed forms, and more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those searching for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Referral Program
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand name colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have outlined info on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start writing,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Analyze.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you produce and release newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your customers are (and damage them down into sectors), Expand is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you develop your newsletter landing page and post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you intend to discuss, I suggest just going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can modify your template and designing later– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and user-friendly interface for writing.
Once you begin composing, you can maximize headings, add links, and design your material just how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for various types of web content like video clips, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is also frequently releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a lot extra content features relying on when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to design your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, photo layouts, and more. I’m not going to undergo ever before single point you can maximize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the system totally free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a terrific posting system for any type of newsletter developer.
Right here are some of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it very easy to write and send e-mails. I pointed out over some of the things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the much better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a site. Think about it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, provide you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a customized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or via embed forms.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire people to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed type. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different options– a complete size, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to forward UTM specifications for tracking functions– rather cool.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the group is working on updates for these, but I mentioned a couple of problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your list to onward your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they get other people to sign up for your list, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually appear several newsletter firms offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional opportunity for growing your email listing.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs registrations
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration revenue is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be very rewarding depending on what your newsletter needs to provide. For example, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that creates millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the important things I enjoy about beehiiv is how clean and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Beehiiv Referral Program.
You get access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer matter rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you whatever you require to start and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and access to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for several users.
I’m unsure exactly how the unit economics work with this, however beehiiv is certainly cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to set up and begin sending e-newsletters for free.
Clean and contemporary client analytics.
Lots of adaptability with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Create premium options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen another newsletter platform that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
However naturally, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to point out some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom fonts.
I use Webflow as my web site building system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much information why I love Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow review if you ‘d like to find out more.
Today, there actually is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to decrease my site a bit. Every time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s really visible when you get on a sluggish web connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a routine Webflow form (which I like utilizing). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly just add added prices that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I believed I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point produce a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is an excellent option for any individual wanting to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system much surpasses numerous that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly economical of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create evaluation blog posts often. I only do when I in fact use the device myself and would advise it to a buddy.
I wish you located some quality on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.