Over 2 years earlier, I read one of my favored e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and instantaneously started wrecking Beehiiv Sign Up.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time developer is tough. I’m often getting pitched various tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months trying out various email and newsletter platforms to help construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent choices for composing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me totally customize my newsletter designs, makes it incredibly easy to create and send out e-mails, and offers me tools that help me examine metrics and get more customers.
I assume I’ve finally located the appropriate tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it very easy to style, write, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the popular newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately opt for it as my newsletter platform of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a modern e-newsletter system for fairly a long time now. I’ve procrastinated hard when it came to ultimately introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of e-newsletter makers respect popular newsletters with numerous subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have excellent material, lots of clients, and a smart referral program that allows them to get back at extra subscribers.
So, I went on a hunt to determine exactly how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they create a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool truly comprehend newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the very first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I knew this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Because, any developer knows, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the best newsletter pile (that scales) often suggests using multiple various tools to aid attain one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to set up referrals. It can get expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was free to start utilizing, 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 platform that enables them to send custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
The most effective newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or web content developer, you ought to seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to get started and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you actually wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent sign that people love reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is an excellent platform used by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own website and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a website similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own web site already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your web site subscribers directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to leverage different marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, external embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those looking for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Sign Up
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also select your brand colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin writing,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the really lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your clients are (and damage them down into segments), Grow is where you have access 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 e-newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you want to write about, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly user interface for composing.
When you start creating, you can optimize headings, include links, and style your content just how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for different kinds of material like video clips, web links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is also frequently launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a whole lot a lot more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo design, switch 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 layout.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture styles, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before single point you can maximize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Simply try the system completely free and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a terrific posting platform for any kind of newsletter designer.
Right here are some of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it super easy to create and send emails. I mentioned over several of the things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the much better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive a site. Think about it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, give you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is necessary. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or through embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and want individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different choices– a complete width, a dealt with width, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise a choice for attribution tracking if you wish to ahead UTM parameters for tracking functions– rather neat.
However, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make sure the team is servicing updates for these, yet I mentioned a couple of issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your listing to forward your emails to buddies and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever type you want. I have actually seem lots of newsletter business provide benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you an additional opportunity for expanding your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration profits is certainly a beast of its very own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” problems of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying clients. This can be extremely rewarding depending on what your newsletter needs to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that produces millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
One of the things I like about beehiiv is just how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber matter Beehiiv Sign Up.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client matter rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you whatever you need to get started and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, 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 enhancement of priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit choice for lots of users.
I’m unsure exactly how the system business economics service this, yet beehiiv is definitely less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are several of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters for free.
Tidy and modern client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Create costs options to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen another e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
But obviously, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom fonts.
I use Webflow as my internet site building platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much detail why I like Webflow so much yet you can review my Webflow review if you would love to learn more.
Today, there actually is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t like using iframe’s because they often tend to reduce my website a bit. Every time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s extremely recognizable when you get on a slow-moving net connection. But I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not use a normal Webflow type (which I enjoy utilizing). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier however that would just add extra expenses that I do not require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I believed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the cons below. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point create a far better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a terrific solution for anybody aiming to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system far exceeds numerous that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively inexpensive wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t create review blog posts commonly. I only do when I in fact make use of the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a good friend.
I hope you located some clarity on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.