Over 2 years ago, I was reading one of my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and instantly began wrecking Beehiiv Subscriber Management.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a permanent maker is tough. I’m typically getting pitched various devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I invested the last 6 months trying different email and newsletter platforms to aid build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful choices for creating e-newsletters. However I could not locate one that made me provide a precise “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me fully tailor my newsletter designs, makes it very very easy to compose and send e-mails, and offers me tools that assist me analyze metrics and get more subscribers.
I assume I’ve ultimately discovered the best tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to layout, write, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous workers at the well-known newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally go with it as my newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a modern newsletter platform for rather some time now. I’ve put things off hard when it came to ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure many newsletter creators appreciate popular newsletters with numerous subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have great material, lots of customers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get back at extra clients.
So, I went on a quest to figure out just how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device actually understand newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Due to the fact that, any type of developer recognizes, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the right e-newsletter stack (that ranges) commonly implies using multiple different devices to aid achieve one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was totally free to start making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material maker that wants a system that permits them to send out personalized newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or web content maker, you need to seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you in fact wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indication that people love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a great system used by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and use the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv also offers you a web site similar to Substack. However, if you have your own internet site already, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your internet site clients straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit individuals to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to leverage various marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack alternative.
How to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, outside embed forms, and more. It’s a very generous offering for those just beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Subscriber Management
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand name colors and design to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have described information on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin writing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down right into sectors), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Layout is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you want to blog about, I suggest just mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin creating”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and user-friendly user interface for writing.
As soon as you begin creating, you can maximize headings, include web links, and style your material exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for different types of content like video clips, links, images, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a lot extra content features relying on when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and change some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background shades, borders, spacing, font styles, photo formats, and extra. I’m not going to go through ever solitary point you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Just try out the system totally free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a wonderful publishing platform for any type of e-newsletter developer.
Right here are a few of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly simple to write and send out e-mails. I pointed out above several of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive on a website. Consider it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, give you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or through embed kinds.
If you already have a site, and want people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various alternatives– a full size, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s also an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to forward UTM specifications for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working on updates for these, however I discussed a couple of problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your checklist to onward your e-mails to pals and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever type you want. I’ve appear many newsletter business provide incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you another avenue for growing your email list.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this write-up.
Premium memberships
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription earnings is certainly a monster of its 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 newsletter that are only sent out to paying subscribers. This can be really lucrative depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to use. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the things I like concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter Beehiiv Subscriber Management.
You get access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you everything you need to start and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit alternative for lots of users.
I’m unsure just how the system economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is certainly less costly (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to set up and begin sending e-newsletters absolutely free.
Tidy and contemporary customer analytics.
Lots of flexibility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop costs options to generate income from.
Polls.
To be honest, I have not seen one more e-newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
But of course, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I’ve located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my web site building platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive information why I love Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow testimonial if you wish to discover more.
Now, there truly is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as using iframe’s since they often tend to slow down my website a little bit. Every time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s very obvious when you get on a slow internet connection. Yet I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a routine Webflow kind (which I like utilizing). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier but that would certainly just include extra prices that I don’t require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I assumed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the cons right here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually develop a much better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a terrific solution for any person looking to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform far exceeds lots of that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly economical for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t create evaluation blog posts commonly. I only do when I actually use the tool myself and would suggest it to a buddy.
I wish you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.