Over 2 years ago, I was reading one of my favorite 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 immediately started tearing up Beehiiv Success Stories.
I wasn’t certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full time maker is difficult. I’m usually obtaining pitched various devices and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last six months trying out different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to assist develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful alternatives for writing newsletters. Yet I could not find one that made me offer a definite “yes”.
The concern with several existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it extremely simple to compose and send emails, and offers me devices that help me analyze metrics and get even more clients.
I believe I’ve ultimately found the best device.
However, I recognize beehiiv might 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 platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it simple to design, compose, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous workers at the renowned newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist developers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m going to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly go with it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter system for fairly time currently. I’ve postponed hard when it involved ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain several e-newsletter designers admire popular e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have great material, lots of clients, and a smart referral program that allows them to get even a lot more subscribers.
So, I took place a hunt to figure out just how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they produce a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool really comprehend newsletter production and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the initial marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I recognized this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer growth.
Due to the fact that, any type of developer understands, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the right newsletter pile (that scales) often implies utilizing several different devices to help achieve one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points 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 web content maker that desires a system that permits them to send custom newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or material designer, you ought to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s completely free to start and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you really wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indication that individuals like reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a terrific platform used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and utilize the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you an internet site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own website already, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site customers directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow people to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to take advantage of various marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
Exactly how to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, external embed types, and extra. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those seeking a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Success Stories
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also pick your brand design and colors to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin creating,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you produce and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down right into segments), 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 advertisements, Layout is where you develop your newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you want to blog about, I advise simply going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and straightforward interface for composing.
When you begin writing, you can enhance headings, add links, and style your web content exactly how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for different kinds of content like video clips, links, images, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise frequently releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a whole lot more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your e-mail template and change some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, picture formats, and more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever single thing you can maximize with your email template because it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the system completely free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any kind of e-newsletter designer.
Below are some of the crucial features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely easy to write and send out e-mails. I mentioned over a few of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the far better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) live on a web site. Think about it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can sign up for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, give you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv website or via embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and want individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three different choices– a full width, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for acknowledgment tracking if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– pretty cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the team is working on updates for these, yet I pointed out a few problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your listing to onward your e-mails to buddies and associates and if they get other people to subscribe to your listing, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve seem many newsletter firms offer incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you an additional opportunity for expanding your email list.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this post.
Costs memberships
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration profits is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be really profitable depending on what your newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that creates millions in profits a year just by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count Beehiiv Success Stories.
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 into your dashboard and seeing that client matter go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you everything you require to start and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for many customers.
I’m uncertain how the system economics work on this, yet beehiiv is most definitely less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Below are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and modern client analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop costs alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen another newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
However certainly, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to point out some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the cons I have actually located while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized typefaces.
I use Webflow as my website structure system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive detail why I love Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow review if you wish to find out more.
Right now, there actually is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not like utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to decrease my web site a little bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s very noticeable when you get on a slow internet connection. But I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not use a normal Webflow kind (which I like using). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier however that would certainly simply add extra expenses that I do not require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I thought I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the disadvantages here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point produce a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a terrific solution for anyone seeking to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system much surpasses several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather cheap for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not create testimonial messages usually. I just do when I actually utilize the device myself and would certainly advise it to a pal.
I wish you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.