Over 2 years back, I read one of my favored email 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 instantly started tearing up Beehiiv Tags.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full time developer is difficult. I’m frequently obtaining pitched different devices and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I spent the last six months trying various email and newsletter platforms to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic options for composing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The concern with several existing newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me totally customize my newsletter layouts, makes it extremely very easy to write and send out emails, and provides me devices that assist me assess metrics and obtain even more clients.
I believe I’ve finally discovered the right device.
Yet, I understand beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to style, write, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous employees at the famous newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly opt for it as my e-newsletter system of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter system for quite a long time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it came to ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure numerous newsletter designers look up to prominent e-newsletters with countless clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have great material, lots of clients, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get back at much more clients.
So, I took place a hunt to determine just how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool actually understand newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I recognized this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on developer development.
Due to the fact that, any creator recognizes, you require development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the appropriate e-newsletter pile (that ranges) frequently indicates using multiple various devices to aid attain one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish references. It can get pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was complimentary to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material maker that desires a platform that allows them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most effective newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or web content creator, you must seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to get started and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indication that individuals enjoy reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is an excellent platform made use of by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your very own site and use the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally offers you an internet site similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own site currently, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your site clients straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit people to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to utilize different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The primary step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, external embed kinds, and a lot more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those seeking a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Tags
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand name colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have described info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start writing,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Examine.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see 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, Design is where you design your newsletter landing page and message template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you wish to discuss, I advise just going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin creating”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and easy to use user interface for writing.
Once you start writing, you can optimize headings, add links, and design your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for different kinds of web content like video clips, links, pictures, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise constantly releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a whole lot much more material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your email template and change some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo, activate or off a welcome email to first time clients, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image styles, and more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever single thing you can maximize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Simply try the system totally free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a terrific posting system for any kind of newsletter designer.
Right here are some of the necessary features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send out emails. I stated above a few of the important things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely among the better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web 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 a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can sign up for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, offer you a site. However, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a personalized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv website or through embed kinds.
If you already have a web site, and desire people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various choices– a full size, a repaired width, and a slim installed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an option for attribution tracking if you wish to ahead UTM specifications for tracking functions– pretty cool.
However, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the team is working on updates for these, however I stated a couple of worries I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your checklist to onward your emails to close friends and colleagues and if they get other people to register for your checklist, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve seem many newsletter business provide incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you one more opportunity for growing your email list.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this post.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership revenue is certainly a monster of its very own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be extremely financially rewarding depending upon what your newsletter needs to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among things I love concerning beehiiv is how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count Beehiiv Tags.
You get access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on just how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer count rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you whatever you require to begin and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever 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 whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite generous in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for several users.
I’m not exactly sure how the system economics work on this, however beehiiv is definitely cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while using 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 completely free.
Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Lots of versatility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Create costs alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I have not seen one more newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
However naturally, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to point out some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site structure system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive detail why I like Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow review if you ‘d like to discover more.
Right now, there actually is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site aside from using an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to reduce my internet site a little bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s really recognizable when you’re on a slow-moving internet connection. However I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would certainly just add extra expenses that I don’t require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will at some point create a far better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful remedy for any individual aiming to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter platform far outweighs 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 only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose testimonial messages often. I only do when I really utilize the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a pal.
I hope you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.