Over 2 years back, I read among my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and instantaneously began tearing up Beehiiv Talent.
I had not been sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m frequently getting pitched different tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological since I invested the last 6 months trying out different email and newsletter platforms to assist construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful choices for writing newsletters. Yet I could not find one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with several existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me completely customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it incredibly simple to create and send e-mails, and provides me devices that assist me analyze metrics and obtain even more clients.
I believe I’ve lastly discovered the ideal device.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everyone. 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 style, compose, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous staff members at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly choose it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern newsletter system for quite a long time currently. I’ve hesitated hard when it pertained to ultimately introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make certain several newsletter creators admire popular newsletters with countless customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have great material, lots of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get even much more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to determine just how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool actually comprehend newsletter production and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the very first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I understood this was going to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Since, any type of designer understands, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the ideal newsletter pile (that ranges) frequently indicates using multiple various devices to help achieve one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to establish recommendations. It can get expensive.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, 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 content designer that wants a platform that permits them to send out customized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet 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 author, media company, startup, or content creator, you need to seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to get going and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you in fact end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a good sign that people like reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great platform used by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own web site and utilize the system as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv also gives you a website comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own web site already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your site clients directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit individuals to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to leverage different marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
How to start using beehiiv email marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you accessibility to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting out (or for those seeking a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Talent
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise choose your brand design and colors to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have described info on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start creating,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot over), Begin writing is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your clients are (and damage them down right into segments), 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 develop your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you intend to write about, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Begin creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly user interface for creating.
Once you begin composing, you can optimize headings, add links, and style your material how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for various kinds of content like videos, web links, pictures, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is also regularly launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a great deal much more material features relying on when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to create your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, include your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, fonts, photo styles, and extra. I’m not going to experience ever solitary point you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Just experiment with the system free of cost and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a wonderful publishing system for any type of e-newsletter creator.
Right here are some of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to create and send out e-mails. I discussed over several of things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive a web site. Think of it as a site for your 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 know with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, offer you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom-made domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is very important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or via embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and want people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed form. This is what I make use of on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various options– a full width, a taken care of width, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to ahead UTM criteria for tracking objectives– pretty neat.
However, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is servicing updates for these, but I stated a couple of worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your list to onward your e-mails to friends and associates and if they obtain other people to register for your listing, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever type you want. I’ve appear lots of newsletter business provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you one more method for growing your email checklist.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this post.
Premium memberships
They claim all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership income is absolutely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” issues of your newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be extremely financially rewarding relying on what your newsletter has to use. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
One of the important things I love regarding beehiiv is exactly how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber matter Beehiiv Talent.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you everything you need to get going and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for many individuals.
I’m not exactly sure just how the system business economics service this, however beehiiv is absolutely less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are several of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and begin sending e-newsletters for free.
Clean and modern client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop premium options to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I have not seen another e-newsletter platform that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However naturally, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I’ve located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom font styles.
I use Webflow as my website structure system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive detail why I like Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to find out more.
Now, there truly is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website aside from using an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as using iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to slow down my web site a little bit. Whenever a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the web page. It’s really noticeable when you get on a slow internet connection. But I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow type (which I like using). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would just add added costs that I do not need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately produce a better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a wonderful remedy for anyone seeking to dive into the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system much exceeds numerous that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively affordable wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose testimonial blog posts typically. I just do when I really use the device myself and would certainly advise it to a friend.
I hope you found some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.