Over 2 years earlier, I read among my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and instantaneously started destroying Beehiiv Thank You Page.
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent designer is tough. I’m typically getting pitched different devices and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I invested the last six months trying out different email and e-newsletter systems to assist construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific options for writing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t locate one that made me offer a definite “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me totally personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it very simple to write and send out e-mails, and gives me tools that assist me evaluate metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I believe I’ve lastly found the ideal tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right 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 very easy to layout, create, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous workers at the renowned e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally choose it as my newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for fairly time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it pertained to ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure lots of newsletter developers admire popular newsletters with numerous clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have wonderful web content, tons of subscribers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get even more subscribers.
So, I went on a hunt to identify exactly how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool actually recognize e-newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I knew this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on designer development.
Since, any kind of developer knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the appropriate newsletter stack (that ranges) often implies utilizing several different devices to aid attain one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish referrals. It can get costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things 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 desires a platform that allows them to send customized newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most successful newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or content creator, you should seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s entirely complimentary to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent sign that individuals love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is an excellent system used by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own website and make use of the platform as your all-in-one service for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a web site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your web site clients directly to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit people to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
How to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software application.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you access to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, outside embed kinds, and much more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just beginning (or for those seeking a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Thank You Page
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll then create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally select your brand design and colors to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have outlined details on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start composing,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Analyze.” And at the very lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you create and publish newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into segments), Grow 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 e-newsletter with ads, Layout is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you wish to cover, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and straightforward interface for writing.
When you begin writing, you can enhance headings, include web links, and design your material how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of choices for different sorts of web content like videos, links, images, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise frequently releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot extra material features depending on when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can update 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 clients, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture layouts, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template because it’s a great deal. Just try the platform free of charge and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any type of e-newsletter creator.
Below are some of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very very easy to compose and send e-mails. I stated over a few of things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll save you some added reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive an internet site. Consider it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, provide you an internet site. However, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom-made domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or via embed kinds.
If you already have an internet site, and want people to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed form. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different options– a full size, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise a choice for attribution tracking if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– quite cool.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the group is working with updates for these, yet I mentioned a few problems I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your list to forward your emails to good friends and associates and if they obtain other people to sign up for your list, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve seem numerous newsletter firms give rewards 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 an additional method for growing your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this post.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership revenue is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be really lucrative depending on what your e-newsletter needs to use. For example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that creates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among the important things I love about beehiiv is exactly how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter Beehiiv Thank You Page.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client count go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you everything you require to get going and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for numerous individuals.
I’m uncertain just how the unit business economics work on this, however beehiiv is definitely less costly (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Create premium options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I have not seen one more e-newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
Yet naturally, I do not wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I have actually found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom typefaces.
I use Webflow as my website building platform of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive detail why I like Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to discover more.
Today, there actually is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not like using iframe’s since they tend to slow down my internet site a little bit. Every time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s very visible when you get on a slow-moving internet link. Yet I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can not use a routine Webflow kind (which I love using). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would certainly simply include added prices that I don’t require. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the cons below. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will at some point create a better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful service for anyone aiming to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system far outweighs many that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively cheap wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not write review blog posts usually. I only do when I really make use of the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a pal.
I wish you located some clarity on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.