Over 2 years earlier, I was reading among my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and promptly began tearing up Beehiiv The Popehat Report.
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m typically obtaining pitched different tools and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last six months trying out different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to help construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great options for creating e-newsletters. But I could not discover one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it extremely very easy to compose and send out emails, and offers me devices that aid me assess metrics and get more subscribers.
I think I have actually ultimately found the best tool.
However, I understand beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to design, compose, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the well-known e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help makers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short article, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately choose it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve watched for a contemporary newsletter system for quite time now. I have actually postponed hard when it involved finally releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain several e-newsletter developers admire prominent newsletters with countless customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have excellent content, tons of customers, and a clever referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more clients.
So, I went on a quest to identify how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they develop a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool really understand newsletter production and development.” I questioned 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 growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on developer development.
Since, any kind of developer knows, you need development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the appropriate newsletter pile (that ranges) usually implies making use of numerous various tools to help accomplish one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can get pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was cost-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 allows them to send customized newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, start-up, or content maker, you should seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good indicator that people like reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a terrific platform used by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one option for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a website similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own internet site already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your internet site customers directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to leverage different marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, external embed kinds, and extra. It’s a very charitable offering for those just starting (or for those seeking a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv The Popehat Report
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally choose your brand name design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined information on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start creating,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Examine.” And at the very lower you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you create and publish newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and damage them down into sections), Expand 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, Style is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you wish to cover, I suggest just mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly interface for creating.
As soon as you begin composing, you can maximize headings, include links, and design your material how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for various sorts of material like video clips, links, images, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally frequently launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a lot more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and change some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, font styles, image formats, and more. I’m not going to go through ever before solitary point you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Just try the platform free of charge and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a great publishing platform for any kind of newsletter designer.
Below are several of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it super very easy to write and send e-mails. I mentioned over several of things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the 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. Consider it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, provide you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom-made domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter right from your beehiiv website or through embed forms.
If you already have a web site, and want people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed form. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three different alternatives– a complete size, a taken care of width, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to forward UTM criteria for tracking functions– pretty cool.
However, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the group is dealing with updates for these, but I discussed a couple of issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is an option for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your listing to ahead your emails to buddies and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your listing, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually seem numerous e-newsletter firms give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another method for expanding your email listing.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this write-up.
Premium registrations
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription profits is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be really profitable relying on what your newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that creates millions in profits a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among things I enjoy about beehiiv is just how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count Beehiiv The Popehat Report.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you every little thing you need to begin and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for lots of customers.
I’m unsure just how the system business economics work on this, however beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Naturally, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and contemporary client analytics.
Lots of flexibility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce premium choices to generate income from.
Polls.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen one more newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
However obviously, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom fonts.
I use Webflow as my website building platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter too much detail why I like Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow evaluation if you ‘d like to learn more.
Right now, there really is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t like making use of iframe’s because they often tend to slow down my web site a bit. Every time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s very obvious when you’re on a slow-moving internet connection. However I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a regular Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would just include extra costs that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I thought I would state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the cons here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will at some point create a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a wonderful option for anybody looking to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform much outweighs numerous that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively low-cost for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not create review blog posts usually. I only do when I actually make use of the device myself and would suggest it to a good friend.
I hope you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.