Over two years earlier, I read one of my preferred 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 started wrecking Beehiiv Tiers.
I wasn’t certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched different devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional since I invested the last 6 months experimenting with various e-mail and newsletter systems to assist develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful choices for composing newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me fully tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it super simple to create and send out e-mails, and provides me devices that help me evaluate metrics and obtain even more clients.
I think I have actually lastly found the appropriate device.
Yet, I know beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it simple to style, create, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous employees at the popular newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally opt for it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter system for fairly time now. I’ve postponed hard when it concerned lastly releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain many newsletter designers respect popular newsletters with numerous clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have terrific content, lots of clients, and a smart referral program that enables them to get back at more customers.
So, I took place a hunt to determine how these large newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they produce a newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool actually recognize e-newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I knew this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Because, any maker recognizes, you require growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that ranges) commonly implies using numerous different tools to help accomplish one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was cost-free to start using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that desires a system that permits them to send customized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or material maker, you ought to seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a great indication that people enjoy reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great system used by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own internet site and utilize the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also gives you an internet site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own internet site already, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your site customers directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable individuals to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to take advantage of various marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack choice.
Exactly how to begin using beehiiv email marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you access to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, external embed forms, and extra. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Tiers
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also choose your brand name colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have outlined info on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning composing,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot over), Beginning composing is where you develop and publish newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your customers are (and break them down right into sectors), Grow is where you have access 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, Style is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you want to cover, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and easy to use user interface for writing.
As soon as you start writing, you can optimize headings, include web links, and design your web content just how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of choices for different sorts of content like video clips, web links, images, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise continuously launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot more material features relying on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your email template and change some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome email to first time clients, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background shades, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, photo styles, and more. I’m not going to undergo ever solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template because it’s a lot. Just check out the platform free of cost and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a fantastic publishing system for any kind of e-newsletter creator.
Here are a few of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it very easy to write and send out emails. I pointed out above a few of things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely among the much better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive a web site. Think about it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, provide you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is very important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have a web site, and desire people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed type. This is what I utilize on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different options– a full width, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to forward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
However, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the team is servicing updates for these, however I pointed out a couple of worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your list to forward your emails to close friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your checklist, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve appear numerous newsletter companies offer incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you one more opportunity for expanding your e-mail listing.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this short article.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership income is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be really lucrative depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among things I love about beehiiv is exactly how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter Beehiiv Tiers.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber count go up is definitely 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 need to get started and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 each month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for many customers.
I’m unsure how the device economics deal with this, but beehiiv is certainly less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Develop costs choices to monetize.
Polls.
To be honest, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter system that has had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
However obviously, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my web site structure platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much detail why I like Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to find out more.
Right now, there actually is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than using an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as using iframe’s because they tend to slow down my internet site a little bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the page. It’s really noticeable when you’re on a slow internet connection. But I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not use a routine Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just add extra prices that I don’t need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I thought I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the cons right here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will ultimately create a much better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a great remedy for any individual wanting to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform much exceeds numerous that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather low-cost of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t create testimonial posts often. I only do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would recommend it to a pal.
I hope you discovered some quality on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.