Over 2 years back, I was reading one of my preferred email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and quickly started destroying Beehiiv Trustpilot.
I had not been certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time developer is difficult. I’m commonly obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I spent the last 6 months trying various email and newsletter systems to help develop my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful alternatives for creating newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with many existing newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me totally customize my e-newsletter designs, makes it very simple to write and send out e-mails, and offers me devices that assist me analyze metrics and obtain more customers.
I believe I’ve finally discovered the ideal device.
But, I recognize beehiiv might 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 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 staff members at the well-known e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally go with it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern newsletter system for quite some time currently. I’ve postponed hard when it came to finally launching my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure lots of newsletter creators look up to prominent newsletters with countless subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have great material, tons of clients, and a creative referral program that enables them to get even extra customers.
So, I went on a search to identify how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this device really recognize e-newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator growth.
Because, any designer understands, you need development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the appropriate newsletter stack (that scales) typically means using several different devices to aid accomplish one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up referrals. It can obtain expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was free to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content designer that wants a platform that allows them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
The most effective newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or web content developer, you need to seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s entirely complimentary to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you actually wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a great sign that individuals love reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a great system made use of by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your very own website and utilize the system as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you an internet site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own website currently, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your website customers straight to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to leverage different marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, outside embed types, and more. It’s a really charitable offering for those just starting (or for those seeking a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Trustpilot
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand design and colors to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described info on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin creating,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Assess.” And at the very lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you produce and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your customers are (and damage them down right into sections), 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 ads, Style is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you want to discuss, I advise just going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and easy to use user interface for writing.
As soon as you begin creating, you can maximize headings, add web links, and style your material just how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of options for various sorts of material like video clips, web links, images, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally frequently launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a great deal much more material features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some setups.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, image formats, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before solitary point you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply experiment with the platform free of charge and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a wonderful publishing system for any type of newsletter developer.
Below are some of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it super simple to compose and send e-mails. I mentioned above several of things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) live on a website. Think of it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and an area where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, offer you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom-made domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is very important. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or via embed forms.
If you already have a web site, and desire people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different choices– a complete size, a dealt with width, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s also an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to onward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the team is servicing updates for these, yet I discussed a few 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 e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your list to onward your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they get other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually seem numerous newsletter companies offer rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you one more opportunity for expanding your email list.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this short article.
Costs subscriptions
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration revenue is definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” problems of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be very lucrative depending upon what your newsletter needs to use. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that creates millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is exactly how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter Beehiiv Trustpilot.
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 customer matter increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you require to get started and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything 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 whatever in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the very same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for numerous customers.
I’m unsure just how the device business economics work on this, but beehiiv is absolutely cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
Easy to establish and begin sending e-newsletters for free.
Clean and modern-day subscriber analytics.
Lots of adaptability with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Produce premium alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen one more newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet naturally, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the disadvantages I’ve located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my web site building platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive information why I love Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to find out more.
Right now, there truly is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from using an iframe embed. I directly don’t like utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to slow down my site a bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s extremely recognizable when you get on a slow-moving internet link. However I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can not utilize a normal Webflow kind (which I enjoy using). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier but that would certainly just add extra expenses that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the cons right here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will eventually produce a much better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is an excellent option for anybody aiming to dive into the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform much outweighs many that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather cheap for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t write evaluation messages typically. I just do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would recommend it to a buddy.
I wish you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.