Over 2 years back, I read one of my favored e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and promptly started wrecking Beehiiv TWIST.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time maker is difficult. I’m typically obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months trying different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to assist construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific alternatives for composing e-newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with many existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my newsletter styles, makes it super very easy to compose and send e-mails, and offers me tools that help me evaluate metrics and get more customers.
I believe I’ve ultimately found the ideal device.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it very easy to design, create, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former workers at the well-known e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist developers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately go with it as my newsletter system of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day newsletter system for fairly a long time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it concerned ultimately releasing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure many newsletter developers look up to popular newsletters with numerous subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have fantastic web content, tons of clients, and a clever referral program that permits them to get back at a lot more clients.
So, I took place a hunt to identify how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they develop a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool actually recognize e-newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the initial marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer development.
Since, any type of maker recognizes, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the best e-newsletter stack (that ranges) often suggests using multiple different devices to help achieve one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, 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 maker that wants a platform that permits them to send custom newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or web content creator, you should seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to begin and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you in fact end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indication that individuals enjoy reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great system used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your own website and make use of the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a website comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your website subscribers directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable people to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to leverage various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
Exactly how to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those just starting out (or for those searching for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv TWIST
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and much more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking 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 ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start composing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Examine.” And at the very lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot over), Start writing is where you create and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your customers are (and break them down right into sectors), Grow is where you have accessibility 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 design your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you wish to discuss, I advise just mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Begin creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and easy to use user interface for writing.
As soon as you begin writing, you can optimize headings, add links, and style your material exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for various sorts of content like videos, links, pictures, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot much more content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your email template and readjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever single point you can optimize with your email template because it’s a lot. Simply experiment with the platform absolutely free and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a great publishing system for any type of e-newsletter maker.
Right here are several of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it very very easy to write and send out e-mails. I mentioned above several of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) survive on a website. Think of it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, provide you an internet site. However, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a customized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require 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 register for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or with embed types.
If you already have a web site, and desire individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I make use of on this site (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 full size, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s also a choice for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to onward UTM specifications for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the group is servicing updates for these, however I mentioned a few problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a service for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your checklist to forward your emails to close friends and coworkers and if they get other people to sign up for your listing, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever form you want. I have actually seem lots of newsletter companies offer benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another avenue for growing your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this article.
Premium memberships
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration revenue is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” problems of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be very profitable depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to use. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that generates millions in income a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among the important things I love about beehiiv is just how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count Beehiiv TWIST.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber count go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you whatever you require to start and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit option for many individuals.
I’m uncertain exactly how the device business economics work on this, but beehiiv is certainly less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters totally free.
Tidy and modern subscriber analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Develop premium options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen another e-newsletter system that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
But obviously, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the cons I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my website building platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive information why I enjoy Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow testimonial if you would love to find out more.
Today, there actually is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website aside from making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not such as making use of iframe’s because they tend to reduce my site a bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s extremely visible when you get on a slow internet link. But I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow form (which I love making use of). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier however that would simply include extra prices that I do not require. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I believed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the disadvantages here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point create a far better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful service for anyone seeking to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter platform far outweighs numerous that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly cheap for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not create evaluation articles usually. I just do when I actually use the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a buddy.
I hope you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.