Over 2 years earlier, I read one of my preferred e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and instantaneously started destroying Beehiiv Tyler Denk.
I had not been certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent creator is tough. I’m commonly obtaining pitched various tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional since I spent the last six months experimenting with different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific options for writing newsletters. However I could not discover one that made me offer a definite “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me totally tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it very easy to create and send emails, and offers me devices that assist me evaluate metrics and get even more customers.
I believe I’ve finally found the best device.
However, I know beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it very easy to design, create, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous staff members at the renowned e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid developers 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 explain my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally opt for it as my newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually watched for a modern newsletter system for quite a long time currently. I’ve hesitated hard when it pertained to finally releasing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make certain many newsletter designers look up to popular e-newsletters with millions of customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have excellent content, tons of subscribers, and a smart referral program that allows them to get back at much more customers.
So, I took place a search to figure out just how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? 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 stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that built this device actually comprehend e-newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on developer development.
Since, any kind of maker knows, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the best newsletter stack (that scales) usually suggests making use of numerous various tools to aid achieve one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up references. It can obtain costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was totally free to begin making use of, 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 platform that permits them to send out custom newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or content creator, you must seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you actually wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indication that people enjoy reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great system made use of by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your own web site and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a site similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own website already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site customers straight to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable people to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to leverage various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
How to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, exterior embed types, and a lot more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply starting (or for those seeking a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Tyler Denk
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive 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 likewise choose your brand design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning composing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and damage them down into sectors), 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 advertisements, Style is where you design your newsletter landing page and message template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you intend to discuss, I advise simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use interface for writing.
As soon as you start writing, you can maximize headings, include web links, and style your web content just how you like.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for various sorts of content like video clips, links, pictures, and more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise constantly launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to design your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history colors, borders, spacing, fonts, photo styles, and more. I’m not going to undergo ever single point you can enhance with your email template because it’s a whole lot. Simply experiment with the platform totally free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a wonderful publishing platform for any e-newsletter maker.
Here are several of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely simple to create and send emails. I discussed over several of things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the far better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) survive a web site. Think about it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or through embed kinds.
If you currently have a web site, and desire people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed form. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different choices– a complete width, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment tracking if you want to ahead UTM criteria for tracking objectives– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the team is servicing updates for these, however I mentioned a few issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your listing to forward your e-mails to good friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem numerous newsletter business provide incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– offering you another method for expanding your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility 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 write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration income is absolutely a beast of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” issues of your newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be really rewarding depending on what your newsletter needs to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that generates millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of the things I enjoy about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Beehiiv Tyler Denk.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client count increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to start and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and accessibility to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for lots of customers.
I’m not exactly sure exactly how the unit economics service this, however beehiiv is definitely more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are several of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending out newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce premium alternatives to generate income from.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
But certainly, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my site building system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow review if you would love to learn more.
Right now, there really is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site apart from using an iframe embed. I personally don’t like utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my site a little bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s extremely noticeable when you’re on a slow-moving net link. However I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not use a routine Webflow form (which I enjoy utilizing). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly simply include additional expenses that I do not need. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the cons below. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is a great remedy for anybody aiming to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far outweighs several that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly affordable of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not create review articles frequently. I just do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would advise it to a buddy.
I hope you found some quality on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.