Over 2 years back, I read one of my preferred email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and instantly began wrecking Beehiiv Vs Constant Contact.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full time developer is tough. I’m frequently getting pitched different devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I spent the last 6 months experimenting with various email and e-newsletter systems to aid build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent options for creating e-newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with several existing newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me completely personalize my e-newsletter designs, makes it incredibly easy to write and send out e-mails, and provides me devices that aid me assess metrics and obtain more clients.
I believe I’ve finally discovered the best device.
However, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to style, write, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the renowned e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally choose it as my newsletter system of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter platform for rather some time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it involved lastly releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous e-newsletter makers look up to popular newsletters with numerous subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have excellent web content, lots of clients, and a creative referral program that enables them to get back at extra subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to determine just how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they create a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this device actually recognize e-newsletter development and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the initial marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer growth.
Since, any type of developer knows, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the right newsletter pile (that scales) typically implies making use of several various tools to assist achieve one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was free to start using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that desires a system that permits them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or content designer, you must seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s entirely complimentary to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you in fact wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indication that individuals like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic platform made use of by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your very own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise provides you an internet site similar to Substack. But, if you have your own web site already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your site subscribers straight to your beehiiv email checklist. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to leverage different marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack alternative.
How to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you accessibility to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, exterior embed types, and extra. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those seeking a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Vs Constant Contact
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also select your brand design and colors to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning composing,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down right into sectors), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with ads, Layout is where you create your newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you want to write about, I recommend just going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Begin composing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and easy to use interface for writing.
When you start creating, you can enhance headings, include links, and style your material how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for different types of material like video clips, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise continuously releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot a lot more material features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your email template and change some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo, activate or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture formats, and a lot more. I’m not going to go through ever single thing you can maximize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Just experiment with the platform for free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a wonderful publishing platform for any type of e-newsletter maker.
Below are several of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely very easy to compose and send e-mails. I discussed above a few of things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some additional reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on a site. Think about it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, provide you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a customized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is very important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or with embed types.
If you already have a site, and desire people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three different options– a complete width, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s also a choice for attribution monitoring if you intend to forward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– quite cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the group is servicing updates for these, yet I discussed a couple of problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your list to onward your e-mails to buddies and associates and if they obtain other people to sign up for your checklist, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually appear numerous newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you one more method for growing your email listing.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this write-up.
Costs memberships
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription revenue is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying clients. This can be extremely profitable depending upon what your newsletter has to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that creates millions in profits a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the things I like concerning beehiiv is how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter Beehiiv Vs Constant Contact.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client matter increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you everything you need to get going and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 each month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for many individuals.
I’m not sure just how the device economics work with this, however beehiiv is certainly less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are a few of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Develop premium alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I have not seen an additional newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
But certainly, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m going to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I have actually discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized fonts.
I use Webflow as my website building platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much information why I love Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to learn more.
Now, there actually is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site apart from making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t like using iframe’s because they tend to decrease my internet site a bit. Every time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s very recognizable when you get on a sluggish net connection. But I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not use a normal Webflow type (which I love utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would just include extra expenses that I do not require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the cons here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will eventually develop a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a great service for anyone seeking to study the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform much exceeds numerous 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 also rather cheap for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not compose evaluation articles commonly. I just do when I really utilize the tool myself and would suggest it to a good friend.
I wish you discovered some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.