Over two years ago, I was reading one of my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and immediately began wrecking Beehiiv Vs Ghost.
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time maker is tough. I’m often getting pitched different tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological since I spent the last 6 months trying out different email and newsletter platforms to help build my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent alternatives for creating newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me completely customize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it extremely very easy to create and send out emails, and provides me devices that assist me analyze metrics and get more clients.
I believe I have actually lastly located the ideal device.
But, I understand beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it easy to layout, write, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the renowned newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly go with it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter system for fairly some time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it came to lastly introducing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain many newsletter makers admire popular newsletters with millions of customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have wonderful content, tons of clients, and a creative referral program that permits them to get even more customers.
So, I took place a quest to find out exactly how these large e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they develop a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool actually recognize newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these makers 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 mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Because, any type of designer recognizes, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the best newsletter pile (that ranges) often indicates making use of numerous various tools to assist accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish referrals. It can get pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was totally free to begin utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content maker that wants a platform that permits them to send custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or web content creator, you should seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely free to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you actually wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a great sign that people like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great platform used by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your own website and make use of the platform as your all-in-one option for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv also provides you an internet site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your website customers directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow people to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to leverage different marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack choice.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those just beginning (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Vs Ghost
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand name design and colors to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed info on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin creating,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the really lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down into sections), Expand 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Analyze 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 writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you want to discuss, I advise simply going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Begin creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and user-friendly interface for creating.
As soon as you begin composing, you can maximize headings, include links, and design your web content how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of options for various kinds of web content like video clips, links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is also frequently launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a great deal much more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, font styles, picture layouts, and extra. I’m not going to go through ever before single point you can optimize with your e-mail template since it’s a whole lot. Just try out the system completely free and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it a fantastic posting platform for any kind of newsletter developer.
Here are a few of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it very simple to write and send out emails. I discussed over some of the things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll save you some additional reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the much better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a website. Consider it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, offer you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a customized domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or with embed forms.
If you already have a web site, and desire people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed type. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different choices– a complete size, a dealt with width, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution tracking if you wish to forward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
However, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make sure the team is dealing with updates for these, yet I pointed out a couple of issues I had in the pros and cons area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your listing to forward your emails to good friends and colleagues and if they get other individuals to register for your checklist, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually appear lots of newsletter companies offer rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you one more opportunity for growing your email checklist.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription profits is definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” issues of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying subscribers. This can be very profitable relying on what your newsletter needs to offer. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that produces millions in profits a year just by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I love regarding beehiiv is exactly how clean and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter Beehiiv Vs Ghost.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client matter increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you every little thing you need to get going and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, personalized domain, surveys, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for many customers.
I’m not exactly sure exactly how the unit business economics service this, but beehiiv is certainly more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Right here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve 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 choice:
Easy to set up and start sending newsletters for free.
Tidy and modern-day customer analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce costs options to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen one more newsletter platform that has been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
But certainly, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the cons I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site building platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive information why I love Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to discover more.
Right now, there really is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not such as utilizing iframe’s since they have a tendency to slow down my web site a little bit. Every time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s extremely recognizable when you’re on a sluggish net connection. However I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a routine Webflow kind (which I like utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would simply include extra prices that I do not require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I believed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the disadvantages below. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will ultimately create a far better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
In general, beehiiv is a wonderful remedy for anyone wanting to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform much exceeds several that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively economical wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review blog posts often. I just do when I really use the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a close friend.
I wish you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.