Over 2 years ago, I was reading among my favored email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and quickly began destroying Beehiiv Vs Squarespace.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched various tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional because I spent the last six months trying different e-mail and newsletter platforms to aid develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic options for composing e-newsletters. However I could not locate one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my newsletter designs, makes it very simple to compose and send out emails, and gives me tools that assist me evaluate metrics and obtain more customers.
I believe I have actually lastly located the ideal device.
Yet, I understand beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact best 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, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous workers at the famous e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short article, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a contemporary newsletter platform for fairly time now. I have actually postponed hard when it pertained to lastly launching my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure many newsletter developers appreciate preferred newsletters with countless customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have wonderful content, lots of clients, and a clever referral program that enables them to get even more clients.
So, I went on a quest to find out how these large newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they develop a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool actually understand newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the initial marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker growth.
Because, any kind of creator knows, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the best newsletter pile (that ranges) frequently suggests making use of multiple different tools to help attain one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to establish references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, 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 maker that desires a platform that enables them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or content creator, you need to seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely free to start and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you actually end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent sign that individuals like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific platform made use of by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your own web site and utilize the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a web site similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own web site already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your website clients right to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit people to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Exactly how to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you accessibility to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and much more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting (or for those searching for a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Vs Squarespace
After producing 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 customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand 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 setups.
You will have detailed information on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin writing,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into sections), Grow is where you have accessibility 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 newsletter with ads, Design is where you develop your newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you intend to blog about, I advise simply going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly user interface for composing.
Once you begin composing, you can enhance headings, add links, and style your web content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for various types of material like video clips, links, photos, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is also continuously launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a great deal more material features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo styles, and extra. I’m not going to undergo ever before solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Simply try the system totally free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it an excellent posting system for any kind of newsletter creator.
Below are some of the important features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely easy to compose and send emails. I mentioned above a few of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some added reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) survive a site. Think about it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, provide you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom-made domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or with embed types.
If you currently have a web site, and want people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different choices– a full width, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise a choice for attribution tracking if you wish to ahead UTM criteria for tracking purposes– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working with updates for these, however I mentioned a few issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your list to ahead your emails to pals and colleagues and if they get other people to sign up for your listing, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you desire. I have actually seem several newsletter firms give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you one more method for expanding your email list.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this article.
Premium memberships
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration revenue is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” issues of your newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be extremely lucrative depending on what your newsletter needs to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that produces millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
One of the things I enjoy about beehiiv is how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Beehiiv Vs Squarespace.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count rise is absolutely 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 need to get going and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the very same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for several individuals.
I’m not exactly sure exactly how the unit economics work with this, yet beehiiv is absolutely less costly (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are some 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 option:
Easy to set up and start sending newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and modern customer analytics.
Great deals of versatility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Create costs options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen one more e-newsletter system that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However naturally, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my web site structure system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much detail why I love Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow review if you want to find out more.
Now, there actually is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not like using iframe’s because they often tend to decrease my internet site a bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s extremely visible when you’re on a slow web link. But I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t use a routine Webflow form (which I love using). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply include additional costs that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I thought I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately produce a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a great remedy for any individual aiming to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system far surpasses several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively cheap wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create review posts commonly. I only do when I really use the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a pal.
I wish you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.