Over 2 years back, I read among my preferred 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 started tearing up Beehiiv Webinars.
I had not been sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time creator is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched different tools and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological since I spent the last 6 months trying different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific alternatives for composing newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my newsletter styles, makes it extremely simple to create and send emails, and offers me devices that assist me assess metrics and obtain even more clients.
I assume I’ve lastly discovered the ideal tool.
However, I understand beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it simple to design, write, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the well-known newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist developers 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 mosting likely to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for quite time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it involved lastly releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make sure numerous e-newsletter developers respect prominent e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have fantastic web content, tons of clients, and a clever referral program that allows them to get even more subscribers.
So, I went on a search to determine exactly how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to answer all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool truly recognize newsletter creation and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I understood this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer growth.
Since, any creator recognizes, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And finding the right newsletter stack (that scales) typically indicates utilizing numerous various tools to assist achieve one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was totally free to begin making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that desires a system that allows them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or content maker, you must seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you in fact end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent sign that people love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a wonderful platform utilized by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your own site and use the system as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv also offers you an internet site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own website already, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your site customers right to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to utilize different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
How to start using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The primary step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, outside embed forms, and much more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting (or for those seeking a new system to move to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Webinars
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll then create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet 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 link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand name design and colors to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start writing,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Examine.” And at the really lower you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you develop and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and break them down into segments), Expand is where you have access 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, Design is where you develop your newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you wish to cover, I suggest just going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and user-friendly interface for writing.
As soon as you begin writing, you can optimize headings, include web links, and design your material just how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for various kinds of web content like videos, links, pictures, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is also regularly releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a great deal much more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your email template and change some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome email 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, typefaces, photo styles, and a lot more. I’m not going to experience ever solitary point you can enhance with your email template because it’s a whole lot. Simply try out the platform for free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it a great publishing platform for any e-newsletter maker.
Right here are some of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it super simple to create and send out e-mails. I pointed out above some of things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the much better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) survive a website. Consider it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, provide you a web site. However, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a personalized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or via embed types.
If you already have an internet site, and want people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed type. This is what I make use of on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various choices– a complete width, a fixed size, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise a choice for attribution tracking if you intend to ahead UTM specifications for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the group is dealing with updates for these, yet I pointed out a few problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your listing to forward your e-mails to buddies and coworkers and if they get other individuals to register for your list, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually seem lots of newsletter business offer rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you an additional avenue for expanding your e-mail checklist.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs memberships
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership profits is absolutely a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be extremely profitable depending on what your newsletter needs to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is exactly how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter Beehiiv Webinars.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client count go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you whatever you need to start and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 each month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for numerous users.
I’m unsure how the system business economics work on this, however beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Naturally, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are a few of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending out e-newsletters free of charge.
Clean and contemporary customer analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Develop premium options to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
However certainly, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I have actually located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my internet site building platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive information why I love Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you ‘d like to learn more.
Now, there truly is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t like utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to reduce my web site a bit. Each time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s really recognizable when you’re on a sluggish internet connection. However I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow type (which I enjoy using). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would simply include extra prices that I don’t need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I thought I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the disadvantages right here. I’m also confident that Webflow will at some point create a much better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is an excellent service for any individual looking to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform much surpasses numerous that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly cheap of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write testimonial blog posts typically. I just do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a buddy.
I hope you located some quality on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.