Over two years ago, I was reading one of my favored email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and quickly began tearing up Beehiiv Welcome Email.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time designer is tough. I’m often getting pitched different devices and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months trying different e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to assist develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great choices for creating newsletters. However I couldn’t discover one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The problem with several existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me totally tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it extremely simple to write and send e-mails, and provides me devices that help me examine metrics and obtain more clients.
I assume I have actually ultimately found the best tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to design, write, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the well-known newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid developers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short article, I’m going to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately opt for it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter platform for rather time now. I have actually postponed hard when it concerned finally launching my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make certain lots of e-newsletter creators respect preferred newsletters with millions of subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have terrific content, lots of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get even extra clients.
So, I went on a search to find out just how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more customers? How do they create an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool truly understand newsletter production and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the very first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I understood this was going to be a various newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer growth.
Since, any kind of creator recognizes, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the ideal e-newsletter stack (that scales) frequently suggests using multiple different devices to assist attain one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up referrals. It can obtain expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was totally free to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that desires a system that enables them to send out customized newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or content maker, you must seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you in fact wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent sign that people enjoy reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a terrific platform made use of by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own website and make use of the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also provides you an internet site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your web site clients directly to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to take advantage of various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Exactly how to start using beehiiv e-mail 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 “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance personalization, analytics, external embed types, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those just starting (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Welcome Email
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand design and colors to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning composing,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Analyze.” And at the really lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot over), Beginning composing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break 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 advertisements, Style is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Assess 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 easy to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you wish to discuss, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and straightforward user interface for composing.
When you start writing, you can enhance headings, add links, and style your material just how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for various sorts of web content like video clips, links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is also continuously launching item feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a whole lot extra content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and readjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, image layouts, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before single thing you can maximize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the system absolutely free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a great posting system for any e-newsletter developer.
Right here are several of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it super simple to write and send out e-mails. I discussed over several of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll save you some extra reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the much better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) live on a website. Consider it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, offer you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a customized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is necessary. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv web site or via embed forms.
If you currently have an internet site, and want individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed form. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different choices– a full size, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also an alternative for attribution monitoring if you want to ahead UTM criteria for tracking functions– pretty cool.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is servicing updates for these, but I pointed out a few issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your list to onward your emails to buddies and colleagues and if they get other people to sign up for your listing, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually appear numerous e-newsletter business offer benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you one more method for growing your e-mail checklist.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership income is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be very rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter has to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of the important things I love regarding beehiiv is exactly how tidy and basic the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Beehiiv Welcome Email.
You get access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client matter go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you everything you need to start and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 each month for the very same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit alternative for several users.
I’m uncertain exactly how the unit economics work with this, however beehiiv is definitely cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters for free.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Lots of flexibility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce premium alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen another newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet of course, I do not want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my web site structure platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much detail why I like Webflow so much but you can read my Webflow evaluation if you want to find out more.
Today, there truly is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than using an iframe embed. I directly don’t like making use of iframe’s because they often tend to reduce my site a little bit. Every single time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the web page. It’s very visible when you’re on a slow web link. However I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a regular Webflow form (which I enjoy utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would just include extra expenses that I don’t require. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I believed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the cons right here. I’m also confident that Webflow will ultimately develop a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a terrific service for anybody wanting to dive into the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform much exceeds numerous that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively inexpensive for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t write testimonial articles usually. I just do when I in fact make use of the tool myself and would advise it to a friend.
I hope you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.