Over 2 years ago, I was reading among 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 quickly started tearing up Beehiiv What’s In The Bag.
I had not been certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time maker is difficult. I’m commonly obtaining pitched different devices and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological because I spent the last six months trying out various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to assist develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent alternatives for writing newsletters. Yet I could not discover one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my newsletter designs, makes it extremely very easy to compose and send e-mails, and provides me tools that assist me analyze metrics and obtain more clients.
I assume I have actually ultimately discovered the ideal tool.
But, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal 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, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous staff members at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally select it as my newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter system for fairly time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it concerned finally launching my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of newsletter developers respect prominent newsletters with countless clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have fantastic web content, lots of subscribers, and a creative referral program that enables them to get even extra subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to identify how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to answer every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool really understand newsletter production and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Since, any type of maker recognizes, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate newsletter stack (that scales) typically indicates using multiple various devices to help attain one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was free to begin making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that wants a platform that allows them to send customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or web content designer, you must seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to begin and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you in fact wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a good sign that individuals enjoy reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful system made use of by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your own internet site and make use of the system as your all-in-one service for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your site clients directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
Just how to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first 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 permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, outside embed kinds, and a lot more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those trying to find a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv What’s In The Bag
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin writing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot over), Beginning writing is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down into sectors), 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, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you intend to blog about, I advise just mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and straightforward interface for composing.
As soon as you start composing, you can enhance headings, include links, and style your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for various types of web content like videos, links, pictures, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise frequently launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot extra content features relying on when you read this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your email template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo, activate or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, photo formats, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before single thing you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Just try the system free of cost and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a terrific publishing platform for any e-newsletter maker.
Here are some of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly easy to write and send emails. I discussed over a few of the things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive a web site. Consider it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and an area where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, offer you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a personalized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or through embed forms.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed form. This is what I make use of 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 forms, you have three different choices– a complete size, a dealt with size, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise a choice for attribution monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM specifications for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
However, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make sure the team is working with updates for these, yet I pointed out a few concerns 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 remedy for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your list to onward your e-mails to good friends and associates and if they obtain other individuals to register for your checklist, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually appear several e-newsletter business offer rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you an additional opportunity for expanding your email listing.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this write-up.
Costs registrations
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration earnings is certainly 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 produce “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be very lucrative depending upon what your e-newsletter has to provide. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
One of the things I like concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and easy the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter Beehiiv What’s In The Bag.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on just how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client count go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to get going and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, polls, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the very same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for lots of customers.
I’m uncertain how the device business economics work on this, but beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to establish and start sending newsletters completely free.
Clean and contemporary customer analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create premium options to monetize.
Polls.
To be truthful, I have not seen one more e-newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
Yet certainly, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I have actually found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my website structure platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much detail why I enjoy Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you would love to find out more.
Right now, there truly is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as making use of iframe’s because they often tend to slow down my website a little bit. Whenever a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s very recognizable when you’re on a sluggish internet connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t use a routine Webflow kind (which I love utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly just add extra expenses that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I thought I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will ultimately develop a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a fantastic service for anyone looking to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter platform far exceeds lots of that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly low-cost for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not create review blog posts typically. I only do when I really make use of the tool myself and would advise it to a friend.
I hope you discovered some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.