Over 2 years back, I was reading among my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and instantly began wrecking Beehiiv Wiki.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time developer is difficult. I’m often getting pitched various tools and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months checking out various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful options for writing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t locate one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me totally customize my newsletter layouts, makes it very simple to compose and send e-mails, and provides me tools that aid me analyze metrics and obtain more clients.
I assume I’ve lastly located the right tool.
Yet, I know 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 platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it simple to layout, create, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous staff members at the well-known e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally opt for it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter system for quite a long time now. I’ve postponed hard when it concerned lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain many newsletter creators respect preferred newsletters with millions of customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have terrific web content, lots of customers, and a clever referral program that allows them to get even more subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to identify exactly how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they create an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this device actually comprehend newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker development.
Due to the fact that, any maker recognizes, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the best e-newsletter pile (that scales) typically implies using multiple different devices to aid attain one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can get costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was cost-free to start using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content creator that desires a system that enables them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or material developer, you need to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to get started and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you really wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indicator that individuals like reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a fantastic platform utilized by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one option for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own web site currently, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your site subscribers straight to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
How to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, external embed types, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those just beginning (or for those seeking a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Beehiiv Wiki
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally choose your brand name design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning creating,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Begin writing is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your customers are (and damage them down right into segments), 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 ads, Layout is where you create your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you want to write about, I suggest simply going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin creating”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and user-friendly user interface for composing.
Once you start creating, you can enhance headings, include web links, and style your content how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for various types of content like videos, web links, images, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is also continuously launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a lot extra material features depending upon when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to create your e-mail template and change some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, font styles, photo styles, and extra. I’m not going to go through ever before single point you can optimize with your email template because it’s a lot. Simply check out the platform absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it an excellent publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter creator.
Below are several of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to write and send out emails. I mentioned over some of things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the far better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a website. Think about it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, offer you a web site. However, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is very important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or with embed forms.
If you currently have a website, and want individuals to subscribe to your 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 article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various options– a complete size, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to forward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– quite cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working on updates for these, however I pointed out a few worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your listing to ahead your e-mails to buddies and associates and if they get other people to sign up for your checklist, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you desire. I have actually seem many newsletter firms provide rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional method for expanding your e-mail list.
However, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this short article.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration revenue is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be very rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that generates millions in income a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the things I love about beehiiv is how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count Beehiiv Wiki.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client matter increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan gives you whatever you need to get started and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain, surveys, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit option for numerous customers.
I’m unsure exactly how the unit economics service this, however beehiiv is most definitely more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending e-newsletters for free.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop premium choices to generate income from.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
Yet naturally, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I’ve found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my internet site building system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much information why I love Webflow so much but you can read my Webflow testimonial if you would love to find out more.
Now, there actually is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from using an iframe embed. I personally do not like using iframe’s since they tend to slow down my site a bit. Whenever a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s extremely recognizable when you get on a sluggish web link. However I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not utilize a regular Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would certainly simply add additional prices that I do not require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m also confident that Webflow will ultimately produce a better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is an excellent option for any individual seeking to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far outweighs numerous that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly cheap of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not create evaluation articles frequently. I just do when I in fact make use of the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a good friend.
I hope you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.