Over two years ago, I was reading one of my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantaneously began wrecking Ben’s Bites Beehiiv.
I had not been certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent maker is difficult. I’m usually obtaining pitched various tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last six months experimenting with various email and e-newsletter platforms to aid develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific alternatives for composing e-newsletters. However I could not discover one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me fully tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it extremely simple to create and send out e-mails, and offers me devices that aid me analyze metrics and get even more subscribers.
I think I have actually ultimately located the ideal tool.
However, 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 easy to style, create, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former staff members at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this article, I’m going to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally select it as my newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for rather time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it involved lastly introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make sure many e-newsletter designers look up to popular e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have wonderful content, lots of clients, and a clever referral program that allows them to get even more customers.
So, I went on a search to figure out how these large e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they produce a newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to answer every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool truly recognize e-newsletter development and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I knew this was going to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Due to the fact that, any designer understands, you require growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the right newsletter stack (that ranges) commonly implies making use of multiple various devices to help accomplish one goal– one system for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to set up referrals. It can obtain expensive.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that desires a system that permits them to send out personalized newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most successful newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or content creator, you ought to seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you really wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indication that individuals like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful platform used by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one option for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a website comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own website currently, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site subscribers right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to permit individuals to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to leverage various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
Just how to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, external embed forms, and more. It’s a very charitable offering for those just starting (or for those seeking a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Ben’s Bites Beehiiv
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand colors and design to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have described information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning writing,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your major control center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you produce and release newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your customers are (and break them down into segments), Expand is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with advertisements, 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 take care of all of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you want to cover, I advise just mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Start composing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and easy to use user interface for creating.
As soon as you begin composing, you can optimize headings, include links, and style your web content exactly how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for different sorts of content like videos, web links, photos, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is additionally continuously releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a lot more material features relying on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to design your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, picture styles, and a lot more. I’m not going to experience ever before single point you can maximize with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Just try the system totally free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a terrific publishing system for any kind of e-newsletter maker.
Here are a few of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very simple to write and send out emails. I pointed out over several of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some extra reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) live on a site. Think of it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, provide you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a personalized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or via embed kinds.
If you currently have a web site, and want people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed kind. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 different choices– a full width, a fixed width, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution monitoring if you want to onward UTM criteria for tracking functions– quite neat.
However, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the group is servicing updates for these, however I discussed a few problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your checklist to onward your e-mails to buddies and coworkers and if they get other people to sign up for your list, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever form you want. I’ve appear numerous newsletter business provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you an additional opportunity for expanding your email checklist.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this post.
Costs subscriptions
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration profits 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 create “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely rewarding depending on what your newsletter needs to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among the things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is exactly how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count Ben’s Bites Beehiiv.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber count go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you need to begin and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for numerous users.
I’m not exactly sure exactly how the system economics work with this, but beehiiv is absolutely less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to establish and start sending out newsletters free of charge.
Clean and contemporary customer analytics.
Lots of adaptability with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Create premium options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
However certainly, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the cons I’ve found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my site structure system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much information why I like Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow evaluation if you ‘d like to discover more.
Right now, there actually is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t like utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to slow down my website a little bit. Every time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s extremely visible when you’re on a sluggish net connection. However I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t use a routine Webflow type (which I enjoy using). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would certainly simply add additional prices that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I believed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the disadvantages here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will at some point produce a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a great solution for anybody looking to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system much exceeds lots of 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 fairly inexpensive of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unusual. 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 per month.
Anyways, I do not create review blog posts frequently. I just do when I really utilize the device myself and would suggest it to a buddy.
I wish you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.