Over two years back, I was reading one of my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and instantly began tearing up Can I Sell Products on Beehiiv.
I had not been sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time designer is difficult. I’m usually obtaining pitched different devices and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological because I invested the last 6 months experimenting with various email and newsletter platforms to assist construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great choices for composing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me completely customize my newsletter layouts, makes it very very easy to write and send out e-mails, and offers me devices that help me analyze metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I assume I have actually ultimately located the ideal tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact appropriate 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 very easy to style, compose, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous workers at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly select it as my newsletter platform of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a contemporary e-newsletter system for fairly a long time currently. I’ve postponed hard when it came to lastly launching my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure several e-newsletter designers admire prominent newsletters with millions of clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have great material, lots of subscribers, and a creative referral program that enables them to get even more customers.
So, I took place a quest to determine just how these big e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they produce a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this device really understand e-newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the very first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I understood this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator growth.
Because, any type of creator understands, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the ideal newsletter stack (that ranges) commonly means utilizing multiple different tools to help attain one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to set up referrals. It can get costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was totally free to start 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 enables them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or web content creator, you ought to seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to get started and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you actually wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good sign that individuals like reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific system utilized by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own web site and make use of the system as your all-in-one service for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a website similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own web site currently, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your website customers directly to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable people to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
Exactly how to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, outside embed types, and more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just starting (or for those trying to find a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Can I Sell Products on Beehiiv
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and much more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive 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 process, you’ll additionally select your brand colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed info on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning writing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and break them down right into sectors), Expand is where you have accessibility 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, Style is where you make your newsletter landing page and post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you want to write about, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and easy to use user interface for creating.
When you start composing, you can maximize headings, add web links, and design your content just how you like.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for different kinds of web content like video clips, web links, images, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally frequently launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot more content features relying on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo styles, and extra. I’m not going to undergo ever before single point you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a great deal. Just experiment with the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a great posting platform for any e-newsletter maker.
Here are a few of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it extremely easy to write and send e-mails. I stated above several of things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the far better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) reside on a web site. Consider it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, provide you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or through embed forms.
If you already have a web site, and want people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed kind. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different alternatives– a complete size, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to onward UTM specifications for tracking functions– quite neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working with updates for these, but I discussed a couple of problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your listing to forward your emails to buddies and colleagues and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve appear lots of e-newsletter firms offer incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you one more avenue for expanding your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership profits is certainly a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” issues of your newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be extremely profitable depending upon what your newsletter needs to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that produces millions in profits a year just by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
One of the things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is just how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count Can I Sell Products on Beehiiv.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on just how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client count go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you every little thing you need to get going and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and accessibility to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for many customers.
I’m not sure exactly how the system economics work on this, however beehiiv is definitely less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are some of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
Easy to set up and begin sending out newsletters for free.
Clean and modern subscriber analytics.
Lots of flexibility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create costs options to generate income from.
Polls.
To be honest, I have not seen another e-newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
But obviously, I do not want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the disadvantages I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom font styles.
I use Webflow as my web site building platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much information why I love Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow review if you would love to discover more.
Now, there truly is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not like making use of iframe’s because they tend to decrease my website a bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s really recognizable when you get on a slow-moving web connection. However I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not utilize a normal Webflow form (which I like using). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would just include extra expenses that I do not require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I believed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually create a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a terrific option for any person wanting to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform much outweighs lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather cheap for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not create testimonial posts commonly. I only do when I in fact utilize the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a buddy.
I wish you discovered some quality on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.