Over two years ago, I read one of my preferred e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and instantaneously began tearing up Can I Use Beehiiv For Free.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m usually obtaining pitched various tools and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months experimenting with different e-mail and newsletter platforms to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful choices for creating e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me fully customize my newsletter styles, makes it extremely simple to write and send e-mails, and provides me tools that assist me examine metrics and get even more clients.
I think I’ve lastly discovered the best tool.
However, I know beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it easy to design, compose, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous staff members at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly opt for it as my e-newsletter system of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern newsletter system for fairly time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it pertained to lastly releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain many newsletter creators appreciate popular e-newsletters with countless customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have great content, lots of customers, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get even more customers.
So, I took place a quest to determine exactly how these big 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 get more clients? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool really recognize e-newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the very first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Since, any designer recognizes, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the ideal newsletter stack (that scales) often suggests using several different devices to assist achieve one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to set up referrals. It can get pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was complimentary to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content developer that desires a platform that permits them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, start-up, or material designer, you ought to seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you actually end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good indication that people like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a wonderful platform made use of by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own web site and utilize the system as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while developing 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 much better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a website comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own site already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your web site subscribers straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable individuals to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to leverage different marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Exactly how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you accessibility to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, external embed kinds, and extra. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just starting (or for those seeking a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Can I Use Beehiiv For Free
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise choose your brand name colors and design to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described information on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning composing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and damage them down right 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you want to cover, I advise just mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and user-friendly user interface for composing.
Once you begin writing, you can optimize headings, add links, and design your web content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of options for various types of web content like videos, links, pictures, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise regularly launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot much more content features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time clients, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, picture styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before solitary thing you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Just try out the platform totally free and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it an excellent publishing system for any newsletter designer.
Here are some of the essential features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it super very easy to compose and send out e-mails. I mentioned over several of the important things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive a web site. Consider it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, give you an internet site. However, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a customized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or with embed forms.
If you already have a web site, and desire individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed kind. This is what I use on this web 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 three various choices– a full width, a dealt with width, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM parameters for tracking functions– pretty neat.
However, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the team is working with updates for these, yet I stated a couple of issues I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is an option for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your checklist to forward your emails to close friends and coworkers and if they get other individuals to register for your list, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve appear numerous e-newsletter business offer incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you one more opportunity for expanding your email list.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs memberships
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration profits is certainly a monster of its own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” problems of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be very financially rewarding depending on what your newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I enjoy about beehiiv is how tidy and easy the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Can I Use Beehiiv For Free.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client matter go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you everything you need to begin and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom domain, surveys, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite generous in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for many users.
I’m unsure just how the system economics deal with this, but beehiiv is definitely cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are some of the benefits and drawbacks 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 newsletter system of selection:
Easy to establish and begin sending e-newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Lots of adaptability with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Develop premium alternatives to generate income from.
Polls.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter system that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
However of course, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the cons I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized font styles.
I use Webflow as my internet site structure platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow evaluation if you wish to find out more.
Now, there really is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t like using iframe’s since they have a tendency to decrease my web site a bit. Each time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s extremely visible when you get on a slow-moving internet connection. However I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow form (which I enjoy using). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would just add extra expenses that I do not require. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the cons here. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually create a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a great solution for anyone aiming to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform far surpasses lots of that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively inexpensive for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is unprecedented. 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 monthly.
Anyways, I don’t write evaluation posts typically. I just do when I really utilize the device myself and would recommend it to a pal.
I wish you discovered some clarity on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.