Over 2 years ago, I read among my preferred email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and promptly began wrecking Culture Critic Beehiiv.
I had not been certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time creator is tough. I’m typically getting pitched different devices and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last six months trying various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to aid build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent alternatives for writing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t discover one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it incredibly simple to write and send emails, and provides me tools that help me evaluate metrics and get even more customers.
I assume I’ve ultimately located the right tool.
But, I understand beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal 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 layout, write, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by previous workers at the popular newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist designers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly choose it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter system for rather time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it concerned ultimately launching my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure many newsletter makers admire popular newsletters with countless clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have fantastic material, lots of customers, and a creative referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to identify just how these large e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more clients? How do they create an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool truly recognize e-newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the very 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 concentrated on maker development.
Because, any kind of creator understands, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that ranges) commonly means making use of numerous different tools to help achieve one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish references. It can get costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to start making use of, it was a no-brainer 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 newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or material designer, you should seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a good sign that people like reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a great system made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv also provides you an internet site similar to Substack. But, if you have your own web site already, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your website subscribers directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable individuals to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
How to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, external embed kinds, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those searching for a new system to move to).
Onboarding Culture Critic Beehiiv
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally pick your brand name design and colors to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start writing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot above), Begin composing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your customers 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 advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you intend to blog about, I suggest just mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning composing”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and straightforward user interface for writing.
As soon as you begin creating, you can optimize headings, include web links, and style your content how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for different sorts of web content like videos, web links, photos, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally regularly launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a lot extra material features relying on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to design your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, fonts, image styles, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever solitary thing you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just try out the platform free of charge and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a fantastic posting system for any newsletter developer.
Below are some of the important features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to create and send out emails. I pointed out above a few of the important things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll spare you some added reading.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) live on a website. Think about it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, provide you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter right from your beehiiv website or with embed forms.
If you already have an internet site, and want individuals to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed type. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 different alternatives– a complete size, a dealt with size, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to onward UTM parameters for tracking functions– pretty cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working on updates for these, but I stated a couple of worries I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
Among 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 motivate existing subscribers on your listing to onward your e-mails to pals and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever type you want. I have actually appear numerous e-newsletter firms offer rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you one more opportunity for growing your email list.
However, 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 in this article.
Costs subscriptions
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Subscription revenue is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” issues of your newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be really profitable depending upon what your newsletter has to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that generates millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the things I enjoy about beehiiv is how clean and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter Culture Critic Beehiiv.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you everything you require to get started and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain, polls, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for numerous individuals.
I’m uncertain how the system economics work on this, however beehiiv is definitely less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are a few of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters free of charge.
Clean and contemporary customer analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create costs alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
Yet of course, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the cons I’ve found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my web site structure platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much information why I love Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to learn more.
Today, there really is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t like utilizing iframe’s since they often tend to decrease my site a bit. Every single time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s very obvious when you get on a slow internet link. However I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a regular Webflow type (which I like using). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would simply add additional prices that I don’t require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I thought I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the cons here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately develop a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a wonderful solution for any person seeking to dive into the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform far outweighs numerous that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively cheap of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t write review posts often. I only do when I really utilize the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a friend.
I wish you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.