Over two years ago, I read among my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and instantly started destroying Dan Koe Beehiiv.
I wasn’t certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent developer is difficult. I’m usually obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological because I invested the last six months trying out various email and newsletter systems to help develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great choices for writing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t locate one that made me give a certain “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 completely tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it very simple to compose and send emails, and gives me tools that assist me evaluate metrics and get even more clients.
I believe I’ve lastly located the appropriate device.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to layout, compose, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous staff members at the famous e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist developers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally choose it as my newsletter platform of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve watched for a modern-day e-newsletter system for rather time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it concerned finally releasing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous e-newsletter makers respect popular e-newsletters with millions of clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have fantastic web content, tons of customers, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get even a lot more clients.
So, I took place a quest to find out how these big newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they create a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool actually recognize newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the initial marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on designer growth.
Since, any designer recognizes, you need growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that scales) usually suggests using several different tools to assist accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish references. It can obtain pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was complimentary to begin making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that wants a platform that permits them to send custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or web content developer, you must seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to begin and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a great sign that individuals love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great platform used by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own website and utilize the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv also provides you a site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own internet site currently, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site clients directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to utilize various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you accessibility to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, outside embed types, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those just beginning (or for those seeking a new system to move to).
Onboarding Dan Koe Beehiiv
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet 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
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start creating,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Evaluate.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your customers are (and damage them down right into sections), Grow 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 newsletter with ads, Design is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you wish to cover, I advise just mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Start composing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and user-friendly interface for writing.
When you begin creating, you can maximize headings, include web links, and style your material just how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for various kinds of content like videos, web links, photos, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is also continuously releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a lot a lot more content features depending on when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your email template and change some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time clients, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, picture formats, and more. I’m not going to go through ever solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Simply experiment with the platform absolutely free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it an excellent publishing system for any kind of newsletter designer.
Below are a few of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely easy to compose and send out e-mails. I stated over a few of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll save you some additional reading.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) reside on an internet site. Think about it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom-made domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or through embed types.
If you already have a site, and want people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed form. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various alternatives– a complete size, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for attribution tracking if you want to onward UTM criteria for tracking functions– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the team is dealing with updates for these, however I pointed out a couple of issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your list to ahead your e-mails to good friends and associates and if they obtain other people to register for your listing, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I’ve appear numerous newsletter companies offer rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another opportunity for expanding your e-mail checklist.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this write-up.
Premium registrations
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration profits is certainly a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be really profitable depending upon what your newsletter has to offer. For example, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
One of the important things I like concerning beehiiv is how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber matter Dan Koe Beehiiv.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client count rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you require to get started and expand your newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit choice for many customers.
I’m not exactly sure exactly how the system economics work on this, but beehiiv is certainly less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters free of cost.
Clean and modern client analytics.
Lots of adaptability with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce premium options to generate income from.
Polls.
To be truthful, I have not seen another newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet of course, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m going to mention some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the disadvantages I have actually located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized typefaces.
I make use of Webflow as my site building system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much detail why I like Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow evaluation if you want to discover more.
Today, there really is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t like utilizing iframe’s since they often tend to decrease my web site a bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s extremely obvious when you’re on a slow-moving net link. But I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow form (which I love making use of). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly just add added prices that I do not need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the cons here. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually produce a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a terrific remedy for anyone seeking to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system far exceeds 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 economical of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation messages usually. I only do when I really make use of the device myself and would recommend it to a close friend.
I wish you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.