Over 2 years ago, I was reading among my favored e-mail e-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 instantly started destroying Digital Surfer Beehiiv.
I had not been certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched various tools and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I invested the last 6 months trying out various email and e-newsletter platforms to assist construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific choices for writing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The concern with many existing newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter designs, makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send out e-mails, and gives me tools that aid me assess metrics and obtain more customers.
I believe I’ve finally discovered the ideal tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it simple to design, create, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the popular newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help designers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately select it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually watched for a modern newsletter platform for fairly some time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it pertained to lastly launching my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure numerous newsletter makers admire preferred e-newsletters with countless customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have great content, tons of clients, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get even more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to identify how these large newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they create an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this device truly recognize newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Since, any kind of designer recognizes, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the right e-newsletter pile (that ranges) usually suggests utilizing multiple various devices to help accomplish one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can get costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that wants a platform that allows them to send custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or content maker, you should seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you really wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a good indicator that individuals enjoy reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful platform used by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your very own website and use the system as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also offers you a web site similar to Substack. However, if you have your own web site already, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your website clients right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable people to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
Exactly how to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, outside embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those searching for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Digital Surfer Beehiiv
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll then create a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand name colors and design to ensure your 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 have described details on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start creating,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot over), Beginning writing is where you create and release newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your clients are (and break them down 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 ads, Layout is where you make your e-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.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you wish to discuss, I recommend simply going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and easy to use interface for writing.
Once you start composing, you can maximize headings, include web links, and style your content just how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of alternatives for different types of content like video clips, links, pictures, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is also constantly releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a lot more material features relying on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and extra. I’m not going to experience ever before single thing you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply try the platform completely free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any newsletter creator.
Here are some of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send e-mails. I stated over a few of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll save you some extra reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the much better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive on a site. Think about it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, offer you a web site. However, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a customized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is very important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or via embed kinds.
If you currently have a web site, and want individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed type. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 various options– a full size, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for attribution monitoring if you want to forward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make sure the team is dealing with updates for these, yet I pointed out a few issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your listing to forward your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they get other people to subscribe to your listing, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually seem lots of newsletter firms give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional method for expanding your e-mail listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs registrations
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Subscription profits is absolutely a monster 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” issues of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be really profitable depending upon what your newsletter needs to use. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of the things I like about beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count Digital Surfer Beehiiv.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you everything you need to get started and expand your newsletter (up to 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, customized domain, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for lots of individuals.
I’m not sure just how the unit business economics work on this, however beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are a few of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters completely free.
Tidy and contemporary client analytics.
Lots of versatility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create premium alternatives to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen one more newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet certainly, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the cons I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized font styles.
I use Webflow as my internet site structure platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive detail why I love Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow testimonial if you wish to learn more.
Right now, there actually is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website aside from making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not like using iframe’s because they often tend to slow down my web site a bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the web page. It’s extremely obvious when you get on a slow-moving web link. Yet I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow type (which I love making use of). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would simply add extra expenses that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I thought I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the cons below. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a much better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a great remedy for anyone wanting to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system far surpasses many that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively economical for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write testimonial blog posts frequently. I only do when I in fact utilize the device myself and would advise it to a close friend.
I wish you found some quality on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.