Over two years back, I was reading among my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and immediately started destroying Does Beehiiv Have a Free Plan.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m often obtaining pitched different devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological because I spent the last 6 months checking out different e-mail and newsletter systems to help construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent options for composing newsletters. However I couldn’t locate one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me fully customize my newsletter designs, makes it incredibly easy to write and send out e-mails, and gives me tools that aid me examine metrics and get even more clients.
I assume I have actually lastly discovered the ideal device.
However, I understand beehiiv may 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 newsletter system that makes it easy to layout, write, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous employees at the well-known newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help makers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short article, I’m going to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly choose it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day newsletter platform for fairly a long time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it concerned finally launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain many newsletter developers appreciate prominent newsletters with numerous clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have terrific content, lots of subscribers, and a smart referral program that allows them to get even more clients.
So, I took place a quest to find out exactly how these big newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they create an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool truly recognize newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the very first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Due to the fact that, any type of maker understands, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the right e-newsletter pile (that ranges) often indicates utilizing numerous different devices to help achieve one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to set up references. It can get costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was free to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content designer that desires a system that enables them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media company, startup, or web content maker, you need to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to start and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a good sign that people like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a terrific system used by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own website and use the system as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a website similar to Substack. However, if you have your own internet site currently, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your internet site clients right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to leverage different marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
Just how to begin making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, outside embed types, and more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Does Beehiiv Have a Free Plan
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally choose your brand design and colors to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined information on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin creating,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Analyze.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot over), Begin writing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down right into sections), Expand is where you have access to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Layout is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Composing 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 wish to cover, I recommend simply going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Start creating”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and easy to use user interface for creating.
As soon as you start composing, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your material just how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for various kinds of web content like video clips, web links, photos, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is also constantly launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a great deal much more content features depending upon when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your email template and change some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a description, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history colors, borders, spacing, fonts, picture formats, and much more. I’m not going to undergo ever before solitary thing you can maximize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Just try out the system free of charge and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it an excellent publishing platform for any kind of newsletter developer.
Here are several of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it super simple to write and send out emails. I pointed out over several of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a web site. Consider it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, provide you a web site. However, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or with embed forms.
If you currently have a site, and want individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different choices– a full width, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also a choice for acknowledgment tracking if you want to forward UTM criteria for tracking functions– rather neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is dealing with updates for these, however I discussed a few worries I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your checklist to forward your e-mails to good friends and associates and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your listing, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever type you want. I have actually seem numerous newsletter business provide benefits 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 avenue for growing your email list.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this post.
Premium registrations
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration earnings is absolutely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” issues of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be extremely profitable relying on what your newsletter needs to use. For example, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the things I enjoy about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter Does Beehiiv Have a Free Plan.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client matter rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you everything you require to start and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 each month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for several customers.
I’m unsure just how the unit business economics work with this, however beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Right here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and begin sending newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and contemporary client analytics.
Lots of versatility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Create premium options to monetize.
Polls.
To be truthful, I have not seen another newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But obviously, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I’ve located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my web site structure system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to find out more.
Now, there actually is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than using an iframe embed. I personally do not like making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to reduce my web site a little bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the page. It’s very recognizable when you get on a sluggish internet connection. But I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a routine Webflow type (which I love using). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier but that would just add additional costs that I do not require. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I thought I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the cons here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a fantastic service for anybody looking to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system far exceeds lots of that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively inexpensive wherefore they are. Paying only $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 could cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose testimonial blog posts usually. I just do when I actually use the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a friend.
I hope you found some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.