Over 2 years earlier, I read among my favorite 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 started wrecking Does Beehiiv Work with Shopify.
I had not been sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time developer is tough. I’m commonly obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological since I spent the last 6 months experimenting with various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to aid construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great choices for creating e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with many existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my e-newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly simple to create and send out emails, and gives me devices that help me evaluate metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I think I’ve lastly located the right device.
But, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to layout, create, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous employees at the famous newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist developers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m going to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly choose it as my newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for quite time currently. I’ve hesitated hard when it came to lastly releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain several newsletter designers appreciate prominent e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have wonderful content, lots of clients, and a creative referral program that enables them to get back at much more subscribers.
So, I went on a hunt to identify how these big newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device truly comprehend e-newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker growth.
Due to the fact that, any type of creator understands, you need development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the ideal newsletter stack (that ranges) typically implies using several various devices to aid attain one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was totally free to begin utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that desires a platform that enables them to send custom-made newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or web content maker, you must seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s entirely free to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you really end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a great sign that individuals love reviewing 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 an excellent system made use of by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own website and use the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a website comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own web site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your web site customers right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to leverage different marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you accessibility to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, external embed forms, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those seeking a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding Does Beehiiv Work with Shopify
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll then produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also select your brand design and colors to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning creating,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you produce and publish newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down into sections), Grow is where you have access 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, Style is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you want to cover, I recommend simply going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and user-friendly user interface for composing.
As soon as you start writing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and style your content just how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for various kinds of material like videos, web links, images, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is likewise regularly launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a great deal more content features depending on when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to design your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, font styles, image styles, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever solitary point you can optimize with your email template because it’s a great deal. Simply check out the platform free of charge and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of impressive features that make it a terrific publishing system for any kind of newsletter developer.
Right here are several of the important features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely simple to compose and send emails. I pointed out over a few of the things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll save you some additional reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) reside on a website. Think of it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, give you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom-made domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or via embed types.
If you currently have an internet site, and want individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed kind. 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 types, you have three different alternatives– a full size, a repaired width, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you want to ahead UTM criteria for tracking objectives– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the group is servicing updates for these, but I discussed a couple of issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your listing to ahead your emails to friends and coworkers and if they obtain other people to sign up for your checklist, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually seem several newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you one more method for growing your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this article.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership revenue is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” problems of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be really profitable depending on what your e-newsletter needs to use. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that creates millions in income a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among the important things I enjoy about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and basic the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter Does Beehiiv Work with Shopify.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer count increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you everything you require to start and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit option for numerous customers.
I’m uncertain how the system business economics deal with this, however beehiiv is most definitely more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and start sending newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and contemporary customer analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Develop costs options to monetize.
Polls.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen another e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
But obviously, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m going to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I have actually discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized typefaces.
I make use of Webflow as my web site building platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much detail why I love Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow evaluation if you wish to learn more.
Today, there actually is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not such as utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to decrease my web site a little bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s really recognizable when you get on a slow net connection. But I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a regular Webflow type (which I enjoy utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would certainly just include additional costs that I do not require. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the disadvantages below. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will eventually create a much better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a wonderful service for any individual aiming to study the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform much surpasses lots of that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively inexpensive for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not create review messages commonly. I only do when I really make use of the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a close friend.
I hope you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.