Over two years earlier, I was reading one of my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantaneously began destroying Elden Mirzoian Beehiiv.
I had not been certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a permanent creator is tough. I’m commonly obtaining pitched various devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological because I spent the last 6 months experimenting with various e-mail and newsletter systems to assist build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful options for creating e-newsletters. However I could not locate one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The problem with many existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my e-newsletter styles, makes it very easy to compose and send out emails, and gives me tools that aid me analyze metrics and obtain even more clients.
I think I have actually lastly located the ideal tool.
However, I know beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to design, compose, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the renowned newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a modern-day newsletter system for fairly a long time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it pertained to finally introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make certain lots of e-newsletter creators appreciate prominent e-newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have fantastic web content, tons of subscribers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get even more customers.
So, I took place a hunt to identify how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more clients? How do they create an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this tool really understand e-newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the initial marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I understood this was going to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s focused on developer growth.
Due to the fact that, any kind of developer knows, you need growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the right e-newsletter pile (that ranges) usually means making use of multiple various tools to help attain one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can get pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was free 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 designer that desires a system that enables them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or content maker, you must seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to start and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you in fact wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a great sign that people love reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is an excellent platform used by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own web site and utilize the system as your all-in-one option for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv also offers you a website similar to Substack. However, if you have your own internet site already, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your web site clients right to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow individuals to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to utilize various marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you accessibility to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, outside embed forms, and more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those seeking a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Elden Mirzoian Beehiiv
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise choose your brand name colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have described details on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start creating,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your clients are (and break them down right into segments), Expand 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 advertisements, Design is where you make your newsletter landing page and article template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you intend to discuss, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin creating”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and straightforward user interface for creating.
As soon as you start composing, you can enhance headings, include web links, and style your web content how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of options for various sorts of material like video clips, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise regularly launching item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a lot a lot more material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and change some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, photo formats, and more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before solitary point you can maximize with your email template since it’s a great deal. Simply check out the system for free and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a terrific publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter developer.
Here are several of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it extremely simple to create and send e-mails. I mentioned above several of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the far better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) live on a web site. Think about it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a personalized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv web site or with embed kinds.
If you already have a website, and want people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed type. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three different options– a full size, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the team is servicing updates for these, yet I discussed a few worries I had in the pros and cons area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your listing to forward your e-mails to friends and associates and if they get other individuals to register for your listing, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve seem several e-newsletter business provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you one more avenue for expanding your email checklist.
However, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this article.
Costs memberships
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription revenue is most definitely a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be really rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter has to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among the important things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is just how tidy and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter Elden Mirzoian Beehiiv.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you everything you need to begin and grow your newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for many customers.
I’m not sure how the system economics service this, however beehiiv is absolutely less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters for free.
Clean and modern customer analytics.
Lots of versatility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Develop premium alternatives to generate income from.
Polls.
To be honest, I haven’t seen one more newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However certainly, I do not intend to be biased so I’m mosting likely to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I have actually found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made fonts.
I use Webflow as my internet site building platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in too much information why I like Webflow so much yet you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to discover more.
Today, there actually is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as utilizing iframe’s since they tend to slow down my site a little bit. Each time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the web page. It’s very visible when you get on a slow-moving internet link. But I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow kind (which I like using). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier but that would just include additional expenses that I do not need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will at some point develop a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is a wonderful option for any individual wanting to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter system much surpasses lots of that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather inexpensive of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not create review posts typically. I only do when I really make use of the tool myself and would recommend it to a pal.
I wish you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.