Over two years ago, I read among my preferred email 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 quickly started tearing up FounderPass Beehiiv.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m usually obtaining pitched various devices and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I invested the last six months trying out various e-mail and newsletter systems to aid develop my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific options for creating newsletters. However I couldn’t locate one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully customize my newsletter layouts, makes it extremely very easy to create and send emails, and provides me tools that help me assess metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I believe I have actually ultimately discovered the best tool.
But, 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 platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to design, create, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former workers at the renowned newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist makers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately select it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for quite time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it pertained to lastly introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make sure several e-newsletter designers admire popular newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have terrific content, lots of subscribers, and a creative referral program that allows them to get back at extra clients.
So, I took place a hunt to determine just how these large e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they create an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device truly understand newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Due to the fact that, any type of maker recognizes, you need growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the best newsletter stack (that ranges) frequently implies using several different tools to help accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish referrals. It can get pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was free to start making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content maker that wants a system that enables them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most successful newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or web content creator, you ought to seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you actually wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a good sign that people enjoy reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great system used by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your very own website and make use of the system as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also gives you an internet site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own website already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your web site customers right to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit individuals to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to utilize various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack choice.
Exactly how to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, external embed types, and extra. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting (or for those seeking a new system to move to).
Onboarding FounderPass Beehiiv
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll likewise choose your brand name colors and design to see to it your 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 certainly have described information on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning writing,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Examine.” And at the very lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot over), Beginning writing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and break them down right into segments), 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 newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you want to cover, I recommend simply going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and easy to use user interface for creating.
Once you start creating, you can optimize headings, add web links, and design your web content how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of choices for various types of web content like video clips, web links, pictures, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise frequently releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a lot a lot more material features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your e-mail template and change some settings.
Below, 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 subscribers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo layouts, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever solitary thing you can enhance with your email template since it’s a great deal. Simply try the platform for free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a great posting system for any type of e-newsletter creator.
Right here are a few of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely simple to create and send emails. I discussed above a few of the important things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely among the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) survive a site. Think of it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or via embed forms.
If you already have a web site, and want individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to use an embed type. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various alternatives– a full size, a taken care of width, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to forward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the group is working with updates for these, but I pointed out a couple of concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your list to ahead your e-mails to close friends and coworkers and if they obtain other people to register for your listing, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve appear numerous newsletter business offer incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you another method for expanding your e-mail listing.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this article.
Premium registrations
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration income is most definitely a monster of its own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” issues of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely lucrative depending on what your newsletter has to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that creates millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the important things I like about beehiiv is how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count FounderPass Beehiiv.
You get access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you every little thing you need to get going and expand your newsletter (up to 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, surveys, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for many customers.
I’m not exactly sure exactly how the system business economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is definitely more affordable (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending e-newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and contemporary client analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce costs choices to monetize.
Polls.
To be truthful, I have not seen another e-newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However obviously, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized typefaces.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site building system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to go in too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow review if you want to find out more.
Right now, there truly is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than using an iframe embed. I directly don’t like using iframe’s since they have a tendency to reduce my web site a bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s very noticeable when you get on a slow-moving net link. But I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a regular Webflow form (which I like making use of). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would simply add additional expenses that I do not require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the cons here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will at some point produce a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for anyone looking to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform far exceeds numerous that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather inexpensive of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create review articles commonly. I just do when I actually utilize the device myself and would advise it to a buddy.
I hope you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.