Over two years earlier, I was reading among my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and promptly began tearing up Framer Beehiiv.
I wasn’t certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a permanent creator is difficult. I’m often getting pitched different devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional because I spent the last 6 months trying different email and e-newsletter systems to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent alternatives for creating e-newsletters. But I could not locate one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter styles, makes it extremely easy to compose and send out emails, and provides me devices that help me evaluate metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I believe I have actually ultimately located the ideal tool.
Yet, I understand beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to layout, create, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former employees at the renowned e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly opt for it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter system for fairly some time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it concerned ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure several e-newsletter designers look up to popular e-newsletters with numerous customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have excellent content, lots of clients, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even more customers.
So, I took place a quest to figure out just how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they produce an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool actually comprehend e-newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the very first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I understood this was going to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Since, any type of developer knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the appropriate e-newsletter pile (that scales) often implies making use of numerous various devices to assist achieve one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that desires a system that permits them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or material developer, you should seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you really end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indication that individuals love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a great platform made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own internet site and use the platform as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv also gives you a web site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own site currently, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your website subscribers right to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable people to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
Exactly how to start using beehiiv email marketing software application.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, external embed types, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting out (or for those looking for a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding Framer Beehiiv
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also choose your brand design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed info on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start creating,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning writing is where you create and publish newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down right into segments), Grow is where you have access 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, Style is where you develop your newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you wish to discuss, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Begin composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly user interface for composing.
When you start writing, you can optimize headings, include links, and style your material exactly how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of choices for different kinds of content like videos, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise continuously launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a great deal more content features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your email template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, photo formats, and extra. I’m not going to undergo ever before solitary point you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Just try out the platform for free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a great posting system for any e-newsletter creator.
Here are some of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it incredibly easy to write and send e-mails. I stated above several of the things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely one of the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive a site. Think about it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you an internet site. However, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom-made domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is essential. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or via embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three various alternatives– a full width, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to forward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working with updates for these, but I mentioned a couple of problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your list to forward your e-mails to good friends and associates and if they get other people to sign up for your checklist, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve seem lots of e-newsletter firms offer benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you one more opportunity for growing your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs memberships
They claim all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration revenue 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 rewarding depending on what your newsletter has to use. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that produces millions in income a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among the important things I love concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and easy the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Framer Beehiiv.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you need to start and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority 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 certainly pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for many customers.
I’m uncertain exactly how the system business economics deal with this, however beehiiv is absolutely less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are some of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and begin sending out newsletters for free.
Tidy and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Great deals of versatility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce costs options to monetize.
Polls.
To be truthful, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But naturally, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m going to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my website structure system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much detail why I enjoy Webflow so much yet you can review my Webflow review if you would love to learn more.
Today, there truly is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than using an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to slow down my internet site a little bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s extremely noticeable when you’re on a slow-moving net link. However I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not use a routine Webflow kind (which I love utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would certainly simply include extra costs that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I believed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the disadvantages below. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point produce a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent solution for any individual wanting to study the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system much exceeds several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather inexpensive for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers 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 might cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not create review blog posts typically. I only do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would recommend it to a pal.
I hope you located some clarity on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.