Over two years earlier, I was reading among my favored email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and promptly began wrecking How Good Is Beehiiv.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent maker is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched various devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last six months trying different email and e-newsletter systems to aid build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic options for composing newsletters. But I could not discover one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it very easy to compose and send out e-mails, and provides me tools that aid me analyze metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I assume I’ve finally located the right tool.
But, I understand 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 e-newsletter system that makes it very easy to design, compose, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous workers at the well-known e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly select it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter system for fairly time currently. I’ve hesitated hard when it came to lastly releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure several newsletter developers admire prominent newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have terrific content, lots of clients, and a clever referral program that permits them to get even more customers.
So, I took place a quest to determine exactly how these big 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 customers? How do they develop a newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this device truly comprehend e-newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator development.
Since, any designer knows, you require growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the best e-newsletter pile (that ranges) often implies using multiple various devices to aid attain one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to set up referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was cost-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 creator that wants a platform that enables them to send custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most successful newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or web content maker, you need to seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you in fact wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indication that individuals like reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a wonderful platform made use of by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one option for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv also offers you a website comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own website already, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to permit individuals to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
Exactly how to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you accessibility to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, outside embed forms, and extra. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just starting (or for those seeking a new platform to move to).
Onboarding How Good Is Beehiiv
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you used?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally pick your brand colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have outlined info on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start writing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Assess.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your major control center (screenshot over), Beginning composing is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your customers are (and damage them down right into segments), Expand is where you have accessibility 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you intend to discuss, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly user interface for composing.
Once you start writing, you can enhance headings, include web links, and design your content how you like.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for various types of web content like videos, web links, pictures, and more.
The team at beehiiv is also constantly launching item feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a whole lot extra content features relying on when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your email template and readjust some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture styles, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before single point you can optimize with your e-mail template because it’s a whole lot. Just check out the platform totally free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a great posting system for any kind of e-newsletter designer.
Right here are several of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it super easy to write and send out e-mails. I discussed above some of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll save you some additional reading.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the much better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) live on a website. Think of it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a place where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, offer you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom-made domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade 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 directly from your beehiiv website or via embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and desire people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed type. This is what I use on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different options– a complete width, a fixed width, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for attribution tracking if you intend to onward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the team is dealing with updates for these, but I mentioned a couple of problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your list to onward your e-mails to good friends and colleagues and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever type you want. I’ve appear several e-newsletter companies offer incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you an additional avenue for growing your e-mail checklist.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this post.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration revenue is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” problems of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying clients. This can be extremely financially rewarding depending on what your newsletter has to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among the important things I love about beehiiv is just how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count How Good Is Beehiiv.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber count increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you everything you require to get going and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, surveys, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit choice for lots of customers.
I’m unsure exactly how the system economics service this, but beehiiv is absolutely less costly (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters completely free.
Tidy and modern customer analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Create costs options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be honest, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But obviously, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I have actually located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my site structure system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much information why I like Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow review if you ‘d like to find out more.
Now, there actually is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site besides utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t like using iframe’s since they often tend to reduce my internet site a bit. Each time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s very noticeable when you’re on a slow-moving net connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a normal Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are methods around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would certainly simply add extra expenses that I do not require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I believed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the cons right here. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately develop a far better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent option for any individual seeking to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter system far exceeds numerous that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly cheap wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unheard of. 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 per month.
Anyways, I don’t write review blog posts commonly. I only do when I really utilize the tool myself and would recommend it to a close friend.
I wish you located some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.