Over two years ago, I was reading among my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and promptly began wrecking How Many People Use Beehiiv.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time developer is difficult. I’m typically getting pitched various devices and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional because I spent the last six months checking out various email and e-newsletter systems to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic choices for writing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me provide a precise “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it super very easy to create and send out e-mails, and offers me tools that help me assess metrics and obtain even more customers.
I believe I’ve lastly discovered the appropriate tool.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it very easy to design, write, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous employees at the popular e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally choose it as my newsletter platform of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter system for quite time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it concerned lastly releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain several e-newsletter makers appreciate prominent newsletters with millions of customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have wonderful material, tons of subscribers, and a creative referral program that allows them to get even extra customers.
So, I went on a search to figure out exactly how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more clients? How do they create a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this device actually recognize e-newsletter production 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 took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker development.
Since, any type of maker understands, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the right newsletter stack (that ranges) frequently implies making use of multiple different devices to help attain one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish referrals. It can get pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was cost-free to begin utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that desires a system that enables them to send custom-made newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, start-up, or material maker, you should seriously thinking about trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you really wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good indicator that people like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a wonderful platform made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own web site and make use of the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a website similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own website already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site customers right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to permit individuals to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to utilize various marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack choice.
How to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Register for a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you accessibility to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, external embed forms, and extra. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding How Many People Use Beehiiv
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise choose your brand colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed info on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start creating,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Examine.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning writing is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down right into sectors), Expand 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, Design is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you wish to discuss, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin writing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– focus on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and straightforward user interface for composing.
When you begin creating, you can enhance headings, include links, and design your material just how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of options for different sorts of web content like videos, links, pictures, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is also constantly launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a great deal a lot more content features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, 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, include your logo design, 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 design.
You can edit history colors, borders, spacing, fonts, image layouts, and much more. I’m not going to go through ever single point you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Simply check out the system completely free and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a great publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter developer.
Below are several of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely very easy to create and send out emails. I pointed out above a few of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the far better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive an internet site. Think about it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a place where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, offer you a site. However, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a personalized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv website or via embed forms.
If you currently have an internet site, and want individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed form. This is what I make use of on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 various choices– a full width, a fixed width, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to onward UTM specifications for tracking purposes– rather neat.
However, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working on updates for these, however I mentioned a couple of problems 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 system, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your listing to forward your e-mails to friends and associates and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your listing, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you desire. I have actually appear several newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you an additional opportunity for growing your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this post.
Premium registrations
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership earnings is certainly a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be really lucrative depending upon what your e-newsletter has to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among the important things I enjoy about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and basic the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber matter How Many People Use Beehiiv.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer matter increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you everything you need to get started and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, polls, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for many customers.
I’m uncertain exactly how the system business economics work on this, but beehiiv is definitely more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to establish and start sending out e-newsletters for free.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Lots of adaptability with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Produce costs options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen an additional newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However obviously, I do not want to be biased so I’m going to state some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the cons I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my website building system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter too much detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow review if you ‘d like to discover more.
Today, there actually is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t like using iframe’s since they have a tendency to decrease my website a little bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s really obvious when you’re on a slow web link. Yet I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not use a routine Webflow type (which I like using). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier but that would just add additional expenses that I do not require. To be truthful, 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 outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point produce a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a fantastic service for anybody seeking to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter system much surpasses lots of that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively economical for what they are. Paying just $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 could cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t create evaluation blog posts commonly. I only do when I really use the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a good friend.
I wish you discovered some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.