Over 2 years ago, I was reading among my favorite e-mail e-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 immediately started destroying How To Use Beehiiv.
I wasn’t certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a permanent developer is tough. I’m usually getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I spent the last 6 months checking out different email and newsletter systems to assist construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent choices for writing newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully personalize my newsletter styles, makes it extremely easy to write and send emails, and offers me devices that help me analyze metrics and obtain even more clients.
I believe I have actually lastly found the ideal tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right 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 easy to layout, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous staff members at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m going to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally go with it as my newsletter system of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter system for quite some time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it involved lastly introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of e-newsletter designers look up to prominent e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have excellent web content, lots of clients, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at a lot more clients.
So, I went on a search to figure out just how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this device really understand newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the very first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Due to the fact that, any maker recognizes, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the right newsletter pile (that ranges) typically implies utilizing several various devices to help attain one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was cost-free to begin making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that wants a platform that allows them to send custom-made newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or web content creator, you must seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s entirely free to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you really wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indication that individuals love reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful platform used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise provides you an internet site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own website currently, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your internet site customers straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to take advantage of different marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software application.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, exterior embed types, and a lot more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those trying to find a new system to move to).
Onboarding How To Use Beehiiv
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described details on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start creating,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot over), Begin writing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your subscribers are (and break them down right into sections), 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 newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you wish to write about, I advise just going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and straightforward interface for composing.
When you begin creating, you can maximize headings, add links, and design your content exactly how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of choices for various kinds of web content like video clips, web links, images, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is additionally constantly launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot a lot more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to create your email template and change some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time clients, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, photo styles, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before single thing you can maximize with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Just check out the platform absolutely free and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it an excellent publishing platform for any newsletter developer.
Right here are some of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send out emails. I pointed out over some of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) live on a site. Think about it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a location where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, offer you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or with embed forms.
If you already have a website, and desire people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. This is what I use 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 kinds, you have 3 various choices– a full size, a fixed width, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to onward UTM specifications for tracking functions– quite cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the team is working with updates for these, but I discussed a few concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your list to forward your e-mails to buddies and coworkers and if they get other people to sign up for your listing, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever type you want. I’ve seem numerous e-newsletter companies give rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you an additional method 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 discuss all the plans later on in this article.
Costs registrations
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription profits is certainly a monster of its very own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” problems of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be really profitable depending upon what your newsletter needs to offer. For example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that generates millions in profits a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among the things I love concerning beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count How To Use Beehiiv.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client count go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you require to get started and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, polls, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit choice for numerous users.
I’m not sure how the system economics work with this, yet beehiiv is most definitely more affordable (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while utilizing 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 e-newsletters absolutely free.
Tidy and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Lots of flexibility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create costs choices to generate income from.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen another e-newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
But naturally, I do not wish to be biased so I’m going to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the disadvantages I have actually located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my site building system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive detail why I love Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you would love to find out more.
Right now, there truly is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not like using iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to slow down my website a little bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s really recognizable when you get on a slow-moving web connection. But I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow kind (which I like using). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would certainly just include extra expenses that I don’t require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I thought I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually create a better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a fantastic option for any person looking to dive into the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform much exceeds numerous that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively low-cost of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not compose testimonial articles usually. I only do when I really use the tool myself and would recommend it to a buddy.
I wish you discovered some clarity on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.