Over two years back, I was reading among my preferred email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantly began wrecking Is Beehiiv Better Than Mailchimp.
I had not been certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time maker is difficult. I’m usually getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last six months trying out various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to aid build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific options for composing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my e-newsletter styles, makes it extremely easy to create and send out emails, and provides me tools that help me assess metrics and get more clients.
I believe I have actually finally found the right tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to design, compose, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former workers at the renowned e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist makers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this article, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally choose it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day e-newsletter system for quite some time now. I’ve hesitated hard when it pertained to lastly releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure several newsletter developers appreciate prominent e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have great content, lots of customers, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get back at extra customers.
So, I went on a search to find out how these big e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more clients? How do they produce a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool actually comprehend newsletter production and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I understood this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Due to the fact that, any kind of designer recognizes, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the right e-newsletter pile (that ranges) often means making use of numerous various tools to aid attain one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish referrals. It can get pricey.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was complimentary to start using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that desires a platform that allows them to send customized newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or material designer, you need to seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you actually end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a good indicator that individuals like reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic platform utilized by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own website and utilize the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you an internet site similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own web site already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your website customers right to your beehiiv email list. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to permit people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to utilize different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those just beginning (or for those searching for a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding Is Beehiiv Better Than Mailchimp
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand name design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed info on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning creating,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Analyze.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you create and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down into sectors), Expand is where you have accessibility 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 newsletter with ads, Style is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you wish to blog about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and easy to use interface for composing.
As soon as you begin creating, you can enhance headings, add links, and style your content how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of options for different types of material like video clips, links, images, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise regularly launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a lot a lot more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a description, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to first time clients, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, fonts, photo layouts, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever solitary thing you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Simply check out the platform for free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it an excellent posting system for any kind of e-newsletter developer.
Right here are a few of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely simple to compose and send e-mails. I discussed over several of the things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive a site. Think of it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, provide you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom-made domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or via embed forms.
If you already have a web site, and desire people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I make use of on this 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 options– a full size, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim installed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution monitoring if you want to ahead UTM specifications for tracking functions– rather cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the group is working on updates for these, however I mentioned a couple of concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your checklist to ahead your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they get other people to register for your listing, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve appear several e-newsletter business offer rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you an additional opportunity for expanding your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this article.
Costs registrations
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership revenue is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be really rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter has to supply. For example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the things I love about beehiiv is how tidy and easy the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Is Beehiiv Better Than Mailchimp.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client matter rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you whatever you require to begin and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain name, surveys, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit option for many users.
I’m not sure how the device business economics deal with this, but beehiiv is certainly cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are a few of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of option:
Easy to establish and start sending out e-newsletters totally free.
Tidy and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Create premium choices to monetize.
Polls.
To be truthful, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
But naturally, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to point out some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the disadvantages I have actually found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made font styles.
I use Webflow as my web site building system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to go in too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much yet you can review my Webflow evaluation if you would love to find out more.
Today, there actually is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website aside from using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to reduce my web site a bit. Every time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s really noticeable when you get on a slow-moving web connection. Yet I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not use a routine Webflow form (which I enjoy using). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier but that would certainly simply add extra expenses that I do not need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I assumed I would state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will eventually develop a better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is an excellent option for anybody wanting to dive into the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system far surpasses several that are presently 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 affordable for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review blog posts frequently. I only do when I really utilize the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a friend.
I hope you located some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.