Over 2 years back, I read one of my preferred e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and immediately began wrecking Is Beehiiv Like Substack.
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent developer is tough. I’m typically obtaining pitched various tools 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 different e-mail and newsletter platforms to aid develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific options for creating e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t locate one that made me offer a definite “yes”.
The problem with many existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my e-newsletter styles, makes it incredibly simple to compose and send e-mails, and offers me devices that assist me analyze metrics and get more subscribers.
I assume I’ve finally located the best device.
Yet, I know beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to design, compose, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the well-known newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist designers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally choose it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a modern e-newsletter platform for rather a long time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it concerned finally launching my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain many newsletter designers admire prominent newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have excellent web content, tons of customers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get back at more customers.
So, I went on a quest to identify how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool really comprehend newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the very first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer growth.
Since, any kind of creator understands, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And finding the ideal e-newsletter pile (that ranges) commonly implies utilizing several different tools to assist attain one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was cost-free to start 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 desires a platform that allows them to send out custom newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, start-up, or web content designer, you need to seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s entirely free to get going and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you in fact end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent indication that individuals 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 great system used by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also offers you an internet site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own website currently, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your internet site customers right to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to take advantage of different marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack option.
How to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and a lot more. It’s a very charitable offering for those just starting (or for those searching for a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Is Beehiiv Like Substack
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally choose your brand design and colors to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have outlined information on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin composing,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot over), Begin creating is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into sectors), 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 ads, Layout is where you design your newsletter landing page and post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you intend to blog about, I suggest just going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and straightforward user interface for creating.
As soon as you start creating, you can optimize headings, add web links, and design your web content exactly how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of choices for various types of web content like video clips, links, photos, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is also continuously launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a lot more content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your email template and readjust some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, image formats, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever solitary thing you can maximize with your email template because it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the system completely free and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it an excellent posting platform for any kind of newsletter designer.
Below 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 extremely very easy to write and send out e-mails. I mentioned over a few of things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) survive on an internet site. Consider it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and an area where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, give you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom-made domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is necessary. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or with embed types.
If you already have a site, and want individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed type. This is what I utilize on this site (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 3 different choices– a complete size, a fixed size, and a slim installed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution tracking if you intend to ahead UTM specifications for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working on updates for these, but I pointed out a few worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your listing to forward your emails to good friends and associates and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your listing, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you desire. I have actually appear lots of e-newsletter firms provide incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you another opportunity for expanding your email checklist.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium registrations
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription earnings is certainly a monster of its own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be very lucrative depending on what your newsletter needs to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the things I like about beehiiv is just how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter Is Beehiiv Like Substack.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client count go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you everything you require to begin and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 per month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for lots of customers.
I’m uncertain exactly how the system business economics deal with this, but beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters for free.
Tidy and contemporary client analytics.
Great deals of versatility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Develop premium choices to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
But naturally, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made fonts.
I use Webflow as my web site structure system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive detail why I like Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow evaluation if you would love to find out more.
Right now, there truly is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t like using iframe’s because they have a tendency to reduce my internet site a little bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s extremely recognizable when you get on a slow internet connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow kind (which I love making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would certainly just add extra prices that I don’t require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a much better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a terrific service for any person seeking to study the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far exceeds many that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively economical for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t write testimonial articles often. I just do when I in fact utilize the device myself and would advise it to a friend.
I wish you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.