Over 2 years ago, I read one of my favorite email 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 instantaneously began wrecking Is Beehiiv Worth It.
I had not been sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time creator is difficult. I’m frequently obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I spent the last 6 months experimenting with different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to assist develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful options for composing newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me completely personalize my newsletter styles, makes it very easy to write and send emails, and gives me devices that aid me examine metrics and get even more customers.
I believe I’ve lastly discovered the best tool.
But, I understand beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best 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 easy to layout, write, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former workers at the renowned newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly go with it as my e-newsletter system of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter system for rather some time now. I have actually postponed hard when it pertained to ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure several newsletter creators respect popular newsletters with countless subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have terrific material, lots of subscribers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get even extra customers.
So, I took place a hunt to identify just how these huge 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 subscribers? How do they create an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device actually understand newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker development.
Because, any creator understands, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the best e-newsletter pile (that ranges) commonly suggests using numerous different devices to aid achieve one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was free to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that wants a system that permits them to send custom newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or content developer, you need to seriously thinking about trying out beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you actually end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good sign that individuals love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic system utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own website and utilize the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you an internet site similar to Substack. However, if you have your own website currently, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your site clients straight to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable people to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to take advantage of different marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack choice.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you accessibility to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, external embed types, and extra. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those seeking a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Is Beehiiv Worth It
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally select your brand design and colors to ensure 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 detailed info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start composing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot over), Beginning creating is where you produce and publish 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 clients are (and break them down right into segments), 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 e-newsletter with ads, Style is where you develop your newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you wish to discuss, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Start creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and user-friendly interface for writing.
When you start creating, you can enhance headings, include links, and design your web content how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of alternatives for different sorts of material like videos, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally frequently releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a great deal much more content features depending on when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to create your email template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, image styles, and a lot more. I’m not going to go through ever before solitary thing you can maximize with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Just try the system free of charge and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a great posting system for any type of newsletter designer.
Right here are some of the necessary features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it incredibly easy to create and send e-mails. I discussed over several of things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some added reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really 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 want) survive a website. Consider it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, provide you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a personalized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and desire people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various options– a complete size, a repaired size, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to forward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the team is dealing with updates for these, however I discussed a few concerns I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your list to forward your emails to buddies and coworkers and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve appear lots of e-newsletter firms 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– providing you an additional method for expanding your email list.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this article.
Premium registrations
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription revenue is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be very rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter needs to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that generates millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
One of the important things I love about beehiiv is just how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Is Beehiiv Worth It.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client count rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you everything you require to get going and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 each month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for numerous users.
I’m unsure exactly how the device economics service this, however beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are a few of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters completely free.
Tidy and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce costs options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen one more 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 wish to be biased so I’m going to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized typefaces.
I make use of Webflow as my site building platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much detail why I love Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow review if you ‘d like to find out more.
Now, there truly is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides using an iframe embed. I directly do not like utilizing iframe’s because they often tend to reduce my website a little bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s extremely obvious when you get on a sluggish net link. But I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow kind (which I enjoy utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would certainly simply include added costs that I do not require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I thought I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the cons right here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will ultimately create a better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is an excellent option for any person looking to dive into the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system much outweighs several that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly cheap wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not compose review articles often. I just do when I actually use the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a buddy.
I wish you found some quality on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.