Over 2 years earlier, I was reading one of my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and promptly began destroying Launchy Beehiiv.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time creator is difficult. I’m usually getting pitched different tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological because I invested the last six months trying various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to aid build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic choices for creating e-newsletters. However I couldn’t locate one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me totally tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it super easy to create and send out emails, and offers me devices that assist me examine metrics and get even more subscribers.
I believe I have actually ultimately located the appropriate device.
Yet, I understand beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to layout, write, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist makers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally select it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a modern-day newsletter system for fairly a long time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it concerned ultimately launching my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure lots of e-newsletter makers admire preferred e-newsletters with millions of customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have excellent web content, lots of subscribers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get back at much more customers.
So, I went on a search to figure out exactly how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they create a newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this tool actually recognize newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the very first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer growth.
Due to the fact that, any kind of creator knows, you need development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And finding the right e-newsletter pile (that scales) frequently means using multiple various tools to aid achieve one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish referrals. It can obtain expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was complimentary 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 enables them to send out custom newsletters with or without requiring to have a web 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 company, start-up, or material creator, you need to seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to start and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you actually end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indication that people like reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific platform used by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and make use of the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv also provides you a site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own website currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your internet site subscribers directly to your beehiiv email listing. On the very 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 offers you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack choice.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, external embed forms, and much more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Launchy Beehiiv
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also select your brand colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start creating,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot above), Beginning writing is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down right into sectors), Grow 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you design your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you wish to blog about, I suggest simply going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and straightforward interface for composing.
When you start composing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and design your material how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for different kinds of material like videos, links, images, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise constantly releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a great deal extra material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your email template and readjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, image layouts, and more. I’m not going to undergo ever single thing you can maximize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Just check out the platform completely free and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a terrific publishing platform for any e-newsletter developer.
Below are a few of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it very easy to compose and send emails. I pointed out above a few of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some added reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely among the better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) reside on an internet site. Think about it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, offer you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a customized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or through embed types.
If you currently have a website, and want people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this web 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 three various options– a full size, a repaired width, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you want to ahead UTM criteria for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the team is servicing updates for these, but I pointed out a few concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is an option for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your list to onward your e-mails to good friends and colleagues and if they obtain other people to sign up for your checklist, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever form you want. I have actually appear numerous newsletter business provide benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you one more opportunity for growing your e-mail listing.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this post.
Premium memberships
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration revenue is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be very lucrative depending on what your newsletter has to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the things I enjoy about beehiiv is how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Launchy Beehiiv.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you need to start and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain, polls, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for many users.
I’m not exactly sure just how the unit business economics work on this, however beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are several of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and start sending newsletters for free.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce costs options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen another e-newsletter system that has had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet naturally, I do not want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to mention some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized font styles.
I use Webflow as my website 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 enjoy Webflow so much but you can read my Webflow testimonial if you wish to find out more.
Right now, there actually is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than using an iframe embed. I directly don’t like using iframe’s because they tend to slow down my website a little bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s very obvious when you get on a slow net link. However I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a normal Webflow type (which I enjoy making use of). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would simply include extra prices that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I thought I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the cons right here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will at some point develop a better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a great service for anyone looking to dive into the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform much surpasses many that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly low-cost wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t create evaluation posts commonly. I just do when I actually use the tool myself and would advise it to a friend.
I hope you discovered some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.