Over 2 years earlier, I read one of 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 promptly started destroying Marc Lou Beehiiv.
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m often getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological because I spent the last 6 months trying various email and e-newsletter platforms to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific choices for creating e-newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me totally customize my newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly easy to compose and send e-mails, and gives me devices that assist me evaluate metrics and get more clients.
I believe I have actually lastly located the appropriate tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it very easy to layout, compose, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous employees at the renowned newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly opt for it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve watched for a modern newsletter platform for fairly some time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it came to finally launching my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain numerous e-newsletter developers look up to popular e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have terrific content, tons of customers, and a smart referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more clients.
So, I took place a quest to figure out just how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool actually recognize e-newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the very first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Because, any developer knows, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the ideal newsletter stack (that ranges) typically indicates utilizing several various tools to aid achieve one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up references. It can obtain costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was free to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that desires a system that permits them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or web content creator, you ought to seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to get started and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you in fact wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a great sign that people like reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a terrific system utilized by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own website and utilize the system as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv also gives you an internet site similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own site currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your web site clients right to your beehiiv email list. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to utilize various marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
Exactly how to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software program.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, exterior embed types, and a lot more. It’s a very charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those looking for a new system to move to).
Onboarding Marc Lou Beehiiv
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally pick your brand colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed information on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start writing,” “Messages,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you create and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and damage them down into sections), Expand is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with ads, Layout is where you make your newsletter landing page and post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you want to discuss, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning writing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and easy to use interface for writing.
When you start composing, you can maximize headings, include web links, and style your material exactly how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of options for different sorts of content like videos, web links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise frequently releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a lot extra material features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your email template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify background shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, image styles, and a lot more. I’m not going to experience ever single point you can optimize with your e-mail template since it’s a whole lot. Just check out the platform free of cost and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of impressive features that make it a terrific publishing platform for any newsletter designer.
Right here are some of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely simple to compose and send out e-mails. I stated over a few of things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) survive on a website. Think about it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, give you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a personalized domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or with embed forms.
If you already have an internet site, and want people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different choices– a full width, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for attribution monitoring if you intend to ahead UTM specifications for tracking functions– rather neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the group is dealing with updates for these, but I discussed a couple of issues 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 e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your listing to forward your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they obtain other people to register for your listing, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve appear lots of e-newsletter companies give incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you another method for expanding your email list.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership revenue is definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be very rewarding depending on what your newsletter needs to supply. For example, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among the important things I love regarding beehiiv is exactly how tidy and simple the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count Marc Lou Beehiiv.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you every little thing you require to begin and grow your newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit choice for numerous customers.
I’m not exactly sure just how the system business economics work on this, however beehiiv is definitely less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are several 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 newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Lots of adaptability with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce costs options to monetize.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen another e-newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
Yet of course, I do not wish to be biased so I’m going to mention some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom typefaces.
I use Webflow as my web site structure system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in too much detail why I enjoy Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow review if you would love to discover more.
Today, there actually is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as using iframe’s since they tend to decrease my website a little bit. Whenever a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s really visible when you’re on a sluggish internet link. But I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t use a normal Webflow kind (which I love making use of). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would certainly just include additional expenses that I don’t require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I thought I would state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the cons here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately create a much better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for any individual seeking to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter platform far outweighs numerous that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively economical wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose evaluation blog posts often. I just do when I actually use the tool myself and would advise it to a close friend.
I wish you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.