Over 2 years ago, I was reading among my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and instantly started wrecking Matt Mcgarry Newsletter Growth System.
I had not been certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time creator is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched various devices and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last six months trying out different email and e-newsletter platforms to assist construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic choices for creating e-newsletters. However I could not find one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me fully customize my newsletter layouts, makes it super easy to create and send out emails, and provides me devices that help me assess metrics and get more customers.
I believe I have actually finally located the appropriate tool.
But, I understand beehiiv might 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 platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to design, write, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the renowned newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m going to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately select it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a contemporary newsletter system for fairly a long time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it pertained to ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain many e-newsletter creators look up to popular e-newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have great material, lots of subscribers, and a clever referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more subscribers.
So, I took place a hunt to find out just how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this tool truly understand newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I understood this was going to be a various newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Since, any kind of developer recognizes, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that scales) usually indicates making use of several different devices to help achieve one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to set up references. It can get pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was cost-free to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that desires a platform that enables them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or web content maker, you ought to seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indication that individuals enjoy reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful system made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own website and use the platform as your all-in-one service for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a site similar to Substack. But, if you have your own website already, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your site subscribers directly to your beehiiv email list. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow people to register for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to leverage various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack option.
Just how to start using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, external embed types, and much more. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply beginning (or for those looking for a new system to move to).
Onboarding Matt Mcgarry Newsletter Growth System
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also pick your brand name design and colors to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have described details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning creating,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Examine.” And at the very lower you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your customers are (and damage them down right into sectors), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you wish to write about, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Start creating”.
You can modify your template and styling later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and user-friendly interface for composing.
As soon as you begin composing, you can enhance headings, include links, and design your web content how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of alternatives for various sorts of web content like video clips, links, photos, and more.
The team at beehiiv is also continuously launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a great deal more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your email template and change some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, image formats, and more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever single thing you can maximize with your email template since it’s a lot. Simply try the platform free of charge and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a fantastic posting platform for any type of newsletter developer.
Right here are some of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it very very easy to create and send out e-mails. I discussed over some of things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some additional reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) live on an internet site. Think of it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, offer you a website. However, the free plan areas your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or via embed forms.
If you already have a web site, and desire individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to use an embed type. This is what I use on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various alternatives– a full width, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to ahead UTM criteria for tracking purposes– pretty cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working on updates for these, however I stated a couple of issues I had in the pros and cons area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your listing to ahead your e-mails to friends and coworkers and if they obtain other people to register for your checklist, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually seem many newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you one more avenue for expanding your e-mail list.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration earnings is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be very profitable depending on what your newsletter has to use. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that creates millions in profits a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among the things I like regarding beehiiv is just how tidy and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Matt Mcgarry Newsletter Growth System.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer count rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you require to begin and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for several individuals.
I’m not exactly sure just how the device economics deal with this, but beehiiv is certainly less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Naturally, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are some of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and modern subscriber analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create premium options to monetize.
Polls.
To be straightforward, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
Yet obviously, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the cons I’ve located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized fonts.
I utilize Webflow as my web site structure platform of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much detail why I like Webflow so much but you can read my Webflow review if you would love to find out more.
Right now, there really is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t like making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to reduce my internet site a little bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s really noticeable when you’re on a sluggish internet connection. Yet I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a normal Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly just add extra prices that I don’t require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I thought I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the cons right here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will at some point create a much better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful solution for anyone seeking to study the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system much surpasses several that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather inexpensive of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not create review articles often. I only do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would suggest it to a close friend.
I hope you located some clarity on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.