Over 2 years back, I read among my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and instantaneously began tearing up Ms. Beehiiv.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time maker is tough. I’m frequently getting pitched various devices and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological because I invested the last 6 months trying different e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific options for creating newsletters. But I could not discover one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me fully tailor my e-newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly simple to write and send out e-mails, and gives me tools that assist me assess metrics and obtain more customers.
I assume I have actually finally found the ideal tool.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right 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 layout, compose, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the renowned e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid developers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly opt for it as my newsletter platform of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter platform for rather a long time currently. I’ve hesitated hard when it came to lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain several e-newsletter designers look up to prominent newsletters with countless subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have terrific material, lots of clients, and a clever referral program that permits them to get back at a lot more customers.
So, I went on a search to identify exactly how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool really recognize e-newsletter creation and growth.” 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 growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I understood this was going to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Due to the fact that, any type of creator knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the appropriate newsletter stack (that ranges) usually means using multiple various tools to aid achieve one goal– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to establish referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was totally free to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that desires a system that enables them to send out customized newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or content developer, you must seriously thinking about trying out beehiiv. It’s entirely free to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you really end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indicator that people love reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is an excellent platform used by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own website and utilize the platform as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv also provides you an internet site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own web site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your website customers directly to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable people to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to take advantage of various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s internet 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, development customization, analytics, outside embed kinds, and much more. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply beginning (or for those trying to find a new system to move to).
Onboarding Ms. Beehiiv
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll then produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also choose your brand name colors and design to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin composing,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your clients are (and damage them down right into sections), Grow 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 newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you wish to cover, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and user-friendly user interface for composing.
Once you start creating, you can optimize headings, include links, and style your web content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for various kinds of content like video clips, links, photos, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise constantly launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal much more content features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, image formats, and extra. I’m not going to experience ever before single point you can optimize with your email template because it’s a great deal. Just experiment with the platform completely free and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a fantastic posting system for any type of newsletter creator.
Below are several of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it very simple to compose and send e-mails. I stated over several of the things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) live on an internet site. Think about it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, offer you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a personalized domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or with embed forms.
If you currently have a web site, and desire individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed form. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different choices– a full width, a taken care of width, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise a choice for attribution monitoring if you intend to forward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– quite cool.
However, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the team is working on updates for these, but I mentioned a couple of issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your checklist to forward your emails to buddies and coworkers and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your list, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I’ve appear numerous newsletter firms offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you another method for expanding your e-mail list.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this short article.
Premium memberships
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Subscription income is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” problems of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be very financially rewarding depending upon what your newsletter has to provide. For example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that generates millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
One of the things I enjoy about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter Ms. Beehiiv.
You get access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer count rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you everything you need to get going and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit alternative for lots of customers.
I’m uncertain exactly how the unit economics service this, yet beehiiv is definitely less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters absolutely free.
Clean and modern subscriber analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Produce premium choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet certainly, I don’t want to be biased so I’m going to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the cons I’ve located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my web site structure system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive information why I like Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow review if you wish to learn more.
Right now, there actually is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site aside from using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as making use of iframe’s since they often tend to decrease my website a bit. Each time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the page. It’s extremely visible when you get on a sluggish net connection. Yet I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not utilize a normal Webflow kind (which I like making use of). There are methods around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would simply include added prices that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the disadvantages here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will at some point create a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a terrific service for anyone aiming to dive into the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far surpasses several that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly affordable wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unprecedented. 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 monthly.
Anyways, I do not create evaluation posts frequently. I just do when I in fact make use of the device myself and would recommend it to a close friend.
I hope you discovered some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.