Over two years ago, I read one of 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 on it and immediately began wrecking Newsletter Operator Podcast.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time creator is difficult. I’m commonly obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological since I spent the last 6 months experimenting with various email and newsletter systems to aid build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic choices for creating newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The concern with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me completely personalize my newsletter designs, makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send out emails, and offers me tools that assist me examine metrics and obtain even more customers.
I believe I have actually lastly located the right tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to design, compose, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the popular newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly go with it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter system for quite some time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it pertained to finally introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure several newsletter designers look up to preferred newsletters with numerous subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have great material, lots of subscribers, and a creative referral program that allows them to get even a lot more subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to figure out how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they create an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer all of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool actually recognize newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the very first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I knew this was going to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator growth.
Due to the fact that, any kind of creator knows, you need growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the best e-newsletter stack (that scales) commonly indicates making use of several different devices to help accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to establish references. It can get expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was complimentary to start utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content developer that desires a system that permits them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or material creator, you need to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you really wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good sign that people like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific platform made use of by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one option for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv also gives you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own site already, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site subscribers right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit people to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to utilize various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
How to begin using beehiiv email marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, external embed kinds, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Newsletter Operator Podcast
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also choose your brand name design and colors to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined info on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning creating,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Analyze.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the settings alternative.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your customers are (and damage them down into segments), 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 newsletter with ads, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you wish to write about, I suggest just mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning writing”.
You can modify your template and designing later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and straightforward user interface for creating.
Once you begin composing, you can optimize headings, include links, and style your web content just how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for various sorts of material like video clips, web links, photos, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise regularly releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot more content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your email template and change some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time clients, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, picture formats, and extra. I’m not going to go through ever single point you can enhance with your e-mail template because it’s a lot. Simply check out the system totally free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a terrific posting platform for any type of e-newsletter maker.
Below are several of the essential features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it very very easy to create and send emails. I pointed out over some of things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive a website. Think about it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a place where people can register for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, offer you an internet site. However, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom-made domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or through embed kinds.
If you already have a site, and want people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed type. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different options– a complete size, a repaired size, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim installed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s also an alternative for attribution tracking if you wish to onward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working on updates for these, but I pointed out a few problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is an option for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your checklist to forward your e-mails to close friends and colleagues and if they get other people to subscribe to your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually seem many newsletter business offer benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you an additional avenue for expanding your e-mail list.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this post.
Premium registrations
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership revenue is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” issues of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be really lucrative relying on what your newsletter has to use. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that generates millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of things I love regarding beehiiv is how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter Newsletter Operator Podcast.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer count rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you everything you need to start and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of priority support 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 customers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for many individuals.
I’m uncertain exactly how the unit economics service this, but beehiiv is certainly more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are several of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters for free.
Clean and modern customer analytics.
Lots of adaptability with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Create costs alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I have not seen another e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet naturally, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m going to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom font styles.
I use Webflow as my site building platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow evaluation if you ‘d like to discover more.
Right now, there actually is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not like using iframe’s since they tend to decrease my website a bit. Every time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s very obvious when you get on a sluggish net connection. But I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not use a routine Webflow kind (which I enjoy utilizing). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply add additional expenses that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the cons below. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually produce a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a fantastic solution for any individual seeking to dive into the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter platform far exceeds numerous that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively economical for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing 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 into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation blog posts commonly. I just do when I in fact utilize the device myself and would advise it to a good friend.
I wish you discovered some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.