Over two years ago, I read among my favorite email 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 promptly began destroying Notion To Beehiiv.
I had not been certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time creator is difficult. I’m often getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological because I spent the last six months experimenting with different email and e-newsletter systems to aid develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic choices for composing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The issue with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it extremely simple to write and send out emails, and gives me devices that help me evaluate metrics and get more customers.
I think I have actually finally found the appropriate tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually 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 easy to layout, write, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the well-known e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally opt for it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern newsletter system for fairly time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it came to lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of e-newsletter creators admire popular newsletters with millions of subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have great material, lots of customers, and a clever referral program that allows them to get even much more clients.
So, I took place a search to identify just how these big e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they develop a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool actually comprehend newsletter production and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the initial marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Because, any kind of designer recognizes, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the best newsletter stack (that ranges) often implies making use of several different tools to help accomplish one goal– one system for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to establish referrals. It can get expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was free to start using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that wants a platform that allows them to send out custom newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or content creator, you should seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you actually wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a good sign that people like 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 a fantastic system utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own website and utilize the system as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally offers you an internet site similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your internet site customers right to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to leverage various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack choice.
Exactly how to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, external embed types, and much more. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Notion To Beehiiv
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally choose your brand design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed info on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning composing,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Assess.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot above), Start 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 subscribers are (and break them down into sections), 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, Design is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you wish to blog about, I suggest simply going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and straightforward interface for composing.
Once you begin creating, you can maximize headings, add web links, and design your web content how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of options for various sorts of material like videos, web links, images, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally frequently launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a great deal more content features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-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 history shades, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, picture styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before solitary point you can enhance with your e-mail template because it’s a lot. Just experiment with the platform absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it an excellent publishing system for any e-newsletter developer.
Here are several of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it incredibly simple to create and send emails. I discussed over several of the important things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) live on a site. Think about it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom-made domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or through embed kinds.
If you already have a site, and want people 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 internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various options– a complete size, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for attribution tracking if you intend to forward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– pretty cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the group is servicing updates for these, but I mentioned a couple of worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a service for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your listing to onward your e-mails to good friends and colleagues and if they get other people to subscribe to your list, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually seem lots of e-newsletter firms give rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another opportunity for expanding your email list.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this article.
Premium registrations
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership income is certainly a monster of its very own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be very lucrative relying on what your e-newsletter needs to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that produces millions in profits a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the important things I like regarding beehiiv is how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Notion To Beehiiv.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you every little thing you require to start and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 each month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit choice for several users.
I’m uncertain just how the system economics work with this, however beehiiv is absolutely less costly (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 advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and contemporary client analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create costs alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I have not seen one more e-newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet obviously, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I’ve discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom-made fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my site building platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow review if you want to discover more.
Now, there truly is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides using 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 site a little bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s extremely recognizable when you’re on a sluggish net link. However I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not utilize a regular Webflow form (which I enjoy using). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would certainly just add extra costs that I do not require. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I believed I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the cons right here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will ultimately develop a far better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a fantastic service for anybody looking to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform far exceeds many that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly affordable of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unheard of. 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 compose evaluation articles typically. I just do when I in fact use the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a friend.
I hope you located some quality on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.