Over two years ago, I read one of my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and immediately began tearing up Popehat Beehiiv.
I wasn’t certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m usually getting pitched different tools and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional because I spent the last 6 months experimenting with different email and newsletter platforms to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great options for creating newsletters. But I could not find one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The concern with several existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my newsletter designs, makes it super very easy to create and send emails, and provides me devices that help me analyze metrics and obtain more customers.
I assume I’ve lastly located the best device.
Yet, I understand beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it very easy to style, compose, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former staff members at the renowned e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly opt for it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern newsletter system for fairly time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it concerned finally launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain several e-newsletter creators look up to popular e-newsletters with millions of clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have terrific web content, tons of customers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even a lot more clients.
So, I took place a quest to identify how these large 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 even more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this device truly comprehend e-newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Due to the fact that, any developer understands, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the best e-newsletter stack (that scales) often indicates making use of multiple various devices to aid achieve one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to set up referrals. It can obtain pricey.
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 material designer that wants a platform that enables them to send custom newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or content maker, you ought to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you really wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent indicator that people like reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a fantastic platform used by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own internet site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you an internet site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own website currently, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site subscribers directly to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit people to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to utilize various marketing channels to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
How to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, exterior embed types, and more. It’s a really charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Popehat Beehiiv
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll then create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally pick your brand design and colors to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined information on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning composing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot over), Beginning writing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see 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 ads, Design is where you develop your newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you want to cover, I advise just going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Begin writing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and straightforward interface for creating.
As soon as you start writing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and design your content how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for various sorts of material like videos, web links, images, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise frequently launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot more content features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo, turn 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 modify background shades, borders, spacing, font styles, photo layouts, and a lot more. I’m not going to undergo ever before solitary thing you can maximize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Just try the system free of charge and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a fantastic posting platform for any kind of newsletter designer.
Right here are some of the essential features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely very easy to compose and send out emails. I stated over some of things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive a site. Think about it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, offer you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a customized domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is essential. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or through embed types.
If you already have an internet site, and want individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed type. This is what I make use of on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different alternatives– a complete width, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s also an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM specifications for tracking purposes– rather cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is servicing updates for these, yet I stated a couple of issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your checklist to forward your emails to good friends and colleagues and if they get other people to sign up for your checklist, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve appear many newsletter firms offer rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– offering you one more opportunity for expanding your e-mail checklist.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this short article.
Costs memberships
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration income is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be very financially rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter has to use. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that produces millions in income a year simply by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
One of the important things I love concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Popehat Beehiiv.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you require to begin and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs 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 removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for lots of customers.
I’m uncertain just how the system business economics work on this, but beehiiv is absolutely less expensive (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
Easy to set up and start sending out e-newsletters free of cost.
Clean and contemporary client analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop premium choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features together so well.
But of course, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the cons I have actually found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized typefaces.
I use Webflow as my site structure system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much detail why I love Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow review if you ‘d like to learn more.
Right now, there really is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not such as using iframe’s because they have a tendency to slow down my site a little bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s really recognizable when you’re on a sluggish internet link. However I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not make use of a regular Webflow form (which I enjoy using). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier however that would certainly simply include added expenses that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the disadvantages below. I’m also confident that Webflow will ultimately produce a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is an excellent option for anybody aiming to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform much exceeds numerous that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively economical wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not compose testimonial articles commonly. I just do when I really make use of the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a friend.
I hope you located some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.