Over 2 years back, I was reading one of my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and instantly started tearing up Powered By Beehiiv.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m usually obtaining pitched different devices and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological because I spent the last 6 months trying out different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to assist develop my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great options for composing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me totally customize my newsletter layouts, makes it extremely simple to write and send emails, and provides me devices that help me examine metrics and get even more clients.
I think I’ve lastly located the appropriate device.
Yet, I know beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to style, write, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous staff members at the popular e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this article, I’m going to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately go with it as my newsletter system of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve watched for a contemporary newsletter system for rather time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it came to ultimately launching my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make sure many e-newsletter makers admire preferred e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have great material, lots of clients, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more customers.
So, I went on a search to determine exactly how these big e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this device actually understand 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 some of the initial marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Due to the fact that, any type of developer recognizes, you need development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the best e-newsletter pile (that ranges) typically means making use of numerous various tools to help achieve one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was cost-free to begin 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 web site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or material developer, you must seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you actually end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great indicator that people love reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great platform used by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own internet site and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a web site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own site already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your site customers right to your beehiiv email checklist. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow people to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to leverage various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
Just how to begin using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, external embed kinds, and more. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting out (or for those searching for a new system to move to).
Onboarding Powered By Beehiiv
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand name colors and design to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined details on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin writing,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and damage them down into sectors), 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you design your newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you intend to write about, I recommend simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and user-friendly interface for composing.
As soon as you begin composing, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your web content how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of options for various types of web content like video clips, links, photos, and more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise continuously releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal more material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your email template and change some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome email to first time clients, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history colors, borders, spacing, fonts, image formats, and more. I’m not going to undergo ever single point you can maximize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just check out the platform for free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a wonderful posting system for any kind of newsletter creator.
Right here are a few of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it incredibly easy to compose and send out emails. I stated above a few of things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll save you some extra reading.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely one of the far better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on a web site. Consider it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, provide you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a personalized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is very important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or via embed types.
If you currently have a web site, and want people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different choices– a complete size, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to onward UTM specifications for tracking functions– rather neat.
However, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the group is working on updates for these, but I discussed a few issues I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your list to ahead your e-mails to buddies and coworkers and if they obtain other people to register for your checklist, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve seem many e-newsletter business provide benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– offering you another method for expanding your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs subscriptions
They claim all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership revenue is absolutely a beast of its very own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be really financially rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter needs to supply. For example, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that produces millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
One of the important things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is exactly how clean and easy the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count Powered By Beehiiv.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer count increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you everything you need to get going and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for many individuals.
I’m not exactly sure just how the system business economics work with this, however beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few 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 contemporary subscriber analytics.
Lots of flexibility with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Produce premium choices to monetize.
Polls.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen another newsletter platform that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But of course, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the cons I’ve located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized font styles.
I use Webflow as my website structure system of choice (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 a lot however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to discover more.
Now, there actually is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as making use of iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my internet site a little bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s really noticeable when you get on a slow-moving net connection. However I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not use a routine Webflow form (which I like making use of). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would simply add additional prices that I do not need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the cons below. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will eventually develop a far better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a fantastic option for anybody aiming to dive into the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system much outweighs lots of that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly cheap wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t write evaluation messages usually. I only do when I really make use of the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a pal.
I hope you found some quality on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.