Over two years earlier, I read one of my preferred 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 on it and instantaneously started tearing up Prequel Beehiiv.
I had not been certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full time designer is tough. I’m frequently getting pitched various tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional since I spent the last six months checking out various e-mail and newsletter systems to help build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful choices for creating e-newsletters. But I could not locate one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my newsletter designs, makes it incredibly simple to create and send out emails, and gives me tools that assist me analyze metrics and obtain more clients.
I believe I’ve ultimately found the right tool.
However, I understand beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it very easy to layout, create, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the renowned newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately opt for it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for quite some time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it concerned ultimately launching my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure many newsletter makers admire popular newsletters with millions of clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have great material, lots of customers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get back at much more clients.
So, I took place a hunt to identify exactly 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 even more subscribers? How do they produce a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool truly understand e-newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the very first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on developer development.
Due to the fact that, any kind of maker understands, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the right e-newsletter stack (that ranges) often means making use of several various tools to assist accomplish one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to establish recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content creator that desires a platform that permits them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or material maker, you ought to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s totally free to get going and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you in fact end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great indicator that individuals enjoy reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is an excellent platform made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own website and use the platform as your all-in-one option for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a website comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own website currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your website customers right to your beehiiv email listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to utilize different marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack option.
How to start using beehiiv email marketing software application.
Enroll in 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” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and a lot more. It’s a very generous offering for those just beginning (or for those seeking a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Prequel Beehiiv
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll then create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, 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 major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have described details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning composing,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your clients are (and break them down right into sectors), Expand is where you have access 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, Style is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you want to discuss, I recommend just going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and easy to use interface for writing.
As soon as you start composing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and style your web content how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of choices for different sorts of material like videos, web links, photos, and more.
The team at beehiiv is also regularly launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a great deal a lot more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your email template and readjust some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, fonts, image styles, and more. I’m not going to go through ever single thing you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply try the platform free of charge and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a terrific publishing system for any kind of newsletter developer.
Here are some of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it super easy to create and send out e-mails. I stated over some of things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll save you some additional reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) live on an internet site. Think about it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a location where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, provide you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is important. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or through embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and want individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. This is what I utilize 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 types, you have three different alternatives– a full width, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s also an option for attribution tracking if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the group is dealing with updates for these, yet I mentioned a couple of issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your listing to ahead your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your checklist, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve appear lots of newsletter companies give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you another opportunity for expanding your e-mail checklist.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra superior plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this article.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership revenue is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be very rewarding relying on what your newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
One of things I like regarding beehiiv is exactly how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter Prequel Beehiiv.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you every little thing you need to begin and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit option for many customers.
I’m not exactly sure how the system economics service this, but beehiiv is certainly less expensive (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to establish and start sending out newsletters free of cost.
Clean and modern-day customer analytics.
Lots of flexibility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Develop costs options to monetize.
Polls.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter system that has had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
But naturally, I don’t want to be biased so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I have actually located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made typefaces.
I use 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 go in too much detail why I love Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow review if you wish to learn more.
Now, there actually is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not such as utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to reduce my site a bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s really recognizable when you’re on a sluggish web link. Yet I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow form (which I enjoy making use of). There are methods around this by using a device like Zapier but that would just add additional prices that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I believed I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m also confident that Webflow will ultimately develop a much better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
In general, beehiiv is a terrific solution for any person wanting to dive into the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system much surpasses several that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather inexpensive of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t compose review posts often. I only do when I really use the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a buddy.
I hope you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.