Over 2 years earlier, I read among my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and immediately began tearing up Pros and Cons of Beehiiv.
I had not been certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time creator is tough. I’m usually getting pitched different tools and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological since I invested the last 6 months checking out different e-mail and newsletter platforms to help build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic alternatives for composing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The problem with several existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it extremely easy to create and send emails, and gives me devices that help me analyze metrics and obtain even more customers.
I believe I’ve lastly found the best device.
Yet, I understand beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to style, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the renowned e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately select it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern newsletter system for quite some time currently. I’ve postponed hard when it came to finally releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure many e-newsletter creators appreciate preferred e-newsletters with millions of subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have wonderful content, lots of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get even a lot more subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to figure out how these huge newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they create a newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this device really comprehend newsletter development and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the initial marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Due to the fact that, any maker understands, you require development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the right newsletter pile (that ranges) often means utilizing multiple different devices to assist achieve one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish recommendations. It can obtain expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one 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 material maker that desires a system that allows them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or web content creator, you need to seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you in fact wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great sign that individuals enjoy reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great platform made use of by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own website and use the platform as your all-in-one service for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also provides you a web site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own website currently, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your site subscribers directly to your beehiiv email list. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to utilize different marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
How to begin using beehiiv email marketing software application.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, external embed forms, and more. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Pros and Cons of Beehiiv
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise pick your brand name colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have described info on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning writing,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Begin creating is where you produce and release newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break 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 newsletter with ads, Design is where you design your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you wish to discuss, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning writing”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use interface for writing.
When you start creating, you can maximize headings, add web links, and design your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of options for various sorts of web content like video clips, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is also constantly launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a whole lot a lot more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to design your e-mail template and change some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time clients, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history shades, borders, spacing, fonts, image formats, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before single thing you can enhance with your e-mail template because it’s a whole lot. Simply try out the platform free of charge and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it an excellent publishing platform for any type of newsletter designer.
Here are several of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it super easy to create and send out e-mails. I pointed out over a few of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) survive a website. Consider it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a personalized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or with embed kinds.
If you already have a web site, and want individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed form. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various alternatives– a complete width, a fixed size, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to ahead UTM specifications for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the team is dealing with updates for these, yet I pointed out a few issues I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your checklist to onward your e-mails to buddies and coworkers and if they get other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve seem many e-newsletter companies offer incentives 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 one more avenue for expanding your e-mail listing.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this write-up.
Costs memberships
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration income is most 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 develop “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be very financially rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that produces millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count Pros and Cons of Beehiiv.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to start and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain, polls, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for lots of individuals.
I’m not exactly sure just how the unit business economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is definitely cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are several of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters absolutely free.
Tidy and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Lots of flexibility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Create costs alternatives to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen one more e-newsletter system that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
However naturally, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m going to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom font styles.
I use Webflow as my internet site structure system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much detail why I love Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow review if you want to find out more.
Now, there actually is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t like using iframe’s because they often tend to slow down my site a bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s really obvious when you’re on a slow net link. Yet I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a normal Webflow type (which I like using). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier however that would certainly simply include added costs that I do not need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I thought I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the cons below. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will ultimately create a better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a fantastic solution for any individual seeking to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far exceeds lots of that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather economical wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t compose evaluation messages typically. I just do when I in fact use the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a good friend.
I hope you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.