Over 2 years earlier, I read one of my favored email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantly began wrecking Sama Beehiiv.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a full-time maker is tough. I’m typically obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last six months trying different e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific choices for creating e-newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me fully personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it super easy to compose and send e-mails, and gives me devices that help me evaluate metrics and obtain more clients.
I assume I have actually lastly found the best device.
Yet, I understand beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really 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 simple to style, compose, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist designers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately select it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a contemporary e-newsletter system for rather some time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it came to lastly launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure several e-newsletter developers look up to preferred newsletters with countless subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have great web content, tons of subscribers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get back at a lot more customers.
So, I took place a hunt to find out just how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this device really comprehend newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Because, any developer understands, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the right newsletter stack (that scales) usually suggests utilizing numerous various tools to aid achieve one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish references. It can get pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was totally free to start using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that wants a system that permits them to send custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most successful newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or web content developer, you should seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s completely free to start and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you really wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indicator that individuals like reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic system utilized by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own web site and utilize the system as your all-in-one option for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv also gives you an internet site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own web site already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your website subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to leverage different marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
How to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software application.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, outside embed types, and a lot more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just starting out (or for those seeking a new system to move to).
Onboarding Sama Beehiiv
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise choose your brand design and colors to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have described info on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin writing,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot over), Start writing is where you develop and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into segments), Expand is where you have accessibility 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 advertisements, Style is where you develop your newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you intend to cover, I suggest simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and straightforward interface for composing.
As soon as you start creating, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your material exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for various kinds of web content like videos, links, pictures, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise continuously releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a lot much more material features relying on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image formats, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever solitary thing you can enhance with your email template because it’s a lot. Just check out the platform absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it an excellent posting system for any e-newsletter maker.
Right here are a few of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it very very easy to write and send out emails. I stated above some of the things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the far better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) live on a website. Think of it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, give you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a personalized domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or through embed forms.
If you already have an internet site, and desire people to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different alternatives– a complete width, a fixed size, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also an alternative for attribution monitoring if you intend to onward UTM specifications for tracking functions– quite neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working with updates for these, yet I stated a couple of issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is an option for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your list to ahead your e-mails to pals and associates and if they get other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem many newsletter firms offer incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you one more avenue for expanding your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this article.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration revenue is definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re trying to find 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 clients. This can be really lucrative depending on what your e-newsletter has to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that creates millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among the things I like regarding beehiiv is just how tidy and easy the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter Sama Beehiiv.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you everything you need to start and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for lots of customers.
I’m uncertain how the unit business economics work with this, but beehiiv is certainly less costly (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters free of cost.
Clean and modern customer analytics.
Lots of versatility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Create costs alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be honest, I have not seen an additional newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet naturally, I don’t want to be biased so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I have actually discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized typefaces.
I make use of Webflow as my web site building platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much detail why I love Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to learn more.
Now, there really is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not like using iframe’s because they tend to decrease my site a bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the page. It’s extremely noticeable when you’re on a slow internet link. But I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow type (which I love making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would simply add extra prices that I don’t require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will eventually develop a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a terrific service for any person aiming to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform much outweighs lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly economical wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose evaluation articles usually. I only do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would advise it to a good friend.
I wish you discovered some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.