Over two years back, I read among my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and quickly started tearing up Search Beehiiv Newsletters.
I had not been certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time maker is difficult. I’m often getting pitched different devices and services 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 various e-mail and newsletter platforms to assist develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great alternatives for writing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me offer a definite “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully personalize my newsletter designs, makes it extremely easy to create and send out e-mails, and offers me tools that assist me assess metrics and get even more subscribers.
I believe I’ve lastly located the ideal device.
However, I understand beehiiv might not be for everyone. 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 system that makes it simple to style, write, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by previous staff members at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help makers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately choose it as my newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for rather some time currently. I’ve postponed hard when it pertained to ultimately releasing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain several e-newsletter designers admire popular e-newsletters with millions of subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have terrific content, lots of customers, and a smart referral program that allows them to get even a lot more customers.
So, I went on a hunt to find out exactly how these big e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they create a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device actually recognize newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the initial marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Because, any kind of developer recognizes, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the appropriate newsletter pile (that ranges) frequently means utilizing multiple various tools to help attain one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to set up recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was cost-free to start 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 system that permits them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or material designer, you should seriously thinking about trying out beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to get started and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you really end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indication that individuals love reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful system used by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your own site and use the system as your all-in-one service for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv likewise gives you an internet site similar to Substack. However, if you have your own website already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site customers straight to your beehiiv email list. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to leverage various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, outside embed kinds, and more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply starting (or for those trying to find a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding Search Beehiiv Newsletters
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise pick your brand name design and colors to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin creating,” “Posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Examine.” And at the very lower you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into sections), Expand is where you have access 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, Style is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you want to write about, I recommend just going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Start creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and straightforward interface for creating.
When you begin composing, you can maximize headings, include links, and style your material just how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for different kinds of material like video clips, links, pictures, and more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise constantly launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal a lot more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your email template and adjust some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history shades, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, image formats, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before solitary thing you can maximize with your e-mail template because it’s a great deal. Just try out the system absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any type of e-newsletter designer.
Below are a few of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-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 discussed above a few of things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll save you some extra reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive on a site. Think of it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, offer you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a personalized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or via embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and want people to subscribe to your e-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 column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different options– a full size, a repaired size, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to ahead UTM specifications for tracking purposes– pretty cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the team is servicing updates for these, but I mentioned a few concerns 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 motivate existing customers on your list to forward your emails to good friends and colleagues and if they get other people to sign up for your listing, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem many newsletter business provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you another method for growing your email listing.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this article.
Costs registrations
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription earnings is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be extremely financially rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter needs to use. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among things I like about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count Search Beehiiv Newsletters.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client matter go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you everything you need to start and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for several users.
I’m unsure just how the device business economics work on this, but beehiiv is definitely cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are several of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters totally free.
Clean and modern subscriber analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Develop costs alternatives to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet obviously, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the disadvantages I have actually found while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my web site structure platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much information why I like Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow evaluation if you want to find out more.
Now, there actually is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site besides using an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as utilizing iframe’s because they tend to decrease my web site a little bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s really obvious when you get on a slow-moving net link. But I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not use a routine Webflow form (which I enjoy making use of). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier however that would certainly just add extra expenses that I do not need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the cons right here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually develop a better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is an excellent solution for any individual wanting to dive into the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far exceeds many that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather inexpensive for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not compose review messages often. I only do when I in fact use the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a good friend.
I hope you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.