Over 2 years back, I read among my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and quickly began destroying Substack Vs Beehiiv.
I had not been certain why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent maker is tough. I’m typically getting pitched various tools and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological because I invested the last 6 months trying different email and e-newsletter systems to help develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful alternatives for composing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t discover one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully personalize my newsletter designs, makes it extremely simple to write and send out e-mails, and provides me tools that assist me examine metrics and obtain more customers.
I assume I have actually lastly located the right device.
But, I understand beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it simple to layout, write, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by previous workers at the renowned e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid designers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally opt for it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a contemporary newsletter system for quite time now. I’ve procrastinated hard when it came to ultimately releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make certain several e-newsletter developers admire popular newsletters with numerous customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have fantastic material, tons of customers, and a smart referral program that allows them to get even a lot more subscribers.
So, I went on a search to determine just how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool actually understand e-newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was going to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker growth.
Due to the fact that, any kind of developer knows, you require development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the appropriate newsletter pile (that ranges) frequently indicates making use of numerous various tools to aid accomplish one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to establish references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was free to start making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that wants a platform that allows them to send custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or material creator, you must seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s entirely free to get started and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you really wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indication that individuals like reading your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic system used by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own site and make use of the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv enables 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 encourage your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also gives you a web site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your website clients directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable people to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Exactly how to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software application.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting out (or for those trying to find a new system to move to).
Onboarding Substack Vs Beehiiv
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive 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 procedure, you’ll also choose your brand colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed info on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning writing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Examine.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot over), Begin composing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your clients are (and break them down right into sectors), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you create your newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you intend to blog about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– focus on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and straightforward user interface for writing.
As soon as you begin creating, you can maximize headings, include web links, and style your content just how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for various types of material like videos, links, pictures, and more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally constantly launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal a lot more material features relying on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to design your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to first time customers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, image formats, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever single thing you can maximize with your e-mail template since it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the platform for free and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it a terrific publishing platform for any type of e-newsletter maker.
Below are a few of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very simple to write and send e-mails. I discussed over a few of the things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the much better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a site. Think about it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a place where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, give you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom-made domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is necessary. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv site or through embed forms.
If you already have a web site, and desire individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various choices– a full width, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to forward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– rather cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working with updates for these, but I mentioned a couple of concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your checklist to ahead your e-mails to close friends and coworkers and if they obtain other people to register for your checklist, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve seem numerous newsletter companies provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional method for expanding your email list.
However, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this article.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription revenue is absolutely a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely profitable relying on what your e-newsletter has to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that produces millions in income a year just by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count Substack Vs Beehiiv.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer count increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you every little thing you need to begin and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, surveys, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the very same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for several individuals.
I’m not sure how the unit economics service this, yet beehiiv is certainly cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and contemporary customer analytics.
Lots of flexibility with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop costs alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
However obviously, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the cons I have actually located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my site structure system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much detail why I love Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to discover more.
Right now, there actually is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site apart from making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not like using iframe’s since they have a tendency to slow down my web site a bit. Every single time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s really visible when you get on a slow-moving net connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not use a normal Webflow kind (which I like utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would just include additional prices that I do not require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the disadvantages here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will eventually produce a far better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a terrific solution for anybody wanting to dive into the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter system far surpasses many that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to lose 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 uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not compose testimonial messages commonly. I just do when I in fact use the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a close friend.
I wish you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.