Over 2 years back, I read one of my preferred email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and promptly began tearing up Swirling Visions Beehiiv.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time creator is tough. I’m often getting pitched different devices and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional since I spent the last 6 months trying various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to aid construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic options for composing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me provide a precise “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 totally tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send e-mails, and offers me devices that help me assess metrics and get even more clients.
I think I have actually ultimately discovered the best tool.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to style, create, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the famous e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m going to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly go with it as my newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a contemporary newsletter platform for rather some time now. I’ve postponed hard when it pertained to finally introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure several e-newsletter makers look up to popular e-newsletters with millions of clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have terrific web content, lots of customers, and a creative referral program that enables them to get back at extra customers.
So, I went on a hunt to figure out exactly how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they produce an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to answer every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device actually recognize newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Because, any type of designer recognizes, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the ideal e-newsletter pile (that ranges) often suggests utilizing multiple different tools to aid attain one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish referrals. It can get pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was free to begin using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that desires a platform that enables them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, start-up, or material designer, you ought to seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to get started and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you really wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent sign that people like reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful system made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your own internet site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a website similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own internet site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your internet site clients right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable people to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to leverage various marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
How to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software application.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, outside embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding Swirling Visions Beehiiv
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand colors and design to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start writing,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Style,” and” Examine.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you create and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your customers are (and break them down into segments), Grow 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, Layout is where you design your newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you intend to cover, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and user-friendly user interface for creating.
Once you begin composing, you can maximize headings, include web links, and design your web content how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of alternatives for various types of content like video clips, web links, images, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is likewise continuously releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a great deal extra material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to create your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, fonts, photo formats, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before solitary point you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a great deal. Just check out the system free of charge and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a great publishing platform for any type of e-newsletter designer.
Right here are several of the crucial features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very simple to write and send out e-mails. I pointed out over a few of things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the much better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a website. Consider it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, give you a website. However, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a customized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or via embed forms.
If you already have a website, and desire individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed form. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 various choices– a full width, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also an alternative for attribution monitoring if you intend to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the group is dealing with updates for these, however I discussed a couple of issues I had in the pros and cons area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your list to onward your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your listing, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually seem numerous newsletter business give incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you an additional method for growing your email listing.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this article.
Costs registrations
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration profits is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be really lucrative depending on what your e-newsletter has to use. For instance, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that creates millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among things I like regarding beehiiv is just how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter Swirling Visions Beehiiv.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you everything you need to start and grow your newsletter (up to 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, custom domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for many users.
I’m not sure exactly how the system economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is certainly less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are some of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters free of charge.
Clean and modern client analytics.
Lots of adaptability with e-mail layouts.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop costs alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be honest, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
However certainly, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I have actually located while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized font styles.
I make use of Webflow as my website structure system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive detail why I like Webflow so much yet you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to learn more.
Today, there truly is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not like utilizing iframe’s since they have a tendency to slow down my internet site a little bit. Each time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s very recognizable when you get on a slow-moving web connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not utilize a normal Webflow kind (which I enjoy utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly simply add extra prices that I do not need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I assumed I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point develop a far better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is an excellent remedy for anybody looking to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform much outweighs lots of that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively economical for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unusual. 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 monthly.
Anyways, I don’t write review messages commonly. I just do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would suggest it to a good friend.
I wish you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.