Over two years back, I read among my preferred email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantaneously started tearing up The ’92 Beehiiv.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a permanent creator is difficult. I’m usually getting pitched different devices and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological since I invested the last six months checking out various email and newsletter platforms to assist build my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great options for creating e-newsletters. However I could not locate one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my newsletter styles, makes it very easy to compose and send out e-mails, and offers me tools that help me examine metrics and get even more clients.
I think I’ve ultimately found the appropriate device.
But, I recognize 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 newsletter system that makes it simple to layout, compose, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the renowned e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly select it as my newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a contemporary newsletter platform for quite time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it pertained to finally introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain numerous newsletter developers appreciate prominent newsletters with countless subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have wonderful content, tons of customers, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to identify how these huge newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they produce a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool really comprehend e-newsletter production and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the initial marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Because, any maker knows, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the best e-newsletter pile (that scales) usually implies making use of numerous various devices to help attain one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to establish referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that desires a system that enables them to send custom newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or material designer, you need to seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to begin and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you really end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great indication that individuals like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is an excellent system used by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own web site and make use of the system as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a web site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own web site currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable people to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
How to start using beehiiv email marketing software.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting (or for those trying to find a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding The ’92 Beehiiv
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise select your brand colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed information on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin composing,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Analyze.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot over), Beginning creating is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your clients are (and damage them down right into segments), Expand 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 e-newsletter with ads, Design is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you intend to cover, I advise just mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start writing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and easy to use interface for creating.
When you begin composing, you can optimize headings, add links, and style your material how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for various types of content like videos, web links, photos, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise regularly releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a great deal a lot more material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, 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 edit background shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, image styles, and more. I’m not going to go through ever single thing you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the platform completely free and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it an excellent publishing system for any e-newsletter developer.
Here are a few of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely simple to compose and send out e-mails. I discussed over some of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely one of the much better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a site. Think about it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you a website. However, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a customized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or via embed types.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I make use of on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various choices– a complete width, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working with updates for these, but I pointed out a couple of problems I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your checklist to onward your emails to friends and colleagues and if they obtain other people to sign up for your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve appear several e-newsletter business give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you one more opportunity for growing your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to an extra superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this article.
Costs registrations
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration revenue is most definitely a monster of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” issues of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying subscribers. This can be extremely lucrative relying on what your e-newsletter needs to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that generates millions in income a year simply by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the things I love about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count The ’92 Beehiiv.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you everything you require to begin and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain, polls, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit alternative for many individuals.
I’m not sure how the unit business economics service this, yet beehiiv is certainly more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Right here are a few of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and start sending out e-newsletters totally free.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create premium choices to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However certainly, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m going to point out some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized fonts.
I use Webflow as my site building system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much information why I love Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow testimonial if you want to find out more.
Today, there truly is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t like utilizing iframe’s since they have a tendency to slow down my web site a bit. Each time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s very visible when you get on a slow-moving internet link. Yet I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow type (which I like using). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would just include extra expenses that I do not need. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the cons below. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will eventually produce a far better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is an excellent solution for any individual aiming to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far outweighs several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively low-cost wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients 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 might cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create testimonial articles frequently. I only do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a friend.
I wish you discovered some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.