Over two years back, I was reading one of my preferred email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantly started wrecking The Men’s Hope Beehiiv.
I had not been certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m frequently getting pitched various devices and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last six months experimenting with various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to assist construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic alternatives for composing newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully customize my newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly simple to create and send out e-mails, and gives me devices that assist me examine metrics and obtain even more customers.
I assume I’ve lastly discovered the right device.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it easy to style, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the renowned newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help makers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m going to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately choose it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for quite time now. I have actually postponed hard when it pertained to lastly introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure many newsletter developers respect preferred newsletters with numerous subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have great content, tons of subscribers, and a creative referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more subscribers.
So, I took place a search to find out exactly how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they produce a newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device actually understand newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Because, any type of creator recognizes, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the ideal e-newsletter pile (that ranges) commonly implies utilizing multiple different devices to aid attain one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was cost-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 developer that desires a system that allows them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or web content designer, you ought to seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to begin and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a good sign that individuals love reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently 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 obtain your very own web site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a website similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own site already, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your site subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit individuals to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to take advantage of different marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
How to begin using beehiiv e-mail 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” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you accessibility to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and a lot more. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those looking for a new platform to move to).
Onboarding The Men’s Hope Beehiiv
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally pick your brand name colors and design to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have outlined details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning creating,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Analyze.” And at the really lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot over), Start writing is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your customers are (and break them down right into segments), 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 e-newsletter with ads, Design is where you develop your newsletter landing page and post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you wish to write about, I advise simply going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Start composing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and easy to use interface for writing.
Once you begin writing, you can optimize headings, include web links, and style your web content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of options for different types of material like videos, web links, images, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally frequently launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a whole lot a lot more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to design your email template and readjust some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, add your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever single point you can optimize with your e-mail template because it’s a whole lot. Just experiment with the platform for free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of impressive features that make it a fantastic posting system for any kind of e-newsletter developer.
Here are a few of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly simple to write and send out e-mails. I stated over several of things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll save you some additional reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive an internet site. Think of it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, offer you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is essential. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or through embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and want individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have 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 forms, you have 3 various options– a full width, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for attribution monitoring if you intend to forward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– quite cool.
However, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the team is working with updates for these, yet I stated a couple of concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your listing to onward your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they get other individuals to register for your checklist, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I’ve seem numerous newsletter firms give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another avenue for expanding your e-mail list.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs memberships
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration revenue 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 develop “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be very lucrative relying on what your newsletter has to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among things I enjoy about beehiiv is just how clean and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter The Men’s Hope Beehiiv.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client count rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you whatever you require to get started and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, personalized domain, surveys, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for numerous users.
I’m not sure how the device economics service this, but beehiiv is absolutely less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are several of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and start sending out e-newsletters free of cost.
Tidy and modern client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Develop premium choices to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be honest, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But naturally, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my site structure platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive information why I enjoy Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow testimonial if you would love to find out more.
Right now, there really is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from using an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as using iframe’s because they have a tendency to slow down my website a bit. Every single time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the web page. It’s very visible when you get on a slow internet link. But I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow form (which I like using). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier but that would certainly just include added costs that I do not require. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I thought I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the cons here. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually produce a much better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for any person looking to dive into the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far exceeds numerous that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly inexpensive of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose testimonial messages typically. I just do when I actually make use of the device myself and would suggest it to a pal.
I wish you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.