Over 2 years ago, I was reading one of my favored email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and instantly started tearing up The News Beehiiv.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full time developer is difficult. I’m typically getting pitched different devices and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I invested the last six months trying out various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to assist construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific choices for composing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t locate one that made me offer a guaranteed “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 tailor my newsletter designs, makes it incredibly easy to write and send emails, and offers me devices that assist me examine metrics and obtain more clients.
I assume I have actually finally located the best tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to style, write, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former employees at the famous newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally go with it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter platform for rather a long time now. I have actually postponed hard when it involved lastly releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure numerous newsletter designers admire preferred newsletters with countless subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have wonderful material, tons of clients, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get back at more subscribers.
So, I took place a hunt to determine just how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool really comprehend e-newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Because, any creator recognizes, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the best newsletter pile (that scales) frequently suggests using numerous different tools to aid achieve one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up referrals. It can get expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was cost-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 developer that wants a platform that permits them to send out customized newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or web content creator, you need to seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you in fact wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great sign that individuals like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful platform utilized by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own website and utilize the system as your all-in-one option for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a web site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site currently, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your website clients directly to your beehiiv email list. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to leverage various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
Exactly how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance personalization, analytics, external embed types, and more. It’s a really charitable offering for those just starting (or for those seeking a new platform to move to).
Onboarding The News Beehiiv
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise choose your brand design and colors to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined information on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start creating,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Evaluate.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you create and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down into sections), Grow 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, Design is where you make your newsletter landing page and post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you wish to blog about, I advise simply going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– focus on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and user-friendly user interface for composing.
When you start creating, you can optimize headings, add links, and style your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for different kinds of content like video clips, links, images, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise constantly launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a great deal extra material features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and change some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to first time clients, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image styles, and more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever solitary thing you can optimize with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Just try out the platform completely free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a fantastic posting system for any type of newsletter designer.
Below are several of the essential features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it very easy to compose and send out e-mails. I stated above some of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely one of the far better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) survive a web site. Consider it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and an area where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, offer you an internet site. However, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a customized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is important. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or via embed types.
If you already have a website, and want people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different alternatives– a full width, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM specifications for tracking functions– quite neat.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the team is servicing updates for these, however I discussed a couple of issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your listing to onward your emails to close friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to register for your list, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve seem lots of newsletter business provide benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you another avenue for expanding your email list.
However, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this post.
Costs memberships
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription profits is certainly a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” problems of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be really rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter has to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that produces millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among things I enjoy about beehiiv is how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter The News Beehiiv.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you whatever you need to get started 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, surveys, and accessibility to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the very same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for several individuals.
I’m not sure how the unit business economics work on this, however beehiiv is most definitely more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are a few of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
Easy to establish and begin sending out newsletters free of cost.
Clean and modern-day subscriber analytics.
Lots of adaptability with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Develop costs alternatives to monetize.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I have not seen one more newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But certainly, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I’ve located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom fonts.
I use Webflow as my website structure system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much detail why I enjoy Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow evaluation if you want to find out more.
Right now, there truly is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site apart from making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not such as utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to slow down my site a bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the page. It’s extremely obvious when you get on a sluggish net connection. However I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a routine Webflow type (which I love utilizing). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply add extra costs that I don’t require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the cons right here. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point produce a much better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is an excellent remedy for any individual wanting to dive into the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far exceeds several that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather low-cost for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create evaluation posts commonly. I just do when I in fact use the device myself and would suggest it to a close friend.
I wish you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.