Over two years earlier, I was reading among my favored email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and promptly started tearing up The Runway Ventures Beehiiv.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time creator is difficult. I’m usually obtaining pitched various devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months trying various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great choices for composing newsletters. But I could not discover one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me completely personalize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it extremely simple to write and send e-mails, and offers me devices that help me analyze metrics and obtain more customers.
I believe I have actually ultimately located the right device.
But, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everybody. 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 platform that makes it very easy to design, write, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former employees at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to explain 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 system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve watched for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for rather some time now. I’ve procrastinated hard when it concerned ultimately launching my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure many newsletter creators respect preferred newsletters with numerous subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have fantastic content, lots of subscribers, and a creative referral program that permits them to get even extra subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to find out just how these huge 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 stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool really recognize newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the very first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Due to the fact that, any designer understands, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the best newsletter pile (that ranges) usually suggests using numerous different tools to assist achieve one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish references. It can get pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was totally free to begin making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content maker that desires a system that permits them to send out custom newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or material developer, you ought to seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you in fact end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great sign that individuals enjoy reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is an excellent system made use of by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your own website and make use of the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a website similar to Substack. But, if you have your own web site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site clients right to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable people to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
How to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The very 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 allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and much more. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding The Runway Ventures Beehiiv
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise pick your brand design and colors to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin creating,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Design,” and” Examine.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot above), Start creating is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your customers are (and break them down into sectors), Expand is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you wish to discuss, I advise simply going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Begin creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and easy to use user interface for composing.
Once you start writing, you can optimize headings, add links, and design your material just how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of options for different kinds of content like video clips, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise frequently releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a great deal much more content features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and change some setups.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to first time clients, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, photo styles, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before single thing you can optimize with your email template because it’s a great deal. Just experiment with the system completely free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any kind of e-newsletter developer.
Here are a few of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it super easy to compose and send out emails. I stated above a few of the things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive on a site. Consider it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and an area where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, offer you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or with embed types.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed type. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different choices– a complete width, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to forward UTM specifications for tracking functions– rather cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the group is dealing with updates for these, however I mentioned a couple of problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your checklist to ahead your e-mails to pals and colleagues and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your list, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever form you want. I have actually appear numerous e-newsletter firms provide rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you an additional avenue for growing your email listing.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this post.
Costs memberships
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership profits is most definitely a monster of its own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” issues of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be extremely lucrative relying on what your newsletter has to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that creates millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among things I love regarding beehiiv is how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter The Runway Ventures Beehiiv.
You get access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you need to get started and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, polls, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for lots of users.
I’m not exactly sure exactly how the system business economics work with this, however beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are some of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to set up and begin sending out newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and contemporary customer analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Create costs options to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I haven’t seen another e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
However naturally, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the disadvantages I have actually found while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my web site structure system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive detail why I love Webflow so much but you can read my Webflow review if you wish to discover more.
Today, there really is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site besides using an iframe embed. I personally do not like making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to decrease my web site a bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s very obvious when you’re on a sluggish web connection. But I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can not make use of a routine Webflow form (which I love making use of). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply add extra costs that I do not require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I believed I would state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the cons here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will at some point create a far better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful option for anyone looking to study the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform far exceeds lots of that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively affordable for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not compose testimonial blog posts commonly. I just do when I really utilize the tool myself and would recommend it to a good friend.
I wish you found some quality on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.