Over two years back, I was reading one of my preferred email 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 immediately began destroying The Tech Buzz Beehiiv.
I had not been sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a full-time maker is difficult. I’m often obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I invested the last six months trying various e-mail and newsletter platforms to assist construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great options for composing e-newsletters. However I could not discover one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The issue with several existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me completely customize my newsletter layouts, makes it very simple to write and send emails, and provides me tools that assist me assess metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I think I’ve lastly located the best tool.
However, I know beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to design, compose, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the famous e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m going to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern newsletter system for fairly some time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it concerned ultimately introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure several e-newsletter makers admire preferred newsletters with numerous clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have terrific content, tons of subscribers, and a creative referral program that permits them to get even more subscribers.
So, I went on a search to identify how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they create a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool really comprehend e-newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Because, any type of designer understands, you need development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And finding the appropriate newsletter stack (that scales) usually means using multiple different devices to aid accomplish one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to set up referrals. It can get costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was free to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that wants a platform that allows them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or web content maker, you should seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s completely free to get started and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you actually wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great indication that people enjoy reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful platform used by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own website and make use of the system as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a web site similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own web site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your site clients right to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit people to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack choice.
Just how to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software application.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial 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 allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and more. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those looking for a new system to move to).
Onboarding The Tech Buzz Beehiiv
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally select your brand name design and colors to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning writing,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Examine.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot over), Begin creating is where you develop and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your clients are (and break them down right into sectors), Expand 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-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 cover, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start composing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and straightforward interface for writing.
As soon as you start composing, you can maximize headings, add links, and design your web content just how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for different kinds of content like videos, links, images, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is also continuously releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a whole lot extra content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to very first time clients, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, fonts, photo layouts, and much more. I’m not going to undergo ever before solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a whole lot. Just check out the system free of cost and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a fantastic publishing system for any kind of e-newsletter developer.
Right here are some of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it super very easy to compose and send e-mails. I stated over a few of the things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll save you some added analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the far better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) survive on a website. Think of it as an internet site for your e-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 know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, provide you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a customized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or via embed kinds.
If you already have an internet site, and desire individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed type. This is what I use on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 various alternatives– a complete size, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution tracking if you want to onward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working with updates for these, yet I discussed a couple of problems I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your list to forward your e-mails to good friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to register for your listing, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve appear lots of e-newsletter firms offer incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you another method for growing your e-mail list.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this article.
Costs subscriptions
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Subscription profits is certainly a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be really lucrative relying on what your newsletter needs to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that generates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is exactly how clean and easy the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter The Tech Buzz Beehiiv.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you whatever you require to get started and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom domain, polls, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for lots of users.
I’m unsure exactly how the unit economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is definitely more affordable (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Naturally, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of option:
Easy to set up and start sending newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with email styles.
Referral program feature.
Website hosting.
Develop premium options to monetize.
Polls.
To be honest, I haven’t seen another e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
But of course, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding customized typefaces.
I use Webflow as my internet site building platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in too much detail why I like Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow testimonial if you want to discover more.
Now, there actually is nothing else method 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 tend to reduce my web site a bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s very visible when you get on a slow internet connection. However I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not utilize a normal Webflow form (which I love making use of). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would just include additional expenses that I don’t require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will ultimately develop a far better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
In general, beehiiv is a great option for anybody seeking to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform much exceeds lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather inexpensive wherefore 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 could cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t write evaluation messages typically. I only do when I really use the device myself and would certainly advise it to a good friend.
I hope you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.