Over two years back, I read one of my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantaneously began destroying UConn WBB Weekly Beehiiv.
I had not been certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time maker is difficult. I’m often getting pitched different tools and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I spent the last six months trying out various email and e-newsletter systems to help develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic choices for creating newsletters. Yet I could not find one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The problem with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my newsletter designs, makes it super very easy to create and send out e-mails, and provides me tools that help me examine metrics and get more customers.
I think I have actually ultimately found the best tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it easy to style, write, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the renowned newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this article, I’m going to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately select it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter system for fairly a long time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it involved ultimately introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make certain numerous newsletter creators look up to prominent newsletters with countless clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have wonderful web content, tons of clients, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even extra customers.
So, I took place a quest to figure out how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more subscribers? How do they produce a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this device truly understand e-newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the very first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I understood this was going to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Since, any creator recognizes, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the best e-newsletter stack (that scales) commonly suggests making use of multiple various tools to help achieve one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was totally free to begin utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content creator that wants a system that enables them to send out custom newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or material developer, you should seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to begin and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you actually wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indicator that individuals like reading your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic system made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own website and make use of the system as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a site similar to Substack. However, if you have your own internet site currently, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your site clients directly to your beehiiv email listing. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow people to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to leverage different marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
How to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you accessibility to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, outside embed kinds, and much more. It’s a really charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those seeking a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding UConn WBB Weekly Beehiiv
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also choose your brand colors and design to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed info on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning composing,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Monetize,” “Layout,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down into sectors), Grow is where you have access 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 advertisements, Style is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you want to write about, I advise just mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and easy to use user interface for composing.
When you start writing, you can enhance headings, add links, and style your content how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for various types of material like videos, links, pictures, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally constantly launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a whole lot extra content features depending upon when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and change some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, include your logo, activate or off a welcome email to first time customers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background colors, borders, spacing, fonts, image formats, and more. I’m not going to undergo ever single point 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!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any type of e-newsletter developer.
Here are a few of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it super easy to create and send out emails. I discussed above some of things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll save you some added reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) survive on a web site. Consider it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, provide you a web site. However, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a personalized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is essential. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or with embed types.
If you already have an internet site, and desire people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different choices– a complete size, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to forward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– rather neat.
However, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the group is working on updates for these, however I mentioned a couple of concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a service for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your listing to onward your e-mails to good friends and colleagues and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your list, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever type you want. I’ve seem lots of newsletter business offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you an additional method for expanding your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this post.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription income is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be really lucrative depending upon what your e-newsletter has to provide. For example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that creates millions in income a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among things I love regarding 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 rates and client count UConn WBB Weekly Beehiiv.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber count go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you need to start and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for lots of users.
I’m not exactly sure how the unit economics work on this, but beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are a few of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
Easy to establish and start sending out newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of adaptability with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Create premium options to generate income from.
Polls.
To be sincere, I have not seen an additional newsletter platform that has been able to package all of these features together so well.
Yet of course, I do not wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to mention some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the cons I have actually located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including custom font styles.
I use Webflow as my web site building system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much detail why I like Webflow so much yet you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to learn more.
Now, there really is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as making use of iframe’s since they have a tendency to slow down my website a bit. Each time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s very obvious when you’re on a slow-moving internet connection. However I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow kind (which I like using). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would certainly simply add extra expenses that I don’t require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the cons right here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is an excellent service for any individual seeking to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system much outweighs numerous 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 additionally fairly inexpensive for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation articles often. I just do when I actually use the device myself and would suggest it to a buddy.
I hope you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.