Over 2 years ago, I read one of my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and quickly started destroying What Is Beehiiv Boost.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time developer is difficult. I’m commonly obtaining pitched various devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological because I invested the last six months trying various email and newsletter systems to help construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful options for writing newsletters. However I could not locate one that made me provide a precise “yes”.
The concern with several existing newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me completely personalize my newsletter designs, makes it super very easy to compose and send e-mails, and offers me tools that assist me evaluate metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I believe I have actually ultimately located the best device.
But, I know beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to layout, create, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the popular newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help designers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately go with it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day newsletter system for rather a long time now. I’ve procrastinated hard when it concerned lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure many newsletter makers appreciate popular e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have excellent web content, lots of subscribers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to figure out exactly 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 get more clients? How do they create a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this device actually understand newsletter creation and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the very first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I knew this was going to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on designer development.
Due to the fact that, any maker understands, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the ideal e-newsletter pile (that ranges) commonly means utilizing several various devices to help attain one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to establish referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was complimentary to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that desires a platform that permits them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or web content designer, you ought to seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s totally free to start and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you actually end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indicator that individuals like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is an excellent system used by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your very own web site and use the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv also provides you an internet site similar to Substack. However, if you have your own web site already, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your website customers right to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable individuals to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to leverage various marketing channels to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
How to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, external embed kinds, and more. It’s a really generous offering for those just starting out (or for those seeking a new system to move to).
Onboarding What Is Beehiiv Boost
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally pick your brand design and colors to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have described details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning creating,” “Articles,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Assess.” And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you produce and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and damage them down right into sections), Expand 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, Style is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you intend to blog about, I advise simply going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin creating”.
You can modify your template and designing later– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and easy to use user interface for composing.
Once you begin writing, you can optimize headings, add links, and style your material just how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for various types of web content like videos, links, photos, and more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot more material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your email template and change some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, photo formats, and more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever solitary point you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply experiment with the platform absolutely free and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a fantastic posting system for any type of e-newsletter developer.
Right here are some of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it incredibly easy to compose and send out e-mails. I pointed out over a few of the things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll save you some additional reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the far better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) live on an internet site. Consider it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, offer you a website. However, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a personalized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is necessary. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or through embed kinds.
If you already have an internet site, and desire people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed type. This is what I make use of on this website (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 three various options– a full size, a fixed size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s also an alternative for attribution tracking if you want to forward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– rather neat.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the team is working with updates for these, but I discussed a few worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your listing to onward your e-mails to buddies and coworkers and if they get other people to register for your list, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually appear lots of newsletter business give rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you one more opportunity for expanding your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this post.
Costs memberships
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration profits is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” problems of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be very financially rewarding relying on what your newsletter has to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among things I love about beehiiv is how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter What Is Beehiiv Boost.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan gives you everything you need to get going and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom domain, polls, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit option for several individuals.
I’m not sure exactly how the device business economics service this, however beehiiv is certainly less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are several of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters free of charge.
Clean and modern customer analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Internet site hosting.
Produce costs choices to monetize.
Surveys.
To be sincere, I have not seen an additional newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet obviously, I do not want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my site building system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow evaluation if you would love to discover more.
Today, there really is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than using an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as using iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to decrease my site a bit. Every single time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s very obvious when you get on a slow-moving net connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow type (which I love utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly just add added costs that I do not require. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the cons here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually develop a much better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is a terrific option for any individual looking to dive into the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far exceeds several that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively cheap wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t write review blog posts commonly. I just do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a friend.
I hope you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.