Over two years back, I read one of my favored 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 quickly began wrecking What Is Beehiiv Newsletter.
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m typically obtaining pitched different devices and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months trying various email and newsletter platforms to assist build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific alternatives for creating newsletters. But I could not find one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my newsletter designs, makes it extremely easy to create and send out emails, and provides me tools that assist me assess metrics and obtain even more customers.
I believe I have actually ultimately found the appropriate device.
However, I know beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to style, compose, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the well-known e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly opt for it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for fairly some time now. I have actually put things off hard when it concerned lastly releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure many e-newsletter developers appreciate prominent e-newsletters with numerous clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have terrific content, lots of customers, and a creative referral program that allows them to get even extra subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to figure out exactly how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they create an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device actually comprehend e-newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the very first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Due to the fact that, any designer knows, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the appropriate newsletter stack (that scales) usually implies utilizing numerous various tools to aid accomplish one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up references. It can get pricey.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was 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 creator that desires a system that allows them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or content developer, you must seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to start and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you really wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indicator that people like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great system utilized by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own website and use the system as your all-in-one option for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a web site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own site currently, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your website customers right to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit people to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to utilize various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack choice.
Exactly how to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, outside embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those seeking a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding What Is Beehiiv Newsletter
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand design and colors to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin creating,” “Articles,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Examine.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Begin writing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your customers are (and break them down into segments), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with ads, Layout is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you intend to discuss, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use interface for writing.
As soon as you start composing, you can optimize headings, include web links, and style your material exactly how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of options for different sorts of web content like videos, links, pictures, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise regularly launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a great deal extra material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time clients, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before solitary thing you can optimize with your e-mail template because it’s a lot. Just try out the system absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a terrific publishing platform for any newsletter designer.
Right here are some of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly easy to create and send out e-mails. I mentioned above several of things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll save you some added analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the far better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a website. Think of it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, provide you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom-made domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need 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 register for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or through embed kinds.
If you currently have a site, and want individuals to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed kind. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different alternatives– a full width, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s also an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM parameters for tracking functions– rather cool.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the group is working with updates for these, however I stated a few problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your checklist to onward your e-mails to good friends and associates and if they obtain other people to sign up for your checklist, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually appear many e-newsletter firms offer incentives 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 one more avenue for growing your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium memberships
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Subscription earnings is absolutely 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 develop “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be very financially rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter has to use. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that produces millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of the important things I like about beehiiv is exactly how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter What Is Beehiiv Newsletter.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you everything you need to get going and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom domain name, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit option for many individuals.
I’m unsure how the device economics work on this, but beehiiv is most definitely more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are some of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to establish and start sending newsletters totally free.
Clean and modern-day client analytics.
Lots of flexibility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Develop premium alternatives to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet of course, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I’ve located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my site building system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much information why I love Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to learn more.
Now, there truly is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site besides making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as utilizing iframe’s because they often tend to reduce my website a little bit. Every single time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s extremely noticeable when you’re on a sluggish net link. But I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t use a routine Webflow form (which I like utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would simply add extra prices that I don’t require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I assumed I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the cons right here. I’m also confident that Webflow will eventually produce a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for anyone seeking to study the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform much surpasses many that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather inexpensive of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation messages frequently. I just do when I really utilize the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a friend.
I hope you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.