Over 2 years ago, I was reading among my favored e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and instantaneously started tearing up What Is mail.beehiiv.com.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m typically obtaining pitched different tools and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological because I invested the last six months experimenting with different e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to help develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic options for composing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The issue with several existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me completely customize my newsletter designs, makes it super simple to compose and send out emails, and provides me tools that help me examine metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I think I’ve lastly discovered the ideal tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to design, compose, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous staff members at the famous newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help developers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly select it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter system for fairly time now. I have actually put things off hard when it concerned finally releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure many newsletter creators look up to preferred newsletters with millions of clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have wonderful content, tons of customers, and a clever referral program that permits them to get back at extra clients.
So, I went on a hunt to find out exactly how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they produce a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this device actually comprehend newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Since, any type of designer understands, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the right newsletter pile (that scales) often means making use of several different devices to help attain one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish recommendations. It can get expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was cost-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 material creator that desires a platform that allows them to send customized newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or content developer, you ought to seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you in fact end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent indication that individuals like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is an excellent platform used by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your own internet site and use the platform as your all-in-one option for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv permits 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 subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv also offers you a website similar to Substack. However, if you have your own website already, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site subscribers straight to your beehiiv email checklist. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to permit individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you accessibility to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance personalization, analytics, external embed kinds, and more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding What Is mail.beehiiv.com
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally choose your brand name colors and design to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed details on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning writing,” “Posts,” “Audience,” “Grow,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Evaluate.” And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot above), Begin composing is where you develop and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and damage them down into segments), 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 newsletter with ads, Design is where you create your newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you want to blog about, I advise just mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly interface for composing.
When you start creating, you can maximize headings, add links, and style your material exactly how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for various types of material like video clips, web links, pictures, and more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally constantly releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a lot more material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to create your e-mail template and change some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a description, add your logo, activate or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, picture formats, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before single thing you can enhance with your email template because it’s a whole lot. Simply try the platform for free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it an excellent posting system for any newsletter maker.
Here are some of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it incredibly simple to create and send out e-mails. I stated over several of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely one of the much better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on a website. Consider it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, give you a web site. However, the free plan areas your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a customized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or through embed kinds.
If you already have a site, and desire people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different options– a complete width, a fixed size, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an option for attribution tracking if you want to onward UTM criteria for tracking functions– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the group is dealing with updates for these, but I stated a few problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your checklist to ahead your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to register for your listing, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I have actually seem many e-newsletter companies provide benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you an additional opportunity for expanding your email list.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription revenue is definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be very profitable depending upon what your newsletter has to supply. For example, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that creates millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of the important things I like about beehiiv is exactly how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter What Is mail.beehiiv.com.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count rise 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 provides you whatever you require to get started and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for lots of customers.
I’m uncertain just how the unit economics deal with this, but beehiiv is definitely less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are several of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
Easy to establish and start sending out e-newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and modern subscriber analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail styles.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Develop premium alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be truthful, I have not seen another e-newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
Yet certainly, I do not intend to be biased so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I have actually discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including personalized fonts.
I make use of Webflow as my internet site structure platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow review if you wish to find out more.
Right now, there actually is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not such as using iframe’s since they have a tendency to reduce my site a little bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the web page. It’s very visible when you’re on a sluggish net link. But I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not make use of a routine Webflow form (which I love using). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply include additional prices that I do not require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I thought I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the cons below. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately create a much better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is an excellent service for anybody aiming to dive into the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter system much surpasses numerous that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly cheap wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t write review blog posts frequently. I just do when I actually utilize the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a close friend.
I wish you discovered some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.