Over two years earlier, I read one of my preferred email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and quickly started tearing up Who Owns Beehiiv.
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time developer is tough. I’m frequently obtaining pitched different tools and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological since I spent the last 6 months trying out various e-mail and newsletter platforms to help develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent options for creating e-newsletters. Yet I could not find one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with several existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my e-newsletter styles, makes it incredibly easy to create and send emails, and gives me devices that help me assess metrics and get even more customers.
I believe I’ve ultimately discovered the right tool.
However, I understand beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to style, compose, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the famous newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist makers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly select it as my e-newsletter system of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern newsletter platform for fairly time now. I’ve put things off hard when it concerned finally releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure many e-newsletter designers appreciate prominent e-newsletters with millions of clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have wonderful content, tons of customers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even much more customers.
So, I took place a hunt to figure out just how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool really comprehend e-newsletter production and growth.” I examined 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 workers at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on creator growth.
Because, any type of developer recognizes, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the best newsletter pile (that scales) typically means using numerous various devices to help achieve one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish recommendations. It can get costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was cost-free to begin making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content designer that desires a platform that permits them to send custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or content developer, you ought to seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you actually end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent sign that people enjoy reviewing your things.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is an excellent system made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own site and make use of the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a website similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own web site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow people to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
How to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software application.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, external embed kinds, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply starting (or for those searching for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Who Owns Beehiiv
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site link could 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 dashboard
When you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have outlined info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start writing,” “Blog posts,” “Audience,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Style,” and” Analyze.” And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Beginning composing is where you develop and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and damage them down into sectors), Expand is where you have accessibility 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 blog post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you wish to blog about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– focus on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly user interface for writing.
Once you start composing, you can maximize headings, include links, and style your material exactly how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of choices for different kinds of web content like video clips, links, pictures, and more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot much more content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your e-mail template and change some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture formats, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever single point you can enhance with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Just try the system absolutely free and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of impressive features that make it a terrific publishing platform for any type of newsletter maker.
Right here are a few of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very simple to write and send out e-mails. I stated above some of things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely among the better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on a website. Think of it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, give you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your website 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 update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is important. 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 with embed kinds.
If you already have an internet site, and want individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed kind. This is what I use on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various options– a full width, a fixed width, and a slim installed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for attribution monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM specifications for tracking purposes– quite neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make sure the team is working on updates for these, however I mentioned a few worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your listing to ahead your e-mails to friends and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to register for your list, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve seem many e-newsletter business give incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional opportunity for expanding your email listing.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this post.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Subscription profits is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be very financially rewarding relying on what your newsletter needs to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that generates millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of the things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count Who Owns Beehiiv.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan gives you whatever you need to get going and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for many individuals.
I’m not exactly sure just how the unit economics work with this, yet beehiiv is most definitely less costly (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters free of cost.
Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics.
Great deals of flexibility with e-mail designs.
Referral program feature.
Site hosting.
Develop costs alternatives to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be truthful, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But of course, I do not intend to be biased so I’m going to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve located while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding custom-made typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my internet site structure system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much detail why I like Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow testimonial if you would love to find out more.
Now, there truly is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not such as utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my site a little bit. Every single time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s very visible when you get on a slow-moving net link. But I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow form (which I love utilizing). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would just add additional expenses that I do not need. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I assumed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point create a much better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a wonderful option for anybody looking to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform much outweighs numerous that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly economical wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is uncommon. 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 per month.
Anyways, I do not create testimonial posts typically. I only do when I in fact make use of the device myself and would suggest it to a pal.
I wish you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.