Over 2 years back, I read among my preferred e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantly began destroying Why Is Beehiiv Better Than Substack.
I wasn’t certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time maker is difficult. I’m often obtaining pitched different devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological because I invested the last six months experimenting with various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic alternatives for writing e-newsletters. However I could not find one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me completely customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it incredibly simple to write and send emails, and gives me tools that assist me evaluate metrics and obtain even more clients.
I assume I’ve lastly discovered the appropriate device.
However, I understand beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it very easy to style, compose, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the popular newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally select it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually watched for a modern e-newsletter platform for fairly time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it pertained to lastly launching my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain many newsletter developers respect preferred newsletters with countless subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have terrific material, tons of clients, and a creative referral program that allows them to get even a lot more subscribers.
So, I took place a search to determine exactly how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to all of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this device actually recognize e-newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Because, any kind of maker knows, you need development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the ideal newsletter stack (that scales) commonly means making use of several different tools to aid accomplish one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to set up references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was free to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that wants a system that allows them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most successful newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or web content creator, you ought to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s totally free to begin and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you really wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indicator that people love reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic platform utilized by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your own site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a website comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own site currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your site clients directly to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit individuals to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to take advantage of different marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
How to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, external embed forms, and more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just beginning (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding Why Is Beehiiv Better Than Substack
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise select your brand design and colors to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described information on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start creating,” “Messages,” “Target market,” “Expand,” “Generate income from,” “Layout,” and” Examine.” And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Begin composing is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your customers are (and break them down into sections), Expand is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you develop your newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you want to blog about, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can modify your template and designing later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly interface for writing.
When you begin writing, you can enhance headings, include links, and style your material just how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of options for various kinds of material like videos, web links, pictures, and more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise regularly launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot extra content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your email template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time clients, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, image layouts, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever single point you can optimize with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Just experiment with the system totally free and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it a terrific posting system for any type of e-newsletter designer.
Here are a few of the essential features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it super easy to write and send emails. I stated over some of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some added analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a web site. Think of it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and an area where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, offer you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a customized domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or through embed types.
If you currently have a site, and desire individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. This is what I make use of on this web site (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 various choices– a complete size, a dealt with width, and a slim installed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for attribution monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM criteria for tracking purposes– pretty cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make sure the group is dealing with updates for these, however I discussed 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 an option for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your listing to ahead your emails to good friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your listing, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever form you want. I’ve appear several e-newsletter firms offer incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you another method for growing your email list.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this post.
Costs subscriptions
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership earnings is absolutely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” issues of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be extremely lucrative depending upon what your e-newsletter has to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that creates millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the things I like concerning beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter Why Is Beehiiv Better Than Substack.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan gives you whatever you need to start and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
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 costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for several users.
I’m not sure how the system business economics service this, but beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
Easy to establish and begin sending newsletters free of charge.
Tidy and modern-day client analytics.
Great deals of versatility with email layouts.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Develop costs choices to generate income from.
Surveys.
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen one more newsletter system that has had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet certainly, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to mention some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I have actually located while making use of beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around adding personalized typefaces.
I utilize Webflow as my website building platform of choice (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 so much but you can review my Webflow review if you wish to learn more.
Today, there actually is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as making use of iframe’s since they have a tendency to decrease my internet site a little bit. Every single time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s really obvious when you get on a slow internet link. However I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a regular Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would simply include extra prices that I don’t need. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I thought I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually produce a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is a terrific remedy for any person looking to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system much exceeds lots of that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly inexpensive wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t create evaluation articles often. I only do when I in fact make use of the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a friend.
I hope you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.