I was reading one of my favored e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and promptly started wrecking. Beehiiv Headquarters…
Being a permanent developer is difficult. I’m frequently getting pitched various tools and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last six months trying different email and newsletter platforms to help construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great options for composing newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me completely customize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly simple to create and send out emails, and provides me tools that assist me evaluate metrics and obtain more clients.
I assume I’ve ultimately located the best device.
But, I understand beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right 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 design, create, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former employees at the famous newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately opt for it as my newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter system for quite time now. I have actually put things off hard when it pertained to ultimately introducing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure numerous e-newsletter makers admire preferred newsletters with millions of customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have excellent content, tons of subscribers, and a creative referral program that enables them to get back at a lot more subscribers.
So, I took place a search to figure out exactly how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to answer all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool really understand e-newsletter creation and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Because, any kind of developer recognizes, you need development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And finding the right e-newsletter stack (that scales) often implies making use of several different tools to aid achieve one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish referrals. It can obtain expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was totally free to begin utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic system utilized by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and make use of the system as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also provides you a website comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own internet site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your website customers straight to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow individuals to register for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to leverage different marketing channels to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack choice.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that wants a platform that enables them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or web content designer, you need to seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you in fact end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good sign that people enjoy reviewing your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, outside embed types, and extra. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those trying to find a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also select your brand name design and colors to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed details on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start creating”, “Posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Generate income from”, “Layout” and” Evaluate”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down right into segments), Grow 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, Layout 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 manage every one of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you wish to blog about, I recommend simply going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning writing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and straightforward interface for creating.
Once you begin composing, you can enhance headings, include web links, and design your material exactly how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of alternatives for various sorts of web content like videos, links, pictures, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise continuously releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a whole lot much more content features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to design your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to first time clients, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image formats, and extra. I’m not going to experience ever before solitary point you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just experiment with the platform free of charge and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a terrific posting platform for any type of e-newsletter creator.
Here are some of the important features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Headquarters
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely easy to write and send out e-mails. I mentioned above a few of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the much better e-mail 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 desire) reside on a site. Think about it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, offer you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom-made domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is very important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have a site, and want individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed type. This is what I use on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various alternatives– a full size, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s also a choice for attribution tracking if you want to forward UTM criteria for tracking functions– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the team is working on updates for these, but I stated a few problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed 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 producing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your listing to forward your emails to good friends and colleagues and if they get other individuals to register for your listing, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually seem numerous e-newsletter firms provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional opportunity for expanding your e-mail checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs memberships
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription earnings is absolutely a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be really rewarding relying on what your newsletter has to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
One of the things I enjoy about beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer count go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to get going and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit choice for several customers.
I’m not exactly sure how the system economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is definitely cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are some of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
- Easy to establish and start sending newsletters totally free
- Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics
- Great deals of versatility with e-mail layouts.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Headquarters
- Internet site hosting
- Develop premium alternatives to monetize
- Surveys
To be sincere, I have not seen an additional newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
Yet of course, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I’ve located while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including custom-made fonts
I use Webflow as my website structure system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive detail why I like Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow review if you ‘d like to find out more.
Right now, there truly is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as using iframe’s since they have a tendency to slow down my site a little bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s extremely noticeable when you’re on a sluggish web connection. However I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not use a normal Webflow kind (which I enjoy utilizing). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier however that would certainly just include added expenses that I do not require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I assumed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will eventually create a much better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a fantastic service for anyone aiming to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system far surpasses lots of 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 also fairly cheap for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t write testimonial blog posts typically. I just do when I really use the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a buddy.
I wish you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.