I read one of my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and instantly started tearing up. Beehiiv Privacy Policy…
Being a full-time creator is tough. I’m usually getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological because I invested the last six months experimenting with different email and e-newsletter platforms to help build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent alternatives for writing newsletters. But I could not discover one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The concern with several existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me fully tailor my newsletter designs, makes it extremely very easy to write and send out e-mails, and provides me devices that assist me assess metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I think I have actually ultimately located the ideal device.
Yet, I understand beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it very easy to layout, compose, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous staff members at the famous e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m going to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately select it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a contemporary newsletter platform for fairly time now. I’ve hesitated hard when it came to finally releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure numerous newsletter makers admire popular newsletters with numerous subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have wonderful web content, tons of customers, and a clever referral program that allows them to get even more subscribers.
So, I took place a hunt to determine just how these large 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 customers? How do they create a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool truly recognize e-newsletter production and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the initial marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I knew this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Since, any designer understands, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the ideal e-newsletter pile (that scales) commonly implies utilizing multiple different tools to help attain one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was free to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great platform made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own internet site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally gives you an internet site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your website clients directly to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to take advantage of different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that desires a platform that allows them to send custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most successful newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, start-up, or content creator, you should seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s entirely free to begin and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you in fact end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indicator that individuals like reviewing your stuff.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance personalization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and more. It’s a really charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally choose your brand colors and design to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described details on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start writing”, “Blog posts”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Generate income from”, “Style” and” Evaluate”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings alternative.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Begin writing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and damage them down into sections), Expand is where you have access 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, Style is where you develop your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you wish to cover, I recommend just going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use interface for writing.
Once you begin writing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and design your web content just how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for different kinds of content like video clips, web links, pictures, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is also constantly launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a lot much more material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your email template and adjust some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time clients, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, font styles, photo formats, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever single point you can enhance with your e-mail template because it’s a great deal. Just experiment with the system totally free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it an excellent posting system for any kind of newsletter maker.
Below are some of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Privacy Policy
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to create and send e-mails. I discussed above some of the things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the far better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) reside on an internet site. Consider it as a web site 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 newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, give you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a customized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or with embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and want individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various alternatives– a full width, a fixed width, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s also an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to forward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– quite cool.
However, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working with updates for these, but I stated a few issues I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your listing to ahead your emails to close friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to register for your list, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve seem lots of e-newsletter firms give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– offering you another opportunity for growing your email list.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this short article.
Premium registrations
They claim all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Subscription profits is definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be very financially rewarding depending on what your newsletter needs to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the important things I love regarding beehiiv is how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client count rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you need to get started and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom domain, surveys, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite generous in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for several users.
I’m uncertain how the unit economics deal with this, but beehiiv is definitely more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are some of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of option:
- Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters free of charge
- Clean and modern subscriber analytics
- Great deals of versatility with e-mail layouts.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Privacy Policy
- Web site hosting
- Develop premium choices to monetize
- Surveys
To be honest, I have not seen one more e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet certainly, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom-made font styles
I use Webflow as my site structure system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive information why I like Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow evaluation if you wish to find out more.
Today, there really is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website aside from using an iframe embed. I personally do not like utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to slow down my web site a bit. Each time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the web page. It’s really visible when you get on a slow-moving net link. Yet I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t use a normal Webflow kind (which I love making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would simply add added expenses that I do not require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I believed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the cons below. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will at some point create a better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a fantastic service for any person aiming to study the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform much outweighs several that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively affordable wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unusual. If you were to have a 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 review articles commonly. I only do when I really utilize the tool myself and would suggest it to a close friend.
I hope you found some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.