I was reading 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 very first time. I clicked it and promptly began destroying. Beehiiv TWIST…
Being a full-time creator is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched various devices and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional because I invested the last 6 months experimenting with various email and e-newsletter platforms to help build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great alternatives for writing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The concern with several existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me completely customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it extremely simple to create and send out emails, and offers me devices that aid me examine metrics and obtain more customers.
I assume I have actually lastly found the ideal tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv may 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 platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to style, create, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous workers at the famous newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly go with it as my newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for fairly some time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it involved ultimately introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure lots of newsletter makers respect popular e-newsletters with millions of clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have terrific material, tons of customers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get back at a lot more clients.
So, I went on a quest to determine how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to all of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device really comprehend e-newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I knew this was going to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Because, any type of maker knows, you need development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the appropriate newsletter stack (that scales) usually suggests using numerous various devices to aid accomplish one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up recommendations. It can get pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to start making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is an excellent system made use of by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own website and use the platform as your all-in-one option for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own web site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your website clients right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow people to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to take advantage of different marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
How to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content developer that wants a system that enables them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or web content creator, you should seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to begin and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you in fact end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good indicator that people love reviewing your things.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those trying to find a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also select your brand design and colors to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed information on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start writing”, “Articles”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Evaluate”. And at the really lower you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can watch who your customers are (and break them down right into sections), Grow is where you have accessibility 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 newsletter with ads, Layout is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you wish to blog about, I advise simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– focus on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and straightforward interface for composing.
When you start writing, you can optimize headings, include links, and design your web content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for different sorts of web content like video clips, web links, images, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is also continuously releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a lot much more material features relying on when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to create your email template and readjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to first time clients, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, photo formats, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever single thing you can optimize with your e-mail template since it’s a great deal. Just try out the platform completely free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a fantastic posting system for any e-newsletter designer.
Here are a few of the necessary features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv TWIST
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely simple to write and send e-mails. I stated above several of things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly among the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) live on an internet site. Consider it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom-made domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or with embed forms.
If you currently have a website, and desire individuals to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed kind. This is what I use on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different alternatives– a complete size, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an option for attribution monitoring if you wish to onward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the team is dealing with updates for these, however I stated a couple of concerns I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your checklist to onward your emails to close friends and associates and if they obtain other individuals to register for your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever type you want. I’ve appear numerous e-newsletter companies offer rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you an additional opportunity for expanding your email listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration profits is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be extremely rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to use. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that generates millions in profits a year just by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I love concerning beehiiv is exactly how tidy and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count.
You get access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client matter go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you need to begin and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, surveys, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for numerous customers.
I’m not sure exactly how the unit economics service this, however beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
- Easy to set up and start sending newsletters for free
- Clean and modern-day subscriber analytics
- Great deals of versatility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv TWIST
- Web site hosting
- Create costs alternatives to monetize
- Surveys
To be sincere, I haven’t seen another newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet naturally, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I have actually discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including custom-made fonts
I use Webflow as my internet site building system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive information why I love Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow evaluation if you ‘d like to discover more.
Now, there really is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than using an iframe embed. I directly do not like making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to decrease my internet site a bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s really recognizable when you get on a slow net link. Yet I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not make use of a normal Webflow form (which I like using). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would just include extra expenses that I do not need. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the cons right here. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually create a far better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a fantastic solution for any person seeking to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform far surpasses several that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather economical of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose testimonial blog posts commonly. I only do when I actually make use of the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a good friend.
I hope you discovered some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.