I read among my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and quickly began wrecking. Above The Hollow Beehiiv…
Being a full-time maker is difficult. I’m often getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I invested the last 6 months trying different email and e-newsletter systems to help develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great alternatives for composing newsletters. However I couldn’t locate one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully customize my newsletter designs, makes it incredibly simple to compose and send out e-mails, and offers me devices that aid me analyze metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I assume I have actually lastly discovered the best tool.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to style, compose, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former employees at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly opt for it as my newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve watched for a modern-day newsletter system for fairly time now. I have actually put things off hard when it concerned finally launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure several newsletter developers look up to prominent e-newsletters with numerous clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have excellent web content, lots of clients, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to identify just how these large e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they create an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device truly recognize e-newsletter creation and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Because, any type of developer understands, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the right e-newsletter stack (that scales) usually suggests utilizing multiple various tools to help attain one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish recommendations. It can obtain expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was complimentary to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful platform used by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and make use of the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also provides you an internet site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own web site currently, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your website clients directly to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit people to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to leverage various marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that wants a system that enables them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
The most successful newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or content designer, you ought to seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to get going and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you in fact end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent sign that people enjoy reading your things.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you access to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, external embed types, and a lot more. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting out (or for those trying to find a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand name design and colors to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have described details on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start composing”, “Articles”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Examine”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you produce and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down right 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 newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you want to blog about, I suggest simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and straightforward user interface for creating.
When you start creating, you can optimize headings, include web links, and design your material how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of options for various types of web content like videos, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally regularly releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal extra content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your email template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to first time clients, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and much more. I’m not going to undergo ever single thing you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply check out the system free of charge and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a terrific posting system for any type of e-newsletter developer.
Below are some of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Above The Hollow Beehiiv
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it super easy to compose and send e-mails. I pointed out over a few of the important things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the much better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) survive on a website. Think about it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, provide you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom-made domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or through embed types.
If you already have an internet site, and want people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different options– a full width, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to onward UTM specifications for tracking functions– pretty cool.
However, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is dealing with updates for these, yet I mentioned a couple of concerns I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about 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 ahead your emails to close friends and associates and if they obtain other people to register for your checklist, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever type you want. I’ve appear many e-newsletter firms give 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 an additional opportunity for expanding your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this post.
Costs subscriptions
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration profits is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be extremely lucrative depending upon what your e-newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that generates millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the things I love concerning beehiiv is just how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on just how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you need to get going and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for lots of individuals.
I’m unsure just how the unit economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
- Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters free of cost
- Tidy and modern subscriber analytics
- Lots of flexibility with email designs.
- Referral program feature Above The Hollow Beehiiv
- Site hosting
- Produce costs options to monetize
- Surveys
To be sincere, I haven’t seen one more newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But of course, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the cons I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding customized font styles
I make use of Webflow as my internet site structure system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much information why I like Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow review if you wish to find out more.
Now, there really is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not such as using iframe’s because they tend to reduce my website a little bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s very recognizable when you get on a sluggish internet connection. However I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a routine Webflow form (which I enjoy making use of). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly simply add extra expenses that I don’t require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I thought I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will eventually create a far better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a great remedy for anyone seeking to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system much exceeds several that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly affordable of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation articles typically. I only do when I actually make use of the device myself and would certainly advise it to a good friend.
I hope you discovered some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.