I read among my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and quickly began destroying. Alex & Books Beehiiv…
Being a permanent maker is tough. I’m often obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological since I invested the last six months experimenting with different email and e-newsletter platforms to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific alternatives for composing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The concern with several existing newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it extremely simple to compose and send emails, and provides me devices that aid me analyze metrics and get more subscribers.
I think I’ve lastly discovered the ideal tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to layout, create, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the renowned e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a modern e-newsletter system for quite some time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it pertained to lastly introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure several newsletter designers respect preferred newsletters with numerous clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have wonderful material, lots of subscribers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get back at a lot more subscribers.
So, I took place a search to determine exactly how these big newsletters established their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they produce an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to answer all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool truly understand e-newsletter production and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the very first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Since, any type of creator recognizes, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the right newsletter stack (that ranges) usually means using several different tools to help accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to set up recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was cost-free to begin utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great system used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own site and use the system as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally gives you an internet site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own web site currently, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site customers right to your beehiiv email list. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
How to start using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that wants a platform that permits them to send customized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
The most successful newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or content developer, you must seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you actually wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indicator that people enjoy reviewing your stuff.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, outside embed types, and extra. It’s a really generous offering for those just starting (or for those trying to find a new system to move to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand name design and colors to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have described details on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start writing”, “Messages”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Layout” and” Assess”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you create and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and damage them down 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 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 things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you intend to write about, I advise just going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and easy to use user interface for creating.
As soon as you start composing, you can enhance headings, add links, and design your web content how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of options for different sorts of web content like video clips, links, pictures, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is also constantly launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a whole lot a lot more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your email template and readjust some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, fonts, picture layouts, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever single thing you can optimize with your email template because it’s a great deal. Simply experiment with the system absolutely free and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a great posting system for any e-newsletter designer.
Here are a few of the essential features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Alex & Books Beehiiv
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly easy to write and send e-mails. I mentioned above a few of things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll save you some added reading.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) survive an internet site. Think about 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 sign up for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, provide you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a personalized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or through embed types.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire people to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 various options– a full size, a repaired width, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to forward UTM specifications for tracking purposes– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the group is working with updates for these, however I stated a couple of worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your listing to ahead your emails to friends and colleagues and if they get other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve seem lots of newsletter business provide rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional avenue for expanding your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this post.
Premium memberships
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription earnings is absolutely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying clients. This can be very profitable depending on what your e-newsletter needs to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is just how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you require to get going and grow your newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 per month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for lots of individuals.
I’m uncertain just how the device business economics service this, yet beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are some of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
- Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters free of charge
- Tidy and modern subscriber analytics
- Lots of flexibility with email styles.
- Referral program feature Alex & Books Beehiiv
- Site hosting
- Develop premium options to generate income from
- Surveys
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet certainly, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the cons I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including customized typefaces
I make use of Webflow as my website structure platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive information why I enjoy Webflow so much but you can read my Webflow testimonial if you wish to learn more.
Right now, there really is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as using iframe’s because they tend to decrease my internet site a bit. Every time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the page. It’s very visible when you get on a slow internet connection. However I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not use a routine Webflow kind (which I love utilizing). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier however that would just add extra expenses that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the cons here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will eventually produce a far better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is a wonderful option for anyone aiming to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system far outweighs numerous that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively low-cost for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not compose review posts usually. I only do when I really use the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a close friend.
I hope you found some quality on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.