I read one of my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and immediately began wrecking. Beehiiv 2X Boosts…
Being a full time creator is difficult. I’m usually obtaining pitched different devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional because I spent the last six months experimenting with different e-mail and newsletter platforms to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent options for creating e-newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me totally customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it very simple to compose and send out emails, and gives me devices that help me assess metrics and get even more clients.
I think I have actually ultimately discovered the right device.
But, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it very easy to style, create, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former employees at the renowned e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid makers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally choose it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter system for rather time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it involved lastly releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous e-newsletter creators respect prominent newsletters with numerous customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have great web content, tons of clients, and a clever referral program that enables them to get even much more clients.
So, I went on a search to identify just how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this device truly recognize e-newsletter development 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 first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Since, any designer knows, you need growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the best newsletter stack (that ranges) commonly suggests making use of numerous various devices to aid attain one goal– one system for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was cost-free to start using, it was a piece of cake 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 fantastic platform utilized by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own internet site and use the platform as your all-in-one service for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a website comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own web site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your internet site customers straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
How to begin making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content maker that desires a platform that permits them to send out custom newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or material developer, you must seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s totally free to get started and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you really end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent indication that individuals like reading your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, external embed forms, and extra. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally pick your brand design and colors to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have outlined details on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start creating”, “Articles”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Generate income from”, “Design” and” Examine”. And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you produce and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your clients are (and break them down right into sectors), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you wish to discuss, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Start creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and user-friendly interface for composing.
When you start creating, you can enhance headings, include web links, and style your web content just how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for various kinds of material like videos, web links, images, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally constantly launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a whole lot a lot more material features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and change some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, photo layouts, and extra. I’m not going to go through ever single point you can enhance with your email template because it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the system free of charge and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any e-newsletter maker.
Here are a few of the necessary features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv 2X Boosts
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it very very easy to write and send emails. I discussed above several of things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly among the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive a site. Think of it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a place where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, give you a website. However, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or via embed forms.
If you currently have a web site, and desire individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. This is what I use on this web 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 three different choices– a full size, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise a choice for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to ahead UTM criteria for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make sure the group is working on updates for these, yet I stated a couple of issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your list to ahead your emails to buddies and coworkers and if they get other individuals to register for your checklist, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually appear lots of newsletter companies give incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you another opportunity for growing your e-mail list.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this post.
Premium memberships
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration revenue is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be very lucrative depending upon what your e-newsletter has to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among things I love regarding beehiiv is just how tidy and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer count go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you everything you require to get going and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for numerous individuals.
I’m uncertain just how the device economics deal with this, however beehiiv is definitely less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are some of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
- Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters for free
- Clean and modern subscriber analytics
- Great deals of flexibility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv 2X Boosts
- Internet site hosting
- Create premium alternatives to monetize
- Polls
To be truthful, I have not seen an additional newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
But naturally, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom-made font styles
I utilize Webflow as my internet site structure platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow testimonial if you want to find out more.
Right now, there really is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as making use of iframe’s since they tend to reduce my site a little bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s extremely obvious when you’re on a slow internet link. But I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow kind (which I enjoy making use of). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would simply add extra expenses that I do not require. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the disadvantages here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will at some point develop a far better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent solution for any individual wanting to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system much surpasses many that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively inexpensive for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have an e-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 compose review blog posts typically. I just do when I actually make use of the device myself and would recommend it to a close friend.
I hope you located some quality on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.