I read one of my favored email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and promptly started tearing up. Beehiiv and WordPress…
Being a full time developer is tough. I’m typically getting pitched various tools and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological since I spent the last 6 months experimenting with various email and e-newsletter platforms to assist build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful alternatives for writing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me offer a definite “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me completely personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it very easy to compose and send e-mails, and provides me devices that assist me examine metrics and get even more subscribers.
I assume I’ve ultimately located the ideal device.
Yet, I understand beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to style, compose, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous workers at the popular newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help developers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m going to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately select it as my newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a contemporary newsletter system for fairly a long time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it came to lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure many newsletter creators admire prominent newsletters with millions of clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have great material, tons of customers, and a clever referral program that allows them to get even extra customers.
So, I went on a quest to figure out just how these big newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more clients? How do they create a newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool actually recognize newsletter development and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the very first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I understood this was going to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Because, any maker recognizes, you require growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the appropriate newsletter stack (that scales) typically implies utilizing several different devices to assist achieve one goal– one system for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to set up referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was free to start making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is an excellent platform used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own web site and use the system as your all-in-one option for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a website similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own site already, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your web site subscribers right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable individuals to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to utilize various marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack option.
How to start using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content designer that desires a platform that enables them to send custom e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or web content designer, you ought to seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to begin and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you actually wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good sign that people like reviewing your stuff.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, exterior embed types, and more. It’s a really generous offering for those just starting (or for those searching for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also choose your brand colors and design to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start creating”, “Articles”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Evaluate”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Start writing is where you create and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your customers are (and break them down into sections), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development 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 design your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you wish to write about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Begin composing”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– focus on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and straightforward user interface for creating.
When you start composing, you can enhance headings, add web links, and style your content how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of options for various kinds of material like video clips, links, pictures, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is likewise continuously releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a lot extra material features relying on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your email template and change some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, font styles, image formats, and more. I’m not going to undergo ever before single point you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Simply check out the platform free of charge and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any type of e-newsletter designer.
Right here are some of the essential features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv and WordPress
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to write and send emails. I discussed over a few of things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) live on a web site. Consider it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can register for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or via embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed type. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various alternatives– a complete size, a dealt with width, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to ahead UTM criteria for tracking purposes– pretty cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the group is working on updates for these, yet I discussed a couple of issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your list to onward your e-mails to close friends and associates and if they get other people to subscribe to your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually seem several newsletter companies provide 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 one more avenue for growing your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs subscriptions
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership revenue is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be very lucrative depending on what your newsletter needs to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that generates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the things I like regarding beehiiv is how tidy and easy the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client matter increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you whatever you need to get going and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for several individuals.
I’m uncertain just how the device business economics work on this, however beehiiv is definitely less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are a few of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
- Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters for free
- Tidy and modern-day client analytics
- Lots of adaptability with email layouts.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv and WordPress
- Site hosting
- Develop premium alternatives to generate income from
- Polls
To be truthful, I have not seen one more e-newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet obviously, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to point out some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I have actually located while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom-made fonts
I use Webflow as my web site building platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter too much information why I like Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to discover more.
Now, there truly is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to decrease my internet site a bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s very obvious when you get on a sluggish web link. Yet I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a routine Webflow type (which I like utilizing). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier but that would simply include extra expenses that I do not need. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the disadvantages below. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will at some point produce a much better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a wonderful service for anyone looking to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system far outweighs many that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather cheap of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create evaluation blog posts often. I just do when I actually use the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a buddy.
I hope you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.