I read one of my preferred email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and immediately began tearing up. Beehiiv API Access…
Being a permanent maker is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched various tools and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological since I invested the last six months trying different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to assist build my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic options for composing newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The problem with several existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter designs, makes it extremely easy to compose and send out emails, and offers me devices that help me examine metrics and get even more clients.
I assume I have actually lastly found the right device.
However, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to style, create, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former employees at the popular newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally select it as my newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day newsletter platform for fairly a long time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it involved lastly releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make certain numerous newsletter developers respect popular newsletters with numerous customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have terrific material, tons of customers, and a creative referral program that enables them to get even extra customers.
So, I went on a hunt to find out just how these large newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device really understand newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the very first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Due to the fact that, any designer knows, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the appropriate newsletter stack (that ranges) commonly means using multiple different devices to assist attain one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was cost-free to begin making use of, 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, indeed there is. Substack is a great system utilized by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own website and use the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv also provides you a website comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own internet site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to permit people to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to take advantage of various marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack alternative.
How to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that wants a system that permits them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or material maker, you must seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to get started and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you in fact end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent sign that people enjoy reading your stuff.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, external embed types, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those seeking a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise pick your brand design and colors to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin writing”, “Articles”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Layout” and” Evaluate”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and damage them down right into sectors), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with ads, Design is where you design your newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you wish to discuss, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and straightforward user interface for creating.
Once you start creating, you can optimize headings, add links, and design your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of options for various sorts of content like video clips, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is also continuously releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a great deal a lot more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to design your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, image styles, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before single point you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply try out the system completely free and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a wonderful posting system for any type of e-newsletter developer.
Here are several of the important features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv API Access
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly easy to compose and send out e-mails. I pointed out above a few of the things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on a website. Consider it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, give you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom-made domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is very important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter right from your beehiiv website or with embed forms.
If you currently have an internet site, and want individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed form. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different options– a full size, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for attribution monitoring if you want to onward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the group is servicing updates for these, but I discussed a couple of concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your list to ahead your e-mails to friends and coworkers and if they obtain other people to sign up for your list, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever type you want. I’ve seem many newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you another opportunity for growing your email list.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration income is absolutely a beast of its very own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” issues of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying subscribers. This can be extremely rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter needs to use. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that produces millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
One of things I love regarding beehiiv is how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber matter.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client matter go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you need to start and grow your newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, surveys, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for several individuals.
I’m unsure just how the unit business economics service this, however beehiiv is certainly more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are a few of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
- Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters absolutely free
- Clean and modern subscriber analytics
- Lots of versatility with e-mail layouts.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv API Access
- Website hosting
- Develop premium options to monetize
- Polls
To be sincere, I have not seen another newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
But certainly, I do not intend to be biased so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding personalized fonts
I use Webflow as my internet site structure system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to learn more.
Right now, there actually is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to decrease my web site a bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the web page. It’s extremely obvious when you’re on a sluggish internet link. But I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not make use of a regular Webflow kind (which I like utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would certainly just include extra costs that I don’t need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the cons below. I’m also confident that Webflow will ultimately produce a better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is a fantastic service for anybody wanting to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system much surpasses numerous that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly economical for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review messages typically. I only do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would advise it to a buddy.
I hope you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.