I read one of my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and immediately began tearing up. Beehiiv Audio…
Being a full time developer is difficult. I’m frequently getting pitched different devices and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological since I spent the last six months trying different e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to assist construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful options for creating newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me provide a precise “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me totally personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send emails, and provides me tools that help me examine metrics and get more customers.
I think I have actually ultimately found the appropriate tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv may 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 newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to design, create, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former staff members at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately opt for it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter system for rather some time now. I have actually postponed hard when it involved lastly launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure numerous newsletter developers admire prominent newsletters with millions of clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have great web content, tons of subscribers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get even extra subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to find out how these big 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 customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device really understand newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the initial marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Because, any kind of maker knows, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the right newsletter stack (that ranges) frequently means making use of several various devices to help achieve one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can get costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was totally free to start 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, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful platform utilized by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own internet site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one service for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a web site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own website already, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your internet site clients right to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
How to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that desires a system that permits them to send custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or material designer, you must seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you actually end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indicator that individuals enjoy reading your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, outside embed types, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and much 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 e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally pick your brand colors and design to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have described info on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin composing”, “Messages”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Layout” and” Analyze”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot above), Begin writing is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your clients are (and break them down into segments), Grow 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, Design is where you create your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you wish to blog about, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use user interface for writing.
When you begin creating, you can enhance headings, add links, and design your web content how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for different sorts of material like videos, web links, pictures, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally frequently launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal extra material features depending upon when you read this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to design your email template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image styles, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before solitary thing you can maximize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just try the system completely free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it a wonderful posting system for any type of newsletter designer.
Below are a few of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Audio
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it very simple to write and send e-mails. I mentioned over a few of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll save you some extra reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the much better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive an internet site. Consider it as a 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 register for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, provide you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom-made domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is very important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or via embed forms.
If you already have a site, and desire individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed type. This is what I use on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different choices– a full size, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s also an option for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to ahead UTM specifications for tracking functions– quite neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the team is dealing with updates for these, but I pointed out a few concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your checklist to ahead your emails to friends and associates and if they obtain other people to register for your checklist, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually seem numerous newsletter business give incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you an additional method for expanding your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this short article.
Costs memberships
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Subscription income is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be extremely lucrative depending on what your e-newsletter needs to use. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that produces millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among things I love about beehiiv is just how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber matter.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you everything you require to begin and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for many customers.
I’m unsure how the device economics work on this, however beehiiv is certainly less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
- Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters for free
- Tidy and contemporary client analytics
- Lots of flexibility with email designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Audio
- Site hosting
- Develop costs options to monetize
- Polls
To be honest, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
But obviously, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the cons I have actually discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding customized font styles
I utilize Webflow as my site structure platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much detail why I like Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow evaluation if you would love to discover more.
Today, there really is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides using an iframe embed. I personally do not like using iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to reduce my web site a little bit. Each time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s extremely obvious when you get on a slow internet link. However I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not make use of a regular Webflow form (which I enjoy making use of). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply add additional expenses that I do not require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I assumed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the cons right here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will ultimately develop a much better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is a wonderful remedy for any individual wanting to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform much exceeds numerous that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather low-cost of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unprecedented. 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 each month.
Anyways, I do not create review articles typically. I just do when I in fact make use of the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a pal.
I hope you located some clarity on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.