I was reading among my favorite e-mail 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 instantly started tearing up. Beehiiv Boost Network…
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched various devices and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological because I spent the last 6 months checking out various e-mail and newsletter systems to assist construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful choices for creating e-newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The problem with many existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me totally customize my newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly easy to write and send e-mails, and provides me devices that help me analyze metrics and get more subscribers.
I think I have actually ultimately located the appropriate tool.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it very easy to layout, create, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former employees at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly go with it as my newsletter system of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for rather a long time now. I have actually put things off hard when it concerned ultimately introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make certain several newsletter creators admire prominent newsletters with countless clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have fantastic material, lots of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get even extra customers.
So, I took place a hunt to figure out just how these large 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 customers? How do they create an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool actually recognize e-newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I knew this was going to be a various newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer development.
Because, any kind of developer understands, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the appropriate newsletter stack (that scales) often indicates utilizing numerous different devices to aid achieve one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can get expensive.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was complimentary 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 platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is an excellent platform used by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own website and utilize the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a website comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own website already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to leverage different marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material maker that desires a system that allows them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or web content designer, you should seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you actually end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good indication that people enjoy reviewing your things.
Enroll in a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, external embed forms, and a lot more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those searching for a new system to move to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll likewise pick your brand name colors and design to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described info on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin writing”, “Articles”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Assess”. And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you develop and publish newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your customers are (and damage them down right 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 e-newsletter with ads, Style is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you wish to cover, I recommend just going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Start composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and straightforward user interface for writing.
When you start creating, you can optimize headings, add web links, and design your web content how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for different types of content like videos, links, images, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally continuously launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot more content features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your email template and readjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, picture layouts, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before single point you can optimize with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Just try out the platform free of charge and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a terrific posting platform for any type of newsletter creator.
Right here are some of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Boost Network
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it incredibly very easy to write and send e-mails. I pointed out above some of the important things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the far better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) live on an internet site. Think about it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, offer you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom-made domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is essential. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or through embed forms.
If you currently have a web site, and want individuals to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed form. This is what I utilize on this internet 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 3 various choices– a complete width, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can locate 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 parameters for tracking purposes– quite cool.
However, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working with updates for these, however I discussed a couple of problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is an option for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your list to onward your emails to friends and coworkers and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually seem numerous e-newsletter business provide rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional opportunity for expanding your email listing.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription revenue is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying clients. This can be extremely lucrative depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that generates millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to begin and expand your newsletter (as much as 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, polls, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for several customers.
I’m not exactly sure just how the unit economics work on this, yet beehiiv is most definitely more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
- Easy to establish and begin sending out newsletters absolutely free
- Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics
- Lots of adaptability with e-mail styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Boost Network
- Website hosting
- Create costs choices to monetize
- Surveys
To be honest, I have not seen another e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But naturally, I do not wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including personalized font styles
I use Webflow as my site structure system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much detail why I like Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow evaluation if you wish to find out more.
Now, there actually is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site apart from using an iframe embed. I directly do not like using iframe’s since they often tend to slow down my web site a little bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s extremely recognizable when you’re on a slow-moving web connection. However I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not make use of a routine Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly just add added expenses that I do not require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I thought I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m also confident that Webflow will eventually create a far better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a great solution for any individual wanting to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform far surpasses several that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather inexpensive for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not create review posts frequently. I only do when I really use the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a good friend.
I wish you located some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.