I read one of my favored e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and immediately began wrecking. Beehiiv Bronze Tier…
Being a permanent maker is difficult. I’m usually getting pitched different devices and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months trying out various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to help build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent alternatives for writing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me provide a precise “yes”.
The problem with several existing newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it super easy to write and send e-mails, and offers me tools that help me analyze metrics and obtain even more clients.
I assume I’ve ultimately located the appropriate tool.
However, I understand beehiiv might not be for everyone. 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 newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it very easy to design, compose, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous staff members at the popular newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally go with it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually watched for a modern newsletter platform for quite some time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it concerned finally introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain many e-newsletter developers respect prominent e-newsletters with numerous clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have fantastic content, lots of subscribers, and a creative referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more customers.
So, I took place a search to find out exactly how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool actually comprehend e-newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the initial marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on creator development.
Due to the fact that, any designer recognizes, you need development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the best newsletter stack (that scales) typically suggests utilizing multiple various devices to assist accomplish one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish references. It can get expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was free to start utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is an excellent system utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own web site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one service for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a web site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own web site currently, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your website customers right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit individuals to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content designer that desires a system that allows them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most successful newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or web content maker, you should seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to start and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you really wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a good sign that people like reviewing your things.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, external embed types, and much more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just starting (or for those trying to find a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll likewise choose your brand name colors and design to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described information on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start writing”, “Posts”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Generate income from”, “Style” and” Analyze”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Begin creating is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and damage 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 e-newsletter with ads, Design is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you wish to discuss, I suggest simply going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and easy to use user interface for writing.
When you begin writing, you can optimize headings, include links, and design your content just how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for different kinds of material like video clips, links, images, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is additionally frequently launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a whole lot much more content features depending upon when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your email template and change some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, photo styles, and extra. I’m not going to undergo ever before solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template because it’s a whole lot. Just check out the system for free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a fantastic posting system for any newsletter designer.
Here are some of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Bronze Tier
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it very very easy to compose and send out e-mails. I pointed out above several of things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll save you some added analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely among the much better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) live on a site. Think of it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, offer you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a personalized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is essential. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or via embed types.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 various options– a complete width, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise a choice for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to onward UTM criteria for tracking functions– rather cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is dealing with updates for these, but I stated a few concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your list to ahead your emails to friends and colleagues and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I have actually seem many newsletter companies give incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you another method for expanding your e-mail listing.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this post.
Premium registrations
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership earnings is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be very rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter has to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that generates millions in income a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among the things I like regarding beehiiv is exactly how tidy and easy the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count.
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 right into your dashboard and seeing that client count increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to get going and expand your newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain, surveys, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for numerous individuals.
I’m not sure exactly how the device economics work with this, however beehiiv is absolutely less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are a few of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
- Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters free of cost
- Tidy and modern customer analytics
- Great deals of versatility with email layouts.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Bronze Tier
- Site hosting
- Create costs alternatives to generate income from
- Surveys
To be truthful, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
But certainly, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m mosting likely to discuss some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including custom font styles
I make use of Webflow as my site building system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much but you can read my Webflow review if you wish to learn more.
Right now, there really is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from using an iframe embed. I directly don’t like using iframe’s since they often tend to decrease my website a little bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s very recognizable when you get on a slow-moving internet connection. However I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow form (which I love utilizing). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would simply include added costs that I do not require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I believed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the disadvantages below. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will ultimately create a much better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a terrific option for any individual aiming to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system far exceeds many that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather economical 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 could cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose testimonial posts commonly. I just do when I actually make use of the tool myself and would recommend it to a good friend.
I wish you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.