I read one of my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and quickly started destroying. Beehiiv Chatbot Assistant…
Being a full-time creator is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last six months trying various e-mail and newsletter platforms to help construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic choices for creating e-newsletters. Yet I could not discover one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with several existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me totally tailor my newsletter styles, makes it very easy to create and send out emails, and provides me tools that help me analyze metrics and get more clients.
I think I’ve finally discovered the right tool.
But, I understand beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to layout, write, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the popular newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for quite some time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it came to finally releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure numerous newsletter creators look up to preferred newsletters with numerous clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have great web content, tons of clients, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get even a lot more clients.
So, I took place a hunt to find out exactly how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they create a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this device really recognize e-newsletter production and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Since, any developer knows, you need growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the appropriate e-newsletter pile (that scales) frequently means using numerous different tools to assist accomplish one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up references. It can get pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was complimentary to begin making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic platform made use of by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and use the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv also provides you a website comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your site subscribers straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow individuals to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to leverage different marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Just how to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that desires a platform that permits them to send out personalized newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most effective newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or web content designer, you need to seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s completely free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you actually wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great sign that individuals enjoy reading your things.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, external embed kinds, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those looking for a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand name design and colors to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined information on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin writing”, “Messages”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Generate income from”, “Style” and” Assess”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Audience 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 ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Design is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you wish to cover, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Begin composing”.
You can modify your template and designing later– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and straightforward user interface for writing.
Once you start writing, you can maximize headings, add links, and design your content just how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of alternatives for various kinds of web content like videos, web links, photos, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is likewise constantly releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a lot extra content features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your settings 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 settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, fonts, photo layouts, and more. I’m not going to go through ever before solitary thing you can maximize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Just check out the platform absolutely 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 e-newsletter developer.
Below are several of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Chatbot Assistant
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it incredibly very easy to create and send emails. I discussed above several of things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll save you some added reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the far better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a web site. Think about it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where people can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, provide you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom-made domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or via embed kinds.
If you already have a site, and desire people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three various choices– a full size, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim installed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an option for attribution monitoring if you intend to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– rather neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the group is working on updates for these, but I pointed out a couple of issues I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your checklist to ahead your e-mails to buddies and associates and if they get other individuals to register for your listing, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever form you want. I’ve seem lots of newsletter business offer incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you one more avenue for expanding your email listing.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more superior plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this article.
Costs subscriptions
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Subscription earnings is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” issues of your newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be very lucrative relying on what your e-newsletter has to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that creates millions in income a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among things I love concerning beehiiv is how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer count rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you whatever you need to start and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom domain name, polls, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit choice for many users.
I’m unsure how the device economics work on this, however beehiiv is definitely less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
- Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters absolutely free
- Clean and modern-day client analytics
- Lots of adaptability with email designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Chatbot Assistant
- Web site hosting
- Produce premium alternatives to monetize
- Surveys
To be sincere, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But of course, I do not wish to be biased so I’m going to mention some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are several of the disadvantages I have actually located while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including customized font styles
I utilize Webflow as my site building platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow review if you would love to discover more.
Right now, there truly is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site other than 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 internet site a little bit. Every time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the web page. It’s really obvious when you’re on a slow internet connection. But I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can not use a normal Webflow form (which I love utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly simply include added expenses that I do not need. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I thought I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the cons right here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will ultimately create a far better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
In general, beehiiv is a wonderful remedy for anybody looking to study the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far outweighs several that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively affordable of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t create evaluation posts often. I just do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would advise it to a close friend.
I wish you discovered some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.