I was reading one of my favorite e-mail e-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 instantaneously started wrecking. Beehiiv Concierge Onboarding…
Being a permanent maker is tough. I’m frequently obtaining pitched different devices and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological because I spent the last six months checking out different email and e-newsletter systems to help develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful choices for creating newsletters. However I couldn’t discover one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The problem with many existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me completely personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it extremely very easy to compose and send emails, and gives me tools that assist me assess metrics and obtain more customers.
I think I’ve ultimately located the appropriate device.
However, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right 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, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally choose it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter system for quite some time now. I have actually put things off hard when it concerned ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous e-newsletter makers appreciate preferred newsletters with millions of subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have great content, lots of clients, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get back at a lot more clients.
So, I took place a hunt to determine just how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool truly comprehend newsletter production and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Because, any type of maker recognizes, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the best newsletter pile (that scales) frequently implies utilizing multiple various devices to help accomplish one goal– one system for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to establish referrals. It can get costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was free to start 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 platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic platform utilized by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own internet site and make use of the system as your all-in-one option for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv also provides you a site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own internet site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your web site clients right to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to take advantage of different marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Exactly how to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that desires a platform that enables them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or web content developer, you should seriously thinking about trying out beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to begin 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 probably a great indicator that individuals like reading your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance personalization, analytics, external embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those trying to find a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise select your brand colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your main control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed info on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin composing”, “Blog posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Generate income from”, “Design” and” Analyze”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning writing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and damage them down right into sections), Expand 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 advertisements, Style is where you make your newsletter landing page and message template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you wish to discuss, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning composing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly interface for creating.
As soon as you begin creating, you can enhance headings, add links, and design your web content how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for different types of content like video clips, links, pictures, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise constantly launching item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a whole lot more content features depending upon when you read this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your email template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome email 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 modify history shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture layouts, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before single thing you can maximize with your e-mail template because it’s a great deal. Just experiment with the system free of charge and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it a terrific posting system for any kind of newsletter designer.
Below are several of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Concierge Onboarding
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it super very easy to create and send emails. I discussed over a few of things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the far better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) survive a web site. Consider it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, give you a web site. However, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a customized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or via embed kinds.
If you currently have a web site, and desire people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed form. This is what I utilize on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three various alternatives– a full size, a repaired width, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim installed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to forward UTM parameters for tracking functions– pretty neat.
However, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the team is servicing updates for these, however I pointed out a few worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your list to forward your emails to friends and coworkers and if they get other individuals to sign up for your listing, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever type you want. I’ve appear numerous e-newsletter firms provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you another opportunity for growing your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra superior plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this short article.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription profits is most definitely a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying clients. This can be really rewarding relying on what your newsletter needs to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that creates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of things I like concerning beehiiv is how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client count go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to start and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit choice for several individuals.
I’m uncertain how the system business economics work on this, but beehiiv is certainly less expensive (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are several of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
- Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters free of charge
- Tidy and modern customer analytics
- Lots of adaptability with email styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Concierge Onboarding
- Site hosting
- Develop premium choices to monetize
- Polls
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen another e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However naturally, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the disadvantages I have actually located while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including custom typefaces
I use Webflow as my internet site structure platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to go in too much detail why I enjoy Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow review if you ‘d like to find out more.
Right now, there really is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t like making use of iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my internet site a little bit. Every single time 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 obvious when you’re on a slow-moving web connection. However I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not utilize a normal Webflow type (which I love making use of). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would just add added costs that I do not need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will eventually produce a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is an excellent solution for any person wanting to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform much outweighs numerous that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively cheap for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose evaluation posts usually. I just do when I really make use of the tool myself and would advise it to a pal.
I wish you discovered some clarity on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.