I was reading among my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and instantly started tearing up. Beehiiv Creator Spotlight…
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m typically obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional since I spent the last six months trying out various email and newsletter systems to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic choices for creating e-newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me fully customize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it super simple to compose and send out emails, and provides me devices that help me examine metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I believe I have actually finally located the appropriate device.
However, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everybody. 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, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former staff members at the popular newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly select it as my newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a modern e-newsletter platform for quite a long time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it came to ultimately introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure many newsletter developers admire prominent e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have great material, tons of subscribers, and a smart referral program that allows them to get back at more clients.
So, I took place a quest to determine just how these large e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool really recognize newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the initial marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker growth.
Due to the fact that, any designer recognizes, you require development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the ideal e-newsletter stack (that scales) frequently indicates utilizing several various devices to aid attain one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up referrals. It can obtain expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was complimentary to begin making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful system used by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own site and use the platform as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv also provides you a web site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your site customers right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack option.
Exactly how to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that wants a platform that permits them to send custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or content creator, you need to seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to get going and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you actually wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a good indicator that individuals like reading your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, external embed kinds, and more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those seeking a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand name design and colors to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning composing”, “Posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Layout” and” Assess”. And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot over), Start writing is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your clients are (and break them down right into sectors), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Style is where you develop your newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you want to cover, I advise just going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and user-friendly user interface for writing.
When you begin writing, you can enhance headings, include web links, and design your material exactly how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of choices for various sorts of material like video clips, web links, pictures, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise regularly launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a whole lot extra content features relying on when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to create your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo, activate or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background colors, borders, spacing, fonts, image styles, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever single point you can enhance with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply try out the platform absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a fantastic posting system for any kind of newsletter designer.
Right here are a few of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Creator Spotlight
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to write and send emails. I stated above several of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) survive on a site. Think of 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 e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, provide you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom-made domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is essential. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or via embed forms.
If you currently have a website, and desire individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed form. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different choices– a full size, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for attribution tracking if you want to ahead UTM parameters for tracking purposes– quite neat.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the team is working with updates for these, however I discussed a few worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your list to onward your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they obtain other people to sign up for your listing, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem several e-newsletter business offer 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 e-newsletter– giving you another opportunity for expanding your email listing.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs registrations
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration revenue is absolutely a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be really financially rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to use. For example, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that produces millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of the things I enjoy about beehiiv is exactly how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on just how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you whatever you need to start and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for lots of users.
I’m not exactly sure exactly how the unit economics work on this, yet beehiiv is certainly less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Naturally, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
- Easy to establish and begin sending newsletters completely free
- Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics
- Great deals of flexibility with email styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Creator Spotlight
- Website hosting
- Produce premium choices to monetize
- Polls
To be sincere, I haven’t seen another newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet of course, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the disadvantages I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including personalized typefaces
I utilize Webflow as my site building system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow evaluation if you want to find out more.
Now, there truly is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t like using iframe’s since they have a tendency to decrease my internet site a bit. Each time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s extremely noticeable when you’re on a slow-moving web link. Yet I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a normal Webflow kind (which I love making use of). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly just include additional prices that I do not need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will eventually create a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
In general, beehiiv is an excellent option for any person aiming to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system far exceeds lots of that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather inexpensive for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose evaluation articles typically. I just do when I actually utilize the device myself and would suggest it to a pal.
I wish you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.