I was reading one of my favorite e-mail 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 quickly began tearing up. Beehiiv Custom HTML…
Being a full time developer is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological since I spent the last 6 months checking out various e-mail and newsletter platforms to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful alternatives for writing newsletters. However I could not find one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with many existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it super very easy to compose and send e-mails, and provides me devices that assist me evaluate metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I think I have actually lastly located the right device.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to style, write, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the famous e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally choose it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day newsletter system for quite time now. I have actually postponed hard when it involved ultimately launching my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure many e-newsletter developers admire prominent newsletters with millions of subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have terrific web content, lots of clients, and a creative referral program that enables them to get even a lot more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to find out how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What system 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 a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to answer all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool actually understand newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the very first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I understood this was going to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator development.
Since, any maker recognizes, you need growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the right e-newsletter pile (that scales) usually suggests utilizing numerous different devices to help achieve one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to establish referrals. It can get pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was cost-free to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a terrific system used by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your own web site and utilize the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a web site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own site currently, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site clients right to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow individuals to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to utilize different marketing channels to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack option.
How to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that wants a platform that enables them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or web content designer, you need to seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s totally free to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you in fact end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indicator that individuals like reading your things.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, external embed types, and much more. It’s a very charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those looking for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise choose your brand colors and design to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your main control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have described details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning creating”, “Blog posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Evaluate”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers 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 ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you want to discuss, I recommend simply going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and straightforward interface for creating.
As soon as you begin creating, you can enhance headings, add web links, and style your web content how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of options for different kinds of web content like videos, web links, photos, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is also constantly launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot a lot more material features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, fonts, image formats, and more. I’m not going to experience ever single thing you can maximize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Just try out the system completely free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it an excellent posting system for any type of e-newsletter designer.
Below are some of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Custom HTML
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely easy to create and send out emails. I mentioned above a few of the things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the much better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on a web site. Think about it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and an area where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, offer you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a personalized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is very important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or with embed forms.
If you already have a web site, and want people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed kind. This is what I use on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different options– a complete width, a fixed width, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for attribution tracking if you wish to forward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– rather neat.
However, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the team is servicing updates for these, however I discussed a few issues I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your list to onward your e-mails to pals and associates and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually appear several newsletter companies provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you another method for growing your e-mail list.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this post.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription earnings is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be very lucrative relying on what your e-newsletter needs to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that generates millions in income a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I like concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client matter increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you everything you need to get started and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain, surveys, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the very same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for lots of customers.
I’m not sure just how the device business economics work on this, yet beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
- Easy to set up and begin sending e-newsletters absolutely free
- Clean and modern-day subscriber analytics
- Lots of adaptability with email styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Custom HTML
- Website hosting
- Develop premium alternatives to monetize
- Polls
To be truthful, I haven’t seen another newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
However certainly, I do not wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding personalized fonts
I use Webflow as my internet site structure system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much detail why I like Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow evaluation if you ‘d like to learn more.
Now, there really is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site besides making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not like utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to reduce my website a little bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s really recognizable when you get on a slow internet connection. Yet I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a regular Webflow kind (which I love making use of). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply add extra prices that I do not require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the cons below. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will at some point create a far better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is a wonderful option for anybody wanting to dive into the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system far exceeds numerous that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather inexpensive for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t create evaluation messages usually. I just do when I in fact use the device myself and would advise it to a friend.
I hope you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.