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 promptly began wrecking. Beehiiv Design Lab…
Being a full time developer is tough. I’m usually getting pitched different tools and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months experimenting with different email and e-newsletter platforms to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific choices for writing e-newsletters. However I could not find one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me fully tailor my newsletter designs, makes it very easy to create and send e-mails, and offers me devices that help me examine metrics and get more customers.
I assume I’ve lastly located the ideal device.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it easy to style, compose, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former workers at the renowned newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m going to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally opt for it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a modern-day newsletter platform for rather time now. I have actually postponed hard when it involved lastly releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure many newsletter developers appreciate popular e-newsletters with millions of customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have fantastic web content, tons of clients, and a creative referral program that enables them to get even more subscribers.
So, I took place a search to find out exactly how these big e-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 get more customers? How do they create a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this device truly comprehend newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the very first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Due to the fact that, any type of creator understands, you need growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the right e-newsletter pile (that scales) typically indicates utilizing several various tools to assist attain one goal– one system for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to set up recommendations. It can obtain expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was cost-free to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great system utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your own site and use the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while creating 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 better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own web site already, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your website clients right to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to leverage various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
Exactly how to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that wants a platform that allows them to send customized newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, start-up, or content designer, you should seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s completely free to get going and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you really end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent indicator that people love reviewing your things.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, external embed types, and extra. It’s a really charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll then produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally choose your brand colors and design to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed info on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start creating”, “Articles”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Generate income from”, “Style” and” Evaluate”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Beginning creating is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down right into sectors), 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 e-newsletter with ads, Layout is where you create your 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 things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you want to discuss, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and user-friendly interface for creating.
When you begin creating, you can optimize headings, add web links, and style your content exactly how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for various types of content like videos, web links, images, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is also continuously launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a great deal extra material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to first time clients, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, photo layouts, and more. I’m not going to experience ever before single point you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply check out the system completely free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a fantastic posting system for any kind of e-newsletter developer.
Below are some of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Design Lab
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it super very easy to compose and send out e-mails. I stated over some of things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the far better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) live on an internet site. Consider it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, provide you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a customized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is essential. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or through embed kinds.
If you already have a website, and desire individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I make use of on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different choices– a complete width, a repaired size, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM specifications for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the team is servicing updates for these, but I discussed a few concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your listing to forward your e-mails to good friends and associates and if they obtain other people to register for your list, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you want. I have actually seem numerous newsletter companies provide rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another method for expanding your email list.
However, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this short article.
Premium registrations
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription income is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be really rewarding relying on what your newsletter needs to use. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that produces millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
One of the things I like concerning 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 require to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer count rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to start and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain, surveys, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for many customers.
I’m not sure exactly how the unit economics deal with this, however beehiiv is most definitely more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Naturally, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are some of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
- Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters absolutely free
- Tidy and modern-day client analytics
- Lots of versatility with e-mail styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Design Lab
- Internet site hosting
- Create costs alternatives to generate income from
- Polls
To be truthful, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter system that has had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However naturally, I do not want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to point out some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are several of the cons I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding personalized typefaces
I use Webflow as my site structure system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much information why I like Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow review if you wish to discover more.
Today, there truly is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site besides utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not such as making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to slow down my website a little bit. Each time a page on my site (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 internet link. Yet I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow kind (which I like using). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would certainly simply add extra prices that I do not need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I thought I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the disadvantages below. I’m also confident that Webflow will at some point develop a much better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is a great option for anyone looking to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform much outweighs lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly economical of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not create testimonial messages usually. I only do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a friend.
I hope you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.