I read one of my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and instantaneously began tearing up. Beehiiv Email Marketing…
Being a permanent designer is tough. I’m typically getting pitched various tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological because I spent the last six months checking out different e-mail and newsletter platforms to aid build my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic alternatives for composing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t locate one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely personalize my e-newsletter designs, makes it very easy to write and send out emails, and gives me tools that help me examine metrics and get even more subscribers.
I believe I have actually ultimately located the right device.
However, I know beehiiv might not be for everyone. 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 newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it easy to design, create, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous workers at the well-known e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid designers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally choose it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve watched for a modern newsletter platform for fairly time currently. I’ve hesitated hard when it pertained to lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous newsletter creators look up to prominent e-newsletters with millions of subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have fantastic web content, tons of customers, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get back at much more clients.
So, I took place a hunt to figure out just how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool really recognize newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Due to the fact that, any maker recognizes, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the best newsletter stack (that ranges) typically indicates utilizing numerous various devices to help accomplish one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to set up references. It can get costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was free to start making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is an excellent system used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one option for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a web site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own web site currently, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site customers directly to your beehiiv email listing. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit people to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to take advantage of various marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack choice.
How to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that desires a system that permits them to send personalized newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or content developer, you should seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you really wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent indication that people like reviewing your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you accessibility to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, outside embed types, and extra. It’s a really charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those seeking a new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally select your brand name design and colors to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have outlined information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin creating”, “Blog posts”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Evaluate”. And at the really lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot over), Start writing is where you create and publish newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your clients are (and break 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you design your newsletter landing page and message template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you want to discuss, I advise just mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning composing”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and user-friendly user interface for composing.
Once you start writing, you can maximize headings, include links, and style your web content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for different sorts of web content like videos, links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise frequently releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a whole lot much more content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your email template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time clients, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, image formats, and more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever single point you can enhance with your email template because it’s a whole lot. Simply try out the platform completely free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a fantastic posting platform for any newsletter developer.
Below are some of the necessary features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Email Marketing
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it super easy to create and send out emails. I stated over some of the important things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive an internet site. Consider it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, offer you a site. However, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need 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 register for your newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or with embed forms.
If you already have an internet site, and desire people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed type. This is what I make use of 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 kinds, you have 3 various options– a full width, a taken care of width, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise a choice for attribution tracking if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– quite neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the team is working with updates for these, however I mentioned a couple of issues I had in the pros and cons area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your list to ahead your emails to good friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your listing, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually seem lots of e-newsletter firms give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you another opportunity for expanding your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this article.
Costs memberships
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration revenue 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 “costs” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be very lucrative relying on what your e-newsletter needs to provide. For example, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that generates millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among things I like concerning beehiiv is just how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client count rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you everything you need to get going and expand your newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for several users.
I’m not sure how the device economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is certainly cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are a few of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
- Easy to establish and start sending out e-newsletters totally free
- Tidy and modern-day client analytics
- Lots of versatility with e-mail layouts.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Email Marketing
- Website hosting
- Produce costs options to generate income from
- Surveys
To be sincere, I haven’t seen another newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
However obviously, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including custom-made fonts
I use Webflow as my internet site building system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive information why I enjoy Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow testimonial if you want to discover more.
Today, there truly is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site besides using an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as using iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to reduce my website a bit. Every time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s very visible when you’re on a slow-moving net link. Yet I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a routine Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would simply add extra costs that I do not need. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I assumed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will ultimately create a far better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful option for any individual seeking to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform much outweighs many that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively low-cost for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t compose evaluation blog posts commonly. I only do when I really utilize the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a pal.
I hope you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.