I read among my preferred email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and immediately started destroying. Beehiiv Engage My Audience…
Being a full time creator is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched various tools and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional since I spent the last 6 months checking out different email and e-newsletter platforms to assist build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic alternatives for creating e-newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me offer a definite “yes”.
The concern with many existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my newsletter styles, makes it extremely easy to create and send out emails, and gives me tools that assist me examine metrics and get even more clients.
I believe I’ve finally located the right tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to layout, create, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the popular e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid makers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately select it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a contemporary newsletter platform for rather time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it involved lastly releasing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure numerous e-newsletter makers respect preferred newsletters with countless customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have great content, tons of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get even a lot more subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to figure out exactly how these huge e-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 more customers? How do they create a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool actually understand 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 several of the first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s focused on developer growth.
Due to the fact that, any kind of maker knows, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the ideal e-newsletter stack (that scales) commonly suggests utilizing numerous various tools to assist attain one goal– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can get expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was free to begin utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a fantastic system made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and use the platform as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv additionally offers you an internet site similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own web site already, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your site clients right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable individuals to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to utilize various marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
How to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that wants a platform that enables them to send customized newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or content maker, you ought to seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to get going and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you really end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indicator that people love reading your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, exterior embed types, and a lot more. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those searching for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise select your brand colors and design to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described information on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning creating”, “Articles”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Layout” and” Examine”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you create and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into sectors), Expand is where you have access 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 advertisements, Layout is where you design your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you intend to discuss, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin writing”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and user-friendly interface for creating.
When you start composing, you can maximize headings, add web links, and design your material how you like.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for different sorts of material like video clips, links, images, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is additionally regularly releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a great deal a lot more material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to create your email template and adjust some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, photo styles, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before single point you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a great deal. Just try the platform free of charge and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any type of newsletter designer.
Right here are some of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Engage My Audience
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly easy to create and send out e-mails. I stated over a few of things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) live on a website. Think of it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, give you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or with embed kinds.
If you already have a web site, and desire individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I utilize 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 forms, you have three various alternatives– a full size, a repaired size, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim installed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to onward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
However, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the team is dealing with updates for these, yet I mentioned a couple of worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your list to forward your emails to buddies and associates and if they get other individuals to sign up for your listing, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually seem several e-newsletter companies offer rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you another opportunity for expanding your email checklist.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this short article.
Premium registrations
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription profits is absolutely a beast of its very own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be really rewarding depending upon what your newsletter has to provide. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that creates millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among things I love about beehiiv is how clean and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber count go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to begin and expand your newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for several users.
I’m not sure exactly how the device business economics deal with this, however beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are some of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
- Easy to establish and start sending out e-newsletters absolutely free
- Clean and modern-day client analytics
- Lots of adaptability with e-mail styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Engage My Audience
- Website hosting
- Develop costs options to generate income from
- Polls
To be sincere, I haven’t seen another e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet naturally, I do not want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including custom typefaces
I utilize Webflow as my website building platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow testimonial if you wish to learn more.
Today, there really is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not like making use of iframe’s since they often tend to decrease my website a bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s really recognizable when you’re on a slow internet link. Yet I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a normal Webflow type (which I enjoy utilizing). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier but that would just include extra expenses that I don’t require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I thought I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the cons below. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point develop a better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a terrific option for anybody seeking to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system far exceeds lots of that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively economical for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not compose evaluation blog posts commonly. I just do when I in fact utilize the device myself and would advise it to a good friend.
I wish you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.