I was reading among my favored 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 instantaneously started tearing up. Beehiiv For Business…
Being a full-time creator is tough. I’m frequently getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I invested the last six months trying out different e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to aid develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific choices for writing newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with several existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me totally tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it extremely simple to write and send out emails, and gives me devices that assist me examine metrics and obtain more clients.
I think I’ve lastly found the best device.
But, I understand beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to style, write, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former workers at the renowned newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally select it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern newsletter system for quite a long time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it pertained to ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure several newsletter developers appreciate prominent newsletters with numerous clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have fantastic material, tons of clients, and a smart referral program that enables them to get back at much more subscribers.
So, I took place a search to figure out exactly how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool really understand e-newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the very first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s focused on developer growth.
Because, any maker understands, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the ideal newsletter pile (that scales) commonly suggests making use of numerous various devices to help achieve one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to set up referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was complimentary to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic platform used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own internet site and utilize the system as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also offers you an internet site similar to Substack. But, if you have your own web site currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site clients directly to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow individuals to register for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to leverage different marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack choice.
How to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that desires a platform that allows them to send out customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
The most successful newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or material developer, you ought to seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s totally free to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you really end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent indication that people like reviewing your stuff.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you access to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, outside embed types, and extra. It’s a really charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those trying to find a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your e-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”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally select your brand colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined info on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin composing”, “Messages”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Examine”. And at the very lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot above), Start creating is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and break them down right into sectors), Expand is where you have accessibility 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, Style is where you make your newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Writing 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 cover, I suggest just going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Begin writing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and straightforward user interface for composing.
When you start writing, you can maximize headings, include links, and design your content how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for various types of content like videos, web links, photos, and more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally constantly launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal extra content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to create your email template and adjust some setups.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, image layouts, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever solitary thing you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply try out the platform completely free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a terrific publishing platform for any kind of newsletter developer.
Here are some of the crucial features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv For Business
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it incredibly very easy to create and send out emails. I stated over several of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) reside on a website. Consider it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, provide you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is essential. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or through embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed kind. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various choices– a full size, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s also a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM parameters for tracking purposes– rather neat.
However, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working on updates for these, but I stated a few issues I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your listing to onward your e-mails to friends and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your listing, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually appear lots of newsletter firms provide benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional avenue for growing your email list.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this post.
Costs registrations
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription earnings is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be really rewarding depending on what your newsletter needs to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that generates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I love concerning beehiiv is how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on just how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer count increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to begin and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit alternative for lots of individuals.
I’m unsure how the unit business economics deal with this, however beehiiv is certainly less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are some of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
- Easy to set up and begin sending out newsletters absolutely free
- Tidy and modern subscriber analytics
- Lots of versatility with e-mail styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv For Business
- Site hosting
- Create premium options to generate income from
- Polls
To be truthful, I have not seen one more e-newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
However certainly, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including custom typefaces
I make use of Webflow as my internet site structure system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive information why I love Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you want to discover more.
Today, there actually is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than using an iframe embed. I personally don’t like utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to reduce my web site a bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the page. It’s very visible when you get on a slow internet link. But I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t use a normal Webflow type (which I enjoy making use of). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would certainly just include additional costs that I do not need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I assumed I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the cons here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a far better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a fantastic solution for any individual seeking to dive into the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform much outweighs numerous that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather low-cost of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist 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 compose review articles usually. I only do when I really make use of the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a good friend.
I hope you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.