I was reading one of my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and instantly began tearing up. Beehiiv For Email Marketing…
Being a full time developer is difficult. I’m often getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological since I invested the last 6 months checking out different email and e-newsletter platforms to help build my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific choices for writing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me offer a definite “yes”.
The issue with several existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my newsletter styles, makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send e-mails, and gives me devices that aid me evaluate metrics and get more customers.
I believe I have actually finally located the best device.
However, I understand beehiiv may 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 e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it easy to layout, write, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the renowned e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a contemporary newsletter system for rather a long time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it concerned lastly introducing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous newsletter developers admire preferred newsletters with countless customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have excellent web content, tons of clients, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get even a lot more subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to find out just how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more customers? How do they develop a newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device really understand e-newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the very first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I recognized this was going to be a various newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Due to the fact that, any designer knows, you require growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the ideal e-newsletter pile (that scales) frequently indicates using several different tools to aid accomplish one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can get expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was complimentary to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a fantastic platform made use of by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own website and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a web site similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own internet site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your website subscribers right to your beehiiv email listing. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to leverage various marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack option.
How to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that desires a platform that allows them to send out customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or content designer, you should seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s totally free to get started and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you in fact wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a great indicator that individuals love 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 “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and more. It’s a very charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those seeking a new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand name colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start writing”, “Messages”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Generate income from”, “Style” and” Evaluate”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your clients are (and break 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 create your newsletter landing page and post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you intend to discuss, I advise simply going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Begin composing”.
You can modify your template and designing later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and straightforward user interface for composing.
As soon as you start composing, you can optimize headings, include links, and design your material just how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of alternatives for different types of web content like videos, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is also frequently releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot more material features relying on when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to design your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to first time clients, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before solitary point you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just try out the platform for free and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a wonderful publishing system for any type of newsletter developer.
Here are several of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv For Email Marketing
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely simple to create and send emails. I mentioned above a few of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some added reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the much better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) live on an internet site. Consider it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, provide you a web site. However, the free plan areas your website 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
Obtaining customers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv site or via embed types.
If you already have a site, and want individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed form. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various alternatives– a complete width, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s also an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to ahead UTM criteria for tracking purposes– quite cool.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the group is servicing updates for these, however I discussed a few issues I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a service for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your listing to ahead your e-mails to close friends and coworkers and if they get other people to sign up for your list, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I have actually seem several newsletter firms provide rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you one more opportunity for growing your email checklist.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this article.
Costs registrations
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration revenue is definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be really rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter has to offer. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that generates millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among things I love about beehiiv is just how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer count go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you need to start and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for lots of customers.
I’m unsure just how the device economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is definitely cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
- Easy to establish and begin sending newsletters completely free
- Tidy and modern-day customer analytics
- Great deals of versatility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv For Email Marketing
- Site hosting
- Create premium choices to monetize
- Surveys
To be honest, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
However naturally, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I’ve found while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding customized font styles
I use Webflow as my web site structure system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to learn more.
Today, there really is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from using an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my internet site a bit. Every time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s extremely noticeable when you’re on a slow-moving net link. However I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow kind (which I like making use of). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would just add extra prices that I do not need. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I thought I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the cons right here. I’m also confident that Webflow will ultimately produce a far better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful solution for any person seeking to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform far exceeds many that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly inexpensive for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose evaluation posts frequently. I only do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a buddy.
I hope you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.