I read one of my preferred email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and immediately started destroying. Beehiiv For Independent Journalist…
Being a permanent creator is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched various tools and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last six months experimenting with different email and e-newsletter platforms to help develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great alternatives for composing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me totally customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it very very easy to create and send out emails, and gives me tools that assist me examine metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I assume I’ve ultimately discovered the right device.
But, I know beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best 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 design, create, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help developers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally opt for it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for quite some time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it came to ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain numerous e-newsletter makers look up to preferred newsletters with countless customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have wonderful web content, tons of subscribers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get back at a lot more clients.
So, I took place a quest to determine exactly how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool really comprehend newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker development.
Because, any type of creator recognizes, you need growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the ideal newsletter pile (that scales) typically implies making use of several different devices to help accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was totally free to begin making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a great system used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a website comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own website already, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your site subscribers straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to utilize different marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
How to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material maker that wants a platform that permits them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most successful newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or material creator, you should seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent sign that individuals like reviewing your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance personalization, analytics, outside embed forms, and much more. It’s a really charitable offering for those just starting (or for those trying to find a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also pick your brand name design and colors to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined info on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning writing”, “Messages”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Generate income from”, “Design” and” Evaluate”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot over), Start creating is where you develop and publish newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and break them down right into segments), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Style is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you want to write about, I suggest just mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and easy to use interface for composing.
As soon as you start writing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and design your content just how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for various kinds of material like video clips, links, pictures, and more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally regularly launching item feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a whole lot a lot more material features relying on when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, photo layouts, and extra. I’m not going to go through ever solitary thing you can enhance with your email template since it’s a great deal. Simply try the system totally free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a great publishing system for any kind of e-newsletter developer.
Here are several of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv For Independent Journalist
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it very very easy to create and send out emails. I stated above several of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely among the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive on a web site. Think about it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, give you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a customized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter right from your beehiiv website or with embed kinds.
If you already have a web site, and want people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed type. This is what I use 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 different alternatives– a complete width, a fixed width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s also an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking functions– rather neat.
Nevertheless, 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, but I pointed out a few problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a service for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your listing to forward your e-mails to close friends and colleagues and if they get other people to sign up for your list, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I’ve appear several newsletter business give incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional method for expanding your email list.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra superior plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this article.
Costs registrations
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership earnings is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be very rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter needs to offer. For example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that produces millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the important things I love about beehiiv is just how tidy and easy the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client count rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you everything you need to begin and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain, polls, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for lots of users.
I’m not sure how the device business economics work on this, yet beehiiv is most definitely less costly (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
- Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters totally free
- Tidy and modern-day customer analytics
- Lots of versatility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv For Independent Journalist
- Website hosting
- Produce costs alternatives to monetize
- Surveys
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has been able to package all of these features together so well.
However obviously, I do not intend to be biased so I’m mosting likely to mention some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the disadvantages I have actually located while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including customized fonts
I use Webflow as my website building system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to go in too much detail why I like Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow testimonial if you want to discover more.
Today, there actually is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t like utilizing iframe’s because they often tend to reduce my website a little bit. Each time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the page. It’s very recognizable when you get on a slow-moving internet connection. But I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow kind (which I like using). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would certainly just include added prices that I don’t require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I thought I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the disadvantages right here. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually produce a far better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a terrific option for any person wanting to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform far surpasses several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather cheap for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose evaluation messages often. I only do when I in fact use the tool myself and would recommend it to a pal.
I wish you located some clarity on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.