I read one of my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and instantly began tearing up. Beehiiv Google Ads…
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched various devices and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I spent the last six months trying out different e-mail and newsletter systems to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic options for creating e-newsletters. But I could not locate one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me fully tailor my e-newsletter layouts, makes it super very easy to write and send e-mails, and gives me tools that aid me assess metrics and get more customers.
I believe I’ve ultimately discovered the right tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it very easy to style, write, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by previous workers at the well-known newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally go with it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for fairly some time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it came to finally releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure lots of e-newsletter designers appreciate preferred newsletters with millions of subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have wonderful web content, tons of subscribers, and a creative referral program that permits them to get back at a lot more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to figure out how these large newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they produce a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to answer all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool truly understand e-newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the initial marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I knew this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on developer development.
Because, any kind of designer understands, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the appropriate newsletter pile (that scales) frequently implies using multiple various devices to assist achieve one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can get costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was free to begin utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a great system used by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own website and use the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
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 better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you an internet site similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own web site already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your site subscribers straight to your beehiiv email checklist. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to permit individuals to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to leverage different marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack option.
How to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that wants a system that enables them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or web content developer, you need to seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to get started and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you in fact wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indicator that individuals enjoy reviewing your things.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, external embed forms, and extra. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those seeking a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand design and colors to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined details on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning composing”, “Articles”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Examine”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot above), Start creating is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your clients are (and break them down into sectors), Grow is where you have access to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with ads, Design is where you make your newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you wish to write about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Begin composing”.
You can modify your template and designing later– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and user-friendly user interface for composing.
When you begin creating, you can optimize headings, add web links, and design your material just how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for various kinds of content like videos, links, pictures, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally regularly releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a lot a lot more 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, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, image formats, and more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever solitary thing you can optimize with your email template because it’s a great deal. Simply try the platform totally free and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a terrific publishing platform for any kind of newsletter designer.
Below are some of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Google Ads
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely easy to write and send out emails. I pointed out over some of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly among the better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive a site. Think of it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, offer you an internet site. However, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a customized domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is essential. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter right from your beehiiv site or via embed types.
If you currently have a site, and desire people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different options– a complete size, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim installed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution tracking if you want to forward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the group is dealing with updates for these, yet I stated a few concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is an option for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your listing to ahead your e-mails to good friends and coworkers and if they get other individuals to register for your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever type you want. I have actually appear many newsletter firms provide rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional opportunity for growing your email listing.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this post.
Costs registrations
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription earnings is definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be extremely financially rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter needs to supply. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that generates millions in income a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of the things I like about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you whatever you need to get going and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for numerous individuals.
I’m not sure exactly how the system business economics work with this, but beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Naturally, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
- Easy to set up and start sending newsletters totally free
- Tidy and modern client analytics
- Great deals of versatility with email styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Google Ads
- Website hosting
- Develop premium options to generate income from
- Polls
To be honest, I have not seen another newsletter platform that has been able to package all of these features together so well.
But certainly, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the disadvantages I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding personalized font styles
I utilize Webflow as my internet site structure system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much detail why I enjoy Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you would love to discover more.
Now, there really is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not like utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to slow down my web site a little bit. Whenever a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s very recognizable when you get on a sluggish net connection. However I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow type (which I enjoy utilizing). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would just include additional prices that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the disadvantages below. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will ultimately create a far better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful service for any person aiming to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far outweighs numerous that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather economical wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review articles frequently. I just do when I actually use the device myself and would recommend it to a close friend.
I hope you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.