I was reading one of my preferred email e-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 quickly started destroying. Beehiiv Half Baked…
Being a permanent creator is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched various devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months checking out different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to aid build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific choices for composing newsletters. However I could not find one that made me provide a precise “yes”.
The concern with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me completely tailor my newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly simple to write and send e-mails, and provides me tools that aid me examine metrics and get more customers.
I believe I’ve finally discovered the appropriate device.
However, I know beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right 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 simple to design, create, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former staff members at the renowned newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m going to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly go with it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter system for fairly some time now. I have actually postponed hard when it involved ultimately introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain lots of e-newsletter makers appreciate popular e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have fantastic web content, lots of subscribers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at more subscribers.
So, I went on a hunt to find out exactly how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more subscribers? How do they produce a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer all of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device truly comprehend newsletter creation and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the very first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator development.
Due to the fact that, any developer understands, you need growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the best e-newsletter stack (that scales) usually means making use of numerous various devices to aid achieve one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to set up references. It can obtain pricey.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was totally free to start making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic platform utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own web site and make use of the system as your all-in-one option for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a website comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own web site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site customers right to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow individuals to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack choice.
How to begin using beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that desires a platform that enables them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or content developer, you ought to seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you actually end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indication that people like reviewing your things.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, external embed types, and extra. It’s a very charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise choose your brand name colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have outlined info on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning composing”, “Posts”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Assess”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot over), Beginning composing is where you create and release newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down into segments), 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 advertisements, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you want to blog about, I recommend simply going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Begin creating”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly user interface for creating.
As soon as you start creating, you can optimize headings, add links, and style your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of options for different types of web content like videos, web links, images, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise constantly releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a great deal more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, font styles, picture formats, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before solitary point you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just experiment with the platform totally free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it an excellent posting platform for any kind of e-newsletter designer.
Right here are several of the important features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Half Baked
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely very easy to compose and send out e-mails. I discussed over some of things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) live on a web site. Think of it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a place where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, offer you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv website or through embed types.
If you already have a web site, and desire people to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different options– a full size, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution monitoring if you want to ahead UTM criteria for tracking purposes– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working on updates for these, however I pointed out a couple of issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages area below.
Referral program
Among 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 encourage existing clients on your checklist to onward your emails to good friends and associates and if they get other people to sign up for your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem many newsletter companies offer incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you an additional method for growing your e-mail listing.
However, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership profits is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be really lucrative depending on what your newsletter needs to provide. For example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the things I love regarding beehiiv is how tidy and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count.
You get access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on just how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to get started and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for numerous individuals.
I’m not exactly sure just how the unit economics service this, yet beehiiv is most definitely more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are several of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
- Easy to set up and start sending newsletters totally free
- Clean and contemporary customer analytics
- Great deals of flexibility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Half Baked
- Site hosting
- Create costs alternatives to monetize
- Surveys
To be truthful, I have not seen one more newsletter system that has had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet naturally, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including customized typefaces
I make use of Webflow as my internet site building platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much detail why I love Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow evaluation if you would love to find out more.
Today, there really is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t like using iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to decrease my website a little bit. Each time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s really visible when you’re on a sluggish net link. However I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow form (which I enjoy using). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would simply add extra expenses that I do not require. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will at some point develop a better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a fantastic service for anybody looking to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform far exceeds many that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly low-cost of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not create review posts usually. I just do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a buddy.
I hope you located some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.