I read one of my favored email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and quickly started tearing up. Beehiiv Infinite Subscribers…
Being a full-time creator is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched different tools and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional since I spent the last 6 months trying out various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to aid build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent options for composing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t discover one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The problem with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me totally customize my newsletter styles, makes it super easy to compose and send emails, and provides me tools that assist me examine metrics and obtain even more clients.
I think I’ve finally located the ideal device.
However, I understand beehiiv may not be for everybody. 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 e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it easy to style, compose, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former employees at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally choose it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern newsletter system for rather a long time now. I’ve put things off hard when it concerned lastly launching my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of newsletter designers look up to preferred e-newsletters with numerous customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have great content, tons of clients, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get back at extra subscribers.
So, I took place a search to find out exactly how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more clients? How do they produce an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this device really understand newsletter development and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the initial marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on designer development.
Due to the fact that, any type of maker recognizes, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the right e-newsletter stack (that ranges) often suggests utilizing numerous various tools to assist attain one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish references. It can get costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was complimentary to start utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a great platform utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your own web site and use the system as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits 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 urge your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you an internet site similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own website currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your web site subscribers directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable individuals to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to utilize different marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
Exactly how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content developer that wants a platform that allows them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or content developer, you ought to seriously thinking about trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to get going and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you really end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great sign that individuals like reading your stuff.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and much more. It’s a very charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those looking for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet 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 could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also select your brand colors and design to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have described details on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning creating”, “Posts”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Layout” and” Examine”. And at the really lower you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot over), Begin composing is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your customers are (and damage them down into segments), Expand is where you have accessibility 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 develop your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you intend to blog about, I suggest just going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start composing”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and straightforward interface for composing.
When you begin creating, you can enhance headings, add links, and design your material how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for different types of web content like videos, links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise continuously launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a great deal much more material features relying on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history colors, borders, spacing, font styles, photo styles, and more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply experiment with the system absolutely free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it an excellent posting platform for any type of newsletter creator.
Here are a few of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Infinite Subscribers
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it very simple to compose and send out e-mails. I discussed above several of the things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) live on a web site. Consider it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, give you a web site. However, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom domain to remove 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, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or via embed types.
If you already have a site, and desire individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. 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 forms, you have 3 various alternatives– a full size, a taken care of width, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for attribution monitoring if you intend to forward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– quite neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the group is working on updates for these, but I mentioned a few worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your listing to ahead your e-mails to good friends and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to register for your checklist, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually seem many e-newsletter firms provide benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional method for growing your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this post.
Costs memberships
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership profits is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” issues of your newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be extremely financially rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter has to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of things I like concerning beehiiv is just how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer matter go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you whatever you need to get going and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and access to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern support 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 certainly pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for several customers.
I’m not sure exactly how the unit business economics work on this, however beehiiv is certainly less costly (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
- Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters free of cost
- Clean and modern-day client analytics
- Lots of flexibility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Infinite Subscribers
- Site hosting
- Produce premium options to monetize
- Surveys
To be straightforward, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
Yet certainly, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I have actually located while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom fonts
I make use of Webflow as my internet site structure platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive information why I like Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow review if you ‘d like to discover more.
Right now, there actually is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site besides using an iframe embed. I directly do not like utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to slow down my site a bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s really visible when you’re on a slow-moving internet connection. But I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t use a normal Webflow form (which I enjoy making use of). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would certainly just include added expenses that I don’t require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I thought I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will at some point create a far better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a great remedy for anybody looking to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform much outweighs many that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively affordable wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not compose evaluation blog posts usually. I just do when I in fact make use of the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a buddy.
I wish you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.