I was reading among my favorite e-mail 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 began destroying. Beehiiv Jesse Pujji…
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m typically getting pitched various tools and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last six months trying out different e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to assist develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic options for composing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t discover one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The problem with several existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me totally tailor my newsletter styles, makes it incredibly easy to write and send out emails, and provides me tools that aid me assess metrics and obtain even more clients.
I believe I have actually ultimately located the ideal device.
However, I understand beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal 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 easy to layout, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former staff members at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help makers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally choose it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter platform for rather time now. I’ve put things off hard when it involved ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure numerous newsletter creators appreciate popular newsletters with millions of customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have terrific web content, tons of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get even more customers.
So, I took place a search to determine just how these big e-newsletters set up 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 develop a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device really comprehend newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I understood this was going to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer development.
Due to the fact that, any type of creator recognizes, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the best e-newsletter stack (that ranges) usually indicates using numerous different devices to assist accomplish one goal– one system for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary 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 platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a wonderful platform made use of by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your very own web site and utilize the system as your all-in-one option for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also provides you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own website already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site subscribers right to your beehiiv email listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to utilize various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Exactly how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content developer that desires a system that allows them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or web content designer, you need to seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you in fact end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent indication that individuals 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 “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those just starting out (or for those seeking a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly reside 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 procedure, you’ll additionally choose your brand colors and design to see to it your e-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 have outlined details 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”, “Layout” and” Assess”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot over), Beginning creating is where you create and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your customers are (and damage them down right into segments), Grow is where you have accessibility 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 newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you wish to blog about, I advise simply going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and straightforward user interface for creating.
Once you begin writing, you can maximize headings, include web links, and style your material how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of options for various kinds of web content like video clips, links, pictures, and more.
The group at beehiiv is also constantly launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot more content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your email template and readjust some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, font styles, image styles, and more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before solitary thing you can maximize with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Simply experiment with the platform free of cost and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a wonderful publishing platform for any type of e-newsletter creator.
Below are several of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Jesse Pujji
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it very simple to create and send out e-mails. I mentioned over some of things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll save you some added reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a site. Consider it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, provide you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom-made domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or through embed types.
If you currently have a web site, and want individuals to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to use an embed form. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various alternatives– a full size, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for attribution monitoring if you wish to onward UTM criteria for tracking functions– pretty neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the group is dealing with updates for these, however I pointed out a few concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a service for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your listing to forward your e-mails to pals and associates and if they obtain other individuals to register for your checklist, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve appear many e-newsletter business offer benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you an additional avenue for growing your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs subscriptions
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription income is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying subscribers. This can be extremely profitable relying on what your newsletter needs to use. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that produces millions in income a year simply by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
One of things I love about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to start and expand your newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for numerous users.
I’m not sure exactly how the device economics deal with this, but beehiiv is certainly cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
- Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters completely free
- Clean and contemporary customer analytics
- Lots of flexibility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Jesse Pujji
- Internet site hosting
- Produce premium choices to generate income from
- Polls
To be honest, I have not seen an additional newsletter system that has had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
But naturally, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m going to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the disadvantages I have actually located while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding customized font styles
I use Webflow as my site building system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much detail why I enjoy Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow testimonial if you wish to find out more.
Right now, there actually is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site besides making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not like using iframe’s since they tend to reduce my website a bit. Each time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the web page. It’s very visible when you get on a sluggish web connection. Yet I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a regular Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier however that would just include additional expenses that I do not require. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually create a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful option for anyone looking to study the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far outweighs several that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly inexpensive wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not create evaluation messages often. I just do when I in fact make use of the tool myself and would recommend it to a good friend.
I wish you found some quality on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.