I read among my favored email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and quickly started tearing up. Beehiiv Languages…
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m frequently getting pitched different tools and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological because I invested the last six months experimenting with various email and newsletter systems to aid build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great choices for composing newsletters. However I could not discover one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me completely customize my e-newsletter designs, makes it extremely easy to write and send out e-mails, and provides me tools that assist me evaluate metrics and get even more customers.
I think I’ve ultimately located the ideal device.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it very easy to design, write, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the popular e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately select it as my newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern newsletter platform for quite a long time now. I have actually put things off hard when it pertained to finally introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain many newsletter creators admire prominent newsletters with countless subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have fantastic content, lots of subscribers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get even much more customers.
So, I went on a search to identify just how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they create a newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this device actually understand newsletter development and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I understood this was going to be a various newsletter system. One that’s focused on developer growth.
Due to the fact that, any kind of maker knows, you need growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the best newsletter pile (that scales) frequently implies utilizing numerous different devices to aid accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to establish references. It can get costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was totally free to begin making use of, 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, indeed there is. Substack is a wonderful platform used by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv also provides you a website similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own internet site already, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site clients right to your beehiiv email list. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
How to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that wants a system that permits them to send out customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or content maker, you must seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to get started and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you in fact wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indication that people enjoy reviewing your stuff.
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 web site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and much more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply beginning (or for those trying to find a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand name design and colors to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
Once you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin writing”, “Articles”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Layout” and” Analyze”. And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you develop and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your clients are (and damage them down into segments), Expand is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Layout is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Assess 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 easy to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you wish to discuss, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Start composing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly interface for writing.
Once you start writing, you can maximize headings, add web links, and style your material exactly how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for different sorts of material like video clips, links, photos, and more.
The group at beehiiv is also frequently releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal much more material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your email template and change some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time clients, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and a lot more. I’m not going to undergo ever solitary point you can optimize with your e-mail template because it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the system totally free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a terrific publishing system for any type of e-newsletter creator.
Below are several of the essential features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Languages
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it incredibly very easy to write and send out e-mails. I discussed above a few of things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some added analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on a website. Consider it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, give you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is very important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or via embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and want individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed type. This is what I utilize on this website (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 3 various alternatives– a full size, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to ahead UTM parameters for tracking objectives– rather neat.
However, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the team is working with updates for these, yet I mentioned a few worries 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 system, is a service for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your list to forward your emails to pals and coworkers and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually appear many e-newsletter firms give 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 another opportunity for growing your email listing.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this short article.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription income is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” issues of your newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be extremely lucrative depending upon what your e-newsletter has to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that produces millions in profits a year just by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
One of the things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is exactly how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you whatever you require to get going and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs 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 eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for several users.
I’m uncertain just how the unit economics work on this, yet beehiiv is certainly more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are several of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
- Easy to establish and start sending newsletters totally free
- Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics
- Lots of adaptability with email layouts.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Languages
- Web site hosting
- Develop costs alternatives to monetize
- Polls
To be truthful, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
But obviously, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding customized font styles
I utilize Webflow as my website structure platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much information why I like Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to discover more.
Today, there really is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as using iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to reduce my website a bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s really visible when you’re on a sluggish web connection. But I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a regular Webflow kind (which I love making use of). There are methods around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would certainly simply add additional costs that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the cons below. I’m also confident that Webflow will at some point create a much better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a fantastic solution for any person looking to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far outweighs several that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively inexpensive for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t compose testimonial articles often. I just do when I really utilize the device myself and would certainly advise it to a good friend.
I wish you located some clarity on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.