I was reading one of my favored e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and immediately began tearing up. Beehiiv Lead Magnet…
Being a permanent designer is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched different devices and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological because I invested the last six months checking out various email and e-newsletter systems to assist construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific options for writing e-newsletters. Yet I could not locate one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me totally customize my newsletter styles, makes it very very easy to write and send emails, and offers me devices that aid me assess metrics and obtain more clients.
I believe I have actually lastly located the right device.
However, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everyone. 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 newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to design, write, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the renowned newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally select it as my newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for fairly time currently. I’ve hesitated hard when it came to ultimately launching my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure several e-newsletter creators respect preferred e-newsletters with millions of clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have fantastic content, tons of subscribers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even extra clients.
So, I went on a hunt to figure out how these big e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they produce a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this tool really understand e-newsletter production and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the very first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I knew this was going to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Since, any designer understands, you require development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And finding the right e-newsletter pile (that scales) typically means using numerous different devices to aid accomplish one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was free to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is an excellent system used by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own website and make use of the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv also offers you a site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own web site already, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site clients right to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to utilize various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
Just how to begin using beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content maker that wants a system that permits them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or content designer, you need to seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to start and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you actually wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indicator that people like reading your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, external embed kinds, and more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just starting out (or for those seeking a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand name colors and design to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed information on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start writing”, “Blog posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Assess”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings alternative.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Start creating is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and break them down right into segments), Expand is where you have access to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with ads, Style is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you want to discuss, I recommend simply going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start writing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and easy to use interface for writing.
When you start creating, you can enhance headings, include web links, and style your material how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of options for different types of content like videos, web links, photos, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is likewise frequently launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal extra material features depending upon when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your email template and readjust some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, font styles, photo formats, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before single point you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Just experiment with the system absolutely free and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it an excellent posting system for any kind of newsletter maker.
Right here are some of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Lead Magnet
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to create and send out e-mails. I mentioned above several of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) survive on a website. Think of it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, offer you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom-made domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is essential. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or with embed forms.
If you already have a website, and want individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed form. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 different choices– a complete width, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s also a choice for attribution monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM criteria for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the team is servicing updates for these, yet I discussed a couple of problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is an option for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your listing to forward your e-mails to good friends and coworkers and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your list, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually appear numerous e-newsletter companies offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you an additional avenue for expanding your e-mail checklist.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this short article.
Premium memberships
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription earnings is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be really rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to use. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that produces millions in profits a year just by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the things I love regarding beehiiv is just how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber matter.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on just how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to get started and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition 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) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for many users.
I’m unsure exactly how the unit economics deal with this, but beehiiv is certainly less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are a few of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
- Easy to establish and start sending newsletters completely free
- Tidy and modern-day client analytics
- Lots of flexibility with e-mail layouts.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Lead Magnet
- Website hosting
- Develop costs choices to generate income from
- Polls
To be straightforward, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet of course, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom fonts
I make use of Webflow as my web site structure platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive detail why I love Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to discover more.
Today, there truly is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not such as using iframe’s because they tend to slow down my web site a little bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s extremely recognizable when you get on a slow internet link. However I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a routine Webflow kind (which I enjoy making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would certainly just add additional expenses that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the cons here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually produce a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
In general, beehiiv is a fantastic service for anyone wanting to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform much exceeds several that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively economical wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not create review posts typically. I only do when I actually use the tool myself and would suggest it to a friend.
I hope you located some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.