I was reading among my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and instantaneously started tearing up. Beehiiv Magic Links…
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched various tools and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last six months trying different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to assist develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific choices for writing newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me totally tailor my e-newsletter layouts, makes it very simple to create and send out e-mails, and gives me devices that assist me evaluate metrics and obtain even more customers.
I assume I’ve lastly found the ideal tool.
Yet, I understand beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it very easy to layout, create, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the popular newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately choose it as my newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a modern e-newsletter system for fairly a long time now. I’ve postponed hard when it concerned ultimately introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain many newsletter developers look up to prominent e-newsletters with countless clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have great material, lots of clients, and a clever referral program that enables them to get even much more clients.
So, I took place a search to determine how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they produce a newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool truly comprehend newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the initial marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on developer development.
Since, any type of maker knows, you need growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the appropriate e-newsletter pile (that scales) often implies utilizing numerous different devices to aid attain one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish references. It can get costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was cost-free to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great system utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv also gives you a website comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own web site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow individuals to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to leverage different marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack alternative.
Just how to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content designer that wants a platform that enables them to send customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or material maker, you must seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you really wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good indicator that individuals love reading your things.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, outside embed forms, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally pick your brand colors and design to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have described details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start composing”, “Posts”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Assess”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Start creating is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous 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, Design is where you develop your newsletter landing page and 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 composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you intend to cover, I recommend just going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and user-friendly user interface for writing.
As soon as you begin composing, you can enhance headings, add links, and style your content just how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for various kinds of web content like videos, links, images, and more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise regularly launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot much more material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and change some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time clients, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, image layouts, and more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Just try the system free of charge and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a terrific posting system for any e-newsletter creator.
Right here are a few of the crucial features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Magic Links
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it super simple to write and send out emails. I discussed over some of things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) reside on a web site. Think about it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can sign up for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, offer you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or via embed forms.
If you already have a web site, and desire people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed type. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 different alternatives– a complete size, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for attribution monitoring if you want to onward UTM criteria for tracking functions– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is servicing updates for these, but I pointed out a few worries I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your list to onward your emails to friends and associates and if they get other individuals to register for your checklist, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever type you want. I’ve appear several newsletter companies provide rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you another method for growing your email listing.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this article.
Costs memberships
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership profits is certainly a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be very lucrative depending on what your e-newsletter needs to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of the things I enjoy about beehiiv is how tidy and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you require to get started and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, surveys, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for several users.
I’m uncertain how the unit economics work on this, but beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of option:
- Easy to set up and start sending out e-newsletters for free
- Clean and modern-day client analytics
- Great deals of flexibility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Magic Links
- Website hosting
- Create costs options to monetize
- Surveys
To be sincere, I have not seen an additional newsletter system that has had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But obviously, I do not intend to be biased so I’m mosting likely to mention some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I’ve located while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including customized fonts
I utilize Webflow as my internet site structure platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow review if you would love to find out more.
Now, there truly is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from using an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as using iframe’s since they tend to slow down my website a bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s very visible when you get on a sluggish net connection. But I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not make use of a regular Webflow kind (which I like making use of). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier however that would certainly simply add added prices that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the disadvantages here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point develop a far better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a great service for any individual wanting to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system far surpasses many that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly economical wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unprecedented. 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 each month.
Anyways, I do not create evaluation messages frequently. I only do when I in fact utilize the device myself and would suggest it to a good friend.
I wish you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.