I was reading one of my favored e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and promptly started wrecking. Beehiiv Marketplace…
Being a permanent maker is tough. I’m frequently getting pitched various tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological since I invested the last six months trying different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to aid develop my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic options for composing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it incredibly easy to compose and send out emails, and gives me devices that aid me analyze metrics and obtain even more clients.
I think I’ve ultimately found the ideal tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to layout, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous staff members at the renowned newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately go with it as my newsletter platform of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a modern newsletter platform for rather some time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it came to finally introducing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain numerous e-newsletter designers appreciate preferred e-newsletters with countless clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have fantastic content, tons of customers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I took place a hunt to identify exactly how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they create an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device really recognize newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the very first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Because, any type of designer knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate newsletter pile (that ranges) frequently means using several different tools to aid achieve one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish recommendations. It can obtain expensive.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was free to begin using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a great platform made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own internet site and use the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own web site currently, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site customers directly to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit individuals to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
How to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that wants a system that permits them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, start-up, or material developer, you must seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to get started and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you in fact end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a good indication that people like reviewing your things.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, exterior embed forms, and more. It’s a very generous offering for those just beginning (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also pick your brand name design and colors to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have described info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin composing”, “Messages”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Generate income from”, “Layout” and” Evaluate”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot above), Begin writing is where you create and release newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into sections), Grow is where you have access 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, Design is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you intend to write about, I suggest just going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin composing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and easy to use user interface for creating.
Once you begin creating, you can optimize headings, include links, and design your web content how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for different kinds of material like videos, links, pictures, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise frequently releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a whole lot a lot more content features depending upon when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your email template and change some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a description, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, image styles, and more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever solitary point you can maximize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just experiment with the platform absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any type of newsletter designer.
Below are a few of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Marketplace
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it super very easy to write and send out e-mails. I pointed out over some of the things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely among the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) survive on a site. Think about it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, provide you a site. However, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is essential. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or via embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and want individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed type. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 various choices– a complete size, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an alternative for attribution tracking if you want to forward UTM specifications for tracking functions– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the team is working on updates for these, yet I stated a couple of concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your listing to forward your emails to good friends and associates and if they obtain other individuals to register for your listing, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem many e-newsletter firms give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you one more opportunity for growing your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this post.
Costs registrations
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership income is definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be very financially rewarding depending upon what your newsletter needs to use. For instance, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that produces millions in income a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among the things I like concerning beehiiv is just how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you require to get started and expand 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 enhancement the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for many customers.
I’m uncertain exactly how the device economics deal with this, however beehiiv is certainly cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
- Easy to establish and begin sending newsletters totally free
- Tidy and modern customer analytics
- Great deals of versatility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Marketplace
- Website hosting
- Produce premium choices to generate income from
- Polls
To be truthful, I have not seen another e-newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
However obviously, I do not wish to be biased so I’m going to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including personalized font styles
I use Webflow as my internet site structure platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive information why I like Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to find out more.
Right now, there truly is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site besides using an iframe embed. I personally do not like using iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to reduce my web site a little bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s really visible when you’re on a slow web link. However I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a regular Webflow type (which I love making use of). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would just include additional expenses that I do not need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the disadvantages right here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will eventually produce a much better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a wonderful option for any person looking to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform much surpasses several that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather low-cost for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation posts commonly. I just do when I in fact make use of the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a buddy.
I wish you discovered some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.