I read among my favored email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and instantly began destroying. Beehiiv Meta Pixel…
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m commonly obtaining pitched different tools and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last six months experimenting with various email and e-newsletter platforms to help construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful alternatives for writing e-newsletters. However I could not find one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me fully tailor my newsletter layouts, makes it extremely very easy to write and send out e-mails, and provides me tools that assist me assess metrics and obtain more clients.
I believe I’ve ultimately located the appropriate tool.
However, I know beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to design, create, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former employees at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally select it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter platform for fairly some time now. I have actually postponed hard when it concerned ultimately introducing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make certain many newsletter designers respect popular e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have excellent material, lots of subscribers, and a creative referral program that allows them to get even much more clients.
So, I went on a quest to determine how these huge newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they create an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to answer all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this device truly recognize e-newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the initial marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Due to the fact that, any kind of creator recognizes, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the right e-newsletter stack (that ranges) typically means utilizing multiple different tools to aid attain one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to establish referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was cost-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 writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific system utilized by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one option for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own web site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your site clients right to your beehiiv email checklist. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack choice.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that wants a system that allows them to send custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or content maker, you ought to seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to start and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you actually wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent indication that individuals like reading your stuff.
Register 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” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, external embed forms, and more. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those trying to find a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise pick your brand design and colors to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin composing”, “Blog posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Generate income from”, “Design” and” Analyze”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot over), Beginning creating is where you create and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your clients are (and break them down right into segments), Expand 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you wish to cover, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly user interface for composing.
Once you begin writing, you can enhance headings, include web links, and design your material just how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of options for various kinds of material like videos, links, pictures, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is also continuously releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a whole lot much more content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background colors, borders, spacing, fonts, image styles, and more. I’m not going to experience ever solitary point you can enhance with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Simply check out the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it an excellent posting platform for any newsletter creator.
Right here are several of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Meta Pixel
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely very easy to write and send out emails. I mentioned over several of things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely one of the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) survive a website. Think of it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, give you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a customized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is very important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or via embed forms.
If you already have an internet site, and desire individuals to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various choices– a complete width, a dealt with width, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for attribution tracking if you want to onward UTM specifications for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
However, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working on updates for these, yet I pointed out a couple of concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your list to forward your emails to good friends and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to register for your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you desire. I have actually appear lots of newsletter companies offer rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another method for growing your e-mail checklist.
Nonetheless, 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 on in this article.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership revenue is absolutely a beast of its own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be very lucrative relying on what your e-newsletter needs to offer. For example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that produces millions in profits a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of the important things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer matter go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you need to get going and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit choice for lots of customers.
I’m not sure just how the device economics work on this, however beehiiv is absolutely less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are a few of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
- Easy to set up and start sending out e-newsletters completely free
- Clean and contemporary customer analytics
- Great deals of versatility with email layouts.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Meta Pixel
- Website hosting
- Develop costs options to monetize
- Polls
To be sincere, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet naturally, I don’t want to be biased so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I’ve located while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including custom typefaces
I utilize Webflow as my website building platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow evaluation if you want to discover more.
Today, there actually is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not like using iframe’s because they have a tendency to reduce my internet site a bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s extremely visible when you get on a sluggish net connection. But I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not utilize a normal Webflow form (which I like using). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier but that would certainly simply add additional costs that I do not need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the disadvantages below. I’m also confident that Webflow will ultimately create a far better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a wonderful option for anybody seeking to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter system far outweighs numerous that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively economical wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist 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 right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not compose testimonial posts frequently. I only do when I actually use the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a good friend.
I hope you located some quality on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.