I read one of my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and instantly started destroying. Beehiiv Morning Brew…
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched various tools and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional because I invested the last 6 months trying out different email and newsletter systems to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic alternatives for writing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter designs, makes it extremely easy to compose and send e-mails, and provides me tools that aid me evaluate metrics and get more subscribers.
I believe I’ve ultimately found the appropriate tool.
But, I know beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it very easy to layout, compose, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former staff members at the popular newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help designers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally select it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter platform for rather a long time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it came to finally introducing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain numerous e-newsletter makers admire prominent newsletters with numerous clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have terrific content, lots of clients, and a clever referral program that permits them to get even a lot more clients.
So, I went on a search to determine exactly how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more clients? How do they develop a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool really understand e-newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Due to the fact that, any designer recognizes, you need development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the best newsletter pile (that scales) usually suggests using multiple different devices to aid accomplish one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to set up references. It can obtain costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was complimentary to begin making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great system used by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your own internet site and use the system as your all-in-one option for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a website comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site clients directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable people to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that desires a system that enables them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or web content creator, you need to seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to start and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you in fact end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent indication that people like reviewing your stuff.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you accessibility to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, outside embed types, and much more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those trying to find a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise select your brand design and colors to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have outlined information on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning creating”, “Messages”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Generate income from”, “Design” and” Analyze”. And at the really bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Begin writing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into segments), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development 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 make your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you wish to cover, I advise simply going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and easy to use interface for composing.
When you start writing, you can maximize headings, include web links, and design your material just how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for different types of web content like video clips, links, images, and more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise continuously launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a lot more material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your email template and change some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a description, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo formats, and extra. I’m not going to experience ever solitary thing you can maximize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply try out the system free of cost and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it an excellent publishing system for any newsletter designer.
Below are a few of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Morning Brew
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it very simple to create and send out emails. I stated above a few of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some additional reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a website. Think about it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can register for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, offer you an internet site. However, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or via embed forms.
If you already have a website, and want people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I utilize on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different alternatives– a complete size, a fixed width, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to forward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– pretty neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is servicing updates for these, yet I pointed out a few issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your listing to ahead your e-mails to pals and colleagues and if they get other individuals to register for your listing, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve appear numerous newsletter companies provide rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you an additional opportunity for expanding your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this post.
Costs registrations
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership profits is most definitely a monster of its own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely financially rewarding depending on what your newsletter needs to use. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
One of the things I like about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you every little thing you need to start and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, surveys, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit alternative for lots of individuals.
I’m not sure how the unit business economics work with this, yet beehiiv is definitely more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
- Easy to establish and begin sending newsletters for free
- Clean and modern subscriber analytics
- Lots of adaptability with email styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Morning Brew
- Web site hosting
- Produce premium alternatives to generate income from
- Polls
To be sincere, I haven’t seen another newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet of course, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I have actually found while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom-made fonts
I use Webflow as my site building platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much information why I like Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow review if you want to discover more.
Now, there actually is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from using an iframe embed. I personally do not like making use of iframe’s because they tend to decrease my web site a little bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s really obvious when you get on a slow internet link. Yet I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a routine Webflow type (which I love making use of). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier however that would certainly simply include additional expenses that I don’t require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the cons below. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately develop a much better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a fantastic service for anybody wanting to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform much outweighs lots of that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather affordable wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose testimonial articles often. I only do when I really make use of the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a friend.
I hope you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.