I was reading one of my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and instantaneously started wrecking. Beehiiv Next.js…
Being a full time creator is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched various devices and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological since I invested the last six months trying different e-mail and newsletter platforms to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific choices for composing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me provide a precise “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it super very easy to write and send out emails, and gives me tools that aid me examine metrics and get more subscribers.
I assume I have actually ultimately discovered the right tool.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it very easy to style, write, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist makers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly opt for it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for rather a long time now. I have actually postponed hard when it came to finally releasing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain several newsletter creators look up to prominent e-newsletters with numerous customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have terrific content, tons of clients, and a creative referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more subscribers.
So, I took place a search to figure out how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they create an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this device actually comprehend e-newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I understood this was going to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker growth.
Due to the fact that, any developer understands, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that scales) often means making use of several various devices to assist attain one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up recommendations. It can get pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a great platform utilized by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own website and make use of the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also gives you an internet site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own internet site already, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your site subscribers straight to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow people to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to utilize different marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
How to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that wants a system that enables them to send out personalized newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or material designer, you need to seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to get started and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you in fact end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent sign that people love reviewing your things.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, outside embed kinds, and more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those searching for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise pick your brand colors and design to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed info on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start creating”, “Messages”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Evaluate”. And at the really lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot above), Beginning writing is where you produce and release newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down into sectors), Expand is where you have accessibility 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, Style is where you develop your newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you want to cover, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use interface for composing.
When you start composing, you can maximize headings, include web links, and design your material how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for different sorts of content like video clips, links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise regularly releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a whole lot more content features relying on when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your email template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and more. I’m not going to go through ever before solitary thing you can optimize with your e-mail template because it’s a lot. Simply try out the platform free of charge and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a great publishing system for any kind of e-newsletter maker.
Below are several of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Next.js
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it very very easy to write and send out emails. I pointed out over a few of things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the far better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) reside on a web site. Think of it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you a site. However, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom-made domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or through embed forms.
If you currently have an internet site, and want individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed kind. This is what I use on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various alternatives– a full width, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for attribution tracking if you want to ahead UTM parameters for tracking functions– rather cool.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the team is working on updates for these, yet I pointed out a few concerns I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your list to forward your e-mails to good friends and associates and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your list, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I have actually seem numerous e-newsletter business offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you another avenue for growing your e-mail listing.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this post.
Costs subscriptions
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration revenue is definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be very profitable relying on what your e-newsletter needs to use. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that creates millions in income a year just by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
One of things I enjoy about beehiiv is exactly how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client matter increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you every little thing you need to get started and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, customized domain, polls, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for numerous users.
I’m not sure just how the system economics work with this, but beehiiv is most definitely more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
- Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters free of charge
- Clean and modern customer analytics
- Great deals of adaptability with email designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Next.js
- Internet site hosting
- Create costs alternatives to monetize
- Surveys
To be sincere, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet of course, I do not want to be biased so I’m going to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the disadvantages I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including custom font styles
I utilize Webflow as my internet site building system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much detail why I like Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow evaluation if you would love to learn more.
Right now, there actually is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not such as utilizing iframe’s because they tend to reduce my website a bit. Each time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the web page. It’s very noticeable when you’re on a sluggish net link. But I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow kind (which I love utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would just include additional prices that I do not require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I thought I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the cons right here. I’m also confident that Webflow will at some point create a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is a fantastic option for anybody wanting to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter platform much exceeds numerous that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively economical for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not compose evaluation messages frequently. I only do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a buddy.
I wish you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.