I was reading one of my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and instantaneously began destroying. Beehiiv Notion…
Being a full-time creator is tough. I’m frequently getting pitched different tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological since I spent the last six months trying various email and newsletter systems to help construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent choices for creating newsletters. However I couldn’t discover one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me totally personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly very easy to write and send out emails, and provides me tools that assist me evaluate metrics and get even more subscribers.
I think I have actually lastly located the best device.
Yet, I know beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to design, write, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous staff members at the renowned newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately go with it as my newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter platform for quite time now. I have actually postponed hard when it concerned lastly launching my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure several e-newsletter creators respect popular e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have fantastic content, lots of subscribers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get back at more customers.
So, I took place a search to find out exactly how these big e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they create a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this device truly recognize newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the very first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was going to be a various newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Since, any kind of maker recognizes, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the right e-newsletter stack (that ranges) commonly implies utilizing several various tools to aid accomplish one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up references. It can get pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was totally free to begin utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a wonderful system used by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own web site and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you an internet site similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own internet site already, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your internet site customers straight to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to utilize various marketing channels to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
Just how to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content maker that desires a system that allows 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 author, media firm, start-up, or web content designer, you should seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to begin and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you really wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indication that people like reading your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, exterior embed types, and a lot more. It’s a very generous offering for those just beginning (or for those seeking a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you used?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also pick your brand name design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start creating”, “Articles”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Evaluate”. And at the very lower you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot over), Begin creating is where you create and publish newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and damage them down into sections), 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 ads, Style is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you wish to write about, I advise just going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning writing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and easy to use interface for composing.
As soon as you begin composing, you can optimize headings, include links, and style your material just how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for various kinds of web content like videos, links, photos, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally frequently launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a whole lot a lot more content features depending upon when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your email template and change some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever single point you can maximize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply try out the platform free of charge and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter maker.
Below are some of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Notion
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it super easy to compose and send emails. I mentioned over a few of the important things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive an internet site. Think of it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, provide you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a personalized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or via embed types.
If you already have a site, and want people to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed form. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 different alternatives– a full width, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise a choice for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to forward UTM criteria for tracking functions– pretty cool.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the group is working with updates for these, yet I stated a couple of issues 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 e-newsletter system, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your listing to forward your e-mails to close friends and coworkers and if they get other individuals to register for your list, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve appear lots of newsletter business give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– offering you an additional method for expanding your email list.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this post.
Premium registrations
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration profits is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying subscribers. This can be extremely financially rewarding relying on what your newsletter has to provide. For example, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that creates millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among the important things I love regarding beehiiv is how tidy and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you whatever you need to get going and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and accessibility 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 addition of concern support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit option for lots of customers.
I’m uncertain exactly how the device economics work with this, yet beehiiv is most definitely more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are a few of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
- Easy to establish and start sending newsletters free of charge
- Tidy and contemporary customer analytics
- Great deals of adaptability with email styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Notion
- Website hosting
- Produce premium options to generate income from
- Polls
To be truthful, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter system that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet obviously, I do not want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve found while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including custom fonts
I make use of Webflow as my internet site building system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow testimonial if you wish to discover more.
Right now, there truly is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not such as making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to slow down my website a bit. Every single time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s extremely noticeable when you get on a sluggish web connection. However I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not make use of a normal Webflow type (which I like using). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would just include extra prices that I do not require. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I thought I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the disadvantages here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will at some point develop a far better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a terrific option for any person seeking to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system far outweighs lots of that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively economical of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not compose review blog posts usually. I only do when I actually make use of the device myself and would suggest it to a pal.
I wish you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.