I read among my favored email 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 promptly began tearing up. Beehiiv OpenSea…
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m usually getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I spent the last six months trying various e-mail and newsletter systems to help build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great choices for composing newsletters. However I couldn’t locate one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The concern with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me fully customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it extremely simple to create and send out emails, and provides me devices that help me assess metrics and get even more subscribers.
I think I’ve lastly found the ideal tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it very easy to layout, create, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous staff members at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately opt for it as my newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a modern-day newsletter platform for fairly a long time currently. I’ve postponed hard when it involved ultimately introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain several newsletter creators admire prominent e-newsletters with millions of subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have excellent content, lots of clients, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at extra clients.
So, I went on a search to figure out just how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more clients? How do they create a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that built this device really understand newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Because, any type of designer knows, you need development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the ideal newsletter pile (that scales) typically suggests making use of multiple various tools to assist attain one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was cost-free to begin making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great platform used by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your own internet site and use the system as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a web site similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own web site already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack alternative.
Exactly how to begin 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 custom-made e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or web content maker, you should seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s entirely complimentary to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you really wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great indication that people like reviewing your stuff.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, exterior embed types, and much more. It’s a really charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those trying to find a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also select your brand name colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have described details on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin writing”, “Articles”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Generate income from”, “Style” and” Evaluate”. And at the really bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you develop and release newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down into segments), Expand is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Examine 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 simple to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you want to blog about, I advise simply going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and straightforward interface for creating.
Once you begin composing, you can enhance headings, include links, and design your web content just how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of options for different kinds of content like video clips, links, pictures, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is additionally constantly releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot extra material features relying on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your email template and adjust some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, image layouts, and extra. I’m not going to undergo ever single thing you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Just experiment with the platform for free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it an excellent publishing system for any kind of e-newsletter designer.
Here are several of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv OpenSea
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it super easy to write and send emails. I stated over some of the important things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the far better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) live on a web site. Think of it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, provide you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom-made domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or through embed forms.
If you already have a site, and want individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I use on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three various choices– a complete size, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an option for attribution tracking if you want to forward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– quite cool.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the team is servicing updates for these, however I pointed out a few worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages 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 solution for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your list to onward your emails to pals and associates and if they obtain other people to sign up for your checklist, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever type you want. I have actually seem many e-newsletter business give rewards 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 another method for growing your email listing.
Nonetheless, 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 in this short article.
Premium memberships
They claim all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership income is definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying subscribers. This can be very financially rewarding depending on what your newsletter needs to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
One of the important things I love concerning beehiiv is just how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you require to start and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit choice for lots of customers.
I’m not exactly sure just how the system economics work on this, yet beehiiv is most definitely more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are a few of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
- Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters free of charge
- Tidy and contemporary customer analytics
- Lots of flexibility with e-mail layouts.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv OpenSea
- Website hosting
- Create premium options to generate income from
- Polls
To be sincere, I haven’t seen one more newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
But naturally, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to discuss some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I’ve located while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including customized fonts
I make use of Webflow as my website structure system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow testimonial if you would love to discover more.
Today, there really is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not like using iframe’s since they have a tendency to slow down my site a bit. Every single time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s extremely recognizable when you’re on a slow-moving net connection. Yet I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can not make use of a regular Webflow form (which I enjoy utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would certainly just add added prices that I do not need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I assumed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the cons right here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually develop a better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a terrific remedy for any individual seeking to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter system much surpasses many that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather low-cost for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is uncommon. 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 per month.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation articles typically. I just do when I really make use of the device myself and would suggest it to a buddy.
I wish you located some quality on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.