I was reading one of my preferred email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and quickly started tearing up. Beehiiv or ConvertKit…
Being a full time creator is tough. I’m frequently getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last six months trying various email and newsletter systems to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful options for creating e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my e-newsletter designs, makes it extremely very easy to compose and send out e-mails, and gives me tools that help me examine metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I think I’ve ultimately discovered the ideal device.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to design, compose, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former workers at the popular newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly choose it as my newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a modern e-newsletter platform for rather a long time now. I have actually put things off hard when it concerned ultimately launching my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make sure numerous newsletter creators appreciate popular newsletters with countless subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have excellent web content, tons of customers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at much more subscribers.
So, I went on a hunt to identify how these huge newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they create a newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device actually understand e-newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Because, any kind of designer understands, you need development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the best newsletter stack (that scales) often suggests making use of multiple various tools to assist attain one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up recommendations. It can get expensive.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was free to start using, 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 system utilized by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own site and use the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site already, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site customers straight to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow people to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
How to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that wants a system that enables them to send personalized newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
The most successful newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, startup, or material maker, you ought to seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s totally free to get going and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you really wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a great sign that people like reading your things.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to register for 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 customers, give you accessibility to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, exterior embed types, and more. It’s a really charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those trying to find a new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also pick your brand colors and design to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined details on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start composing”, “Articles”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Examine”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot over), Beginning creating is where you produce and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your clients are (and break them down into sections), Grow 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 ads, Layout is where you develop your newsletter landing page and message template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you wish to cover, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly interface for composing.
As soon as you begin composing, you can enhance headings, add links, and design your web content how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for various kinds of material like video clips, links, pictures, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise continuously releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a lot more content features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history shades, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, image layouts, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before solitary point you can enhance with your email template because it’s a great deal. Simply experiment with the system free of charge and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a terrific posting system for any e-newsletter designer.
Right here are a few of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv or ConvertKit
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very easy to create and send e-mails. I mentioned over some of the things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) live on an internet site. Think about it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, offer you a site. However, the free plan areas your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv site or with embed types.
If you currently have a website, and want people 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 website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three various options– a complete size, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s also an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to ahead UTM criteria for tracking purposes– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the team is working on updates for these, however I mentioned a few concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your checklist to onward your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they obtain other people to register for your checklist, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I have actually appear several newsletter companies provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another avenue for expanding your email listing.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this short article.
Premium registrations
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership revenue is absolutely a beast of its very own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying subscribers. This can be very profitable relying on what your e-newsletter has to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among the important things I like concerning beehiiv is just how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client matter increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you whatever you need to get going and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for lots of users.
I’m unsure just how the system business economics service this, yet beehiiv is certainly cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. 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 newsletter system of option:
- Easy to establish and start sending newsletters totally free
- Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics
- Lots of adaptability with email designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv or ConvertKit
- Internet site hosting
- Develop costs choices to monetize
- Polls
To be sincere, I have not seen another newsletter platform that has been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet obviously, I don’t want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including personalized fonts
I utilize Webflow as my web site building system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much detail why I like Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow review if you want to find out more.
Now, there actually is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t like utilizing iframe’s because they often tend to decrease my site a bit. Each time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s very visible when you’re on a slow internet link. Yet I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow kind (which I love using). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly simply add extra expenses that I do not require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I thought I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the cons below. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will eventually create a far better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a wonderful remedy for any person wanting to study the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far surpasses several that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly cheap of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not create review blog posts usually. I just do when I in fact utilize the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a pal.
I hope you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.