I was reading among my favored email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and instantly began tearing up. Beehiiv or Ghost…
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m frequently getting pitched different devices and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I spent the last 6 months checking out different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to help build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great choices for writing newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully personalize my newsletter styles, makes it super very easy to compose and send e-mails, and offers me devices that help me assess metrics and obtain even more customers.
I assume I have actually lastly found the best device.
But, I understand beehiiv might 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 system that makes it very easy to style, write, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous staff members at the famous newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly go with it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a modern-day newsletter platform for quite some time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it pertained to ultimately releasing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain many e-newsletter designers look up to preferred e-newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have wonderful web content, lots of customers, and a clever referral program that permits them to get even much more customers.
So, I went on a quest to figure out just how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to answer every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool actually comprehend e-newsletter creation and development.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the initial marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on developer growth.
Due to the fact that, any developer recognizes, you need growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the best newsletter stack (that scales) commonly implies utilizing numerous various devices to assist attain one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up referrals. It can get pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was cost-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 already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is an excellent platform utilized by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a web site similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own internet site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your website subscribers straight to your beehiiv email checklist. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit individuals to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to leverage various marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack option.
Exactly how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that desires a platform that enables them to send custom e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or web content creator, you should seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to get going and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a great indicator that individuals like reading your stuff.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, external embed forms, and a lot more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting (or for those trying to find a new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and much more.
You’ll then create a name and link for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-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 colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, 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 where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin creating”, “Messages”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Layout” and” Assess”. And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Beginning composing is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your clients are (and break them down into sections), Grow is where you have access 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 e-newsletter with ads, Style is where you create your newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you want to discuss, I recommend simply going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly interface for creating.
As soon as you begin composing, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your content just how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for different kinds of content like videos, web links, pictures, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise regularly launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a lot much more material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to create your e-mail template and change some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, image styles, and a lot more. I’m not going to go through ever before single thing you can optimize with your e-mail template because it’s a great deal. Just try out the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a fantastic publishing system for any kind of e-newsletter creator.
Right here are some of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv or Ghost
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it very easy to write and send out e-mails. I pointed out above some of the important things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll save you some additional reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely one of the far better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) live on a site. Think of it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a location where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, provide you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom-made domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is important. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or with embed forms.
If you already have a web site, and want people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to use an embed form. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three different alternatives– a complete width, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to forward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the group is dealing with updates for these, but I stated a couple of worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your checklist to forward your e-mails to good friends and colleagues and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your listing, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve seem many e-newsletter companies give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you one more method for growing your e-mail list.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more superior plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this post.
Costs subscriptions
They claim all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration earnings is most definitely a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be extremely financially rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter needs to offer. For example, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
One of the things I like about beehiiv is how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client count rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you everything you require to begin and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for many individuals.
I’m unsure how the unit business economics work with this, yet beehiiv is certainly cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
- Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters free of charge
- Clean and modern-day customer analytics
- Lots of adaptability with e-mail layouts.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv or Ghost
- Site hosting
- Produce premium options to generate income from
- Surveys
To be honest, I haven’t seen one more newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet certainly, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I have actually found while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding personalized typefaces
I use Webflow as my web site building platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive information why I love Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow review if you wish to learn more.
Today, there actually is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than 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. Each time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s very noticeable when you’re on a slow-moving internet connection. But I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow form (which I love utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just include extra prices that I don’t need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I believed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will at some point produce a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a great option for anybody looking to dive into the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform much surpasses lots of that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively inexpensive of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not write testimonial blog posts commonly. I only do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would suggest it to a good friend.
I wish you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.