I was reading one of my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and promptly started destroying. Beehiiv Outage…
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m usually obtaining pitched various tools and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I spent the last six months checking out various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to aid build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific choices for writing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me totally customize my e-newsletter designs, makes it extremely simple to create and send out e-mails, and gives me tools that aid me examine metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I assume I have actually lastly found the ideal tool.
However, I know beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it very easy to layout, create, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former staff members at the renowned e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter platform for fairly some time now. I have actually put things off hard when it came to ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain numerous newsletter designers appreciate prominent e-newsletters with millions of customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have fantastic material, lots of customers, and a smart referral program that allows them to get back at much more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to figure out how these large newsletters established their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this tool actually recognize e-newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several 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 newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Due to the fact that, any creator recognizes, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the best newsletter stack (that ranges) frequently implies making use of numerous various devices to aid achieve one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to start making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a terrific system utilized by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own internet site and use the system as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a web site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your website customers straight to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit people to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to leverage different marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
Just how to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content designer that desires a platform that enables them to send custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or web content designer, you ought to seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you in fact end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great indicator that people enjoy reviewing your things.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, external embed forms, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally choose your brand colors and design to make certain 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 certainly have detailed information on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start composing”, “Blog posts”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Generate income from”, “Style” and” Analyze”. And at the really lower you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot over), Begin composing is where you produce and release newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your clients are (and break them down right 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you want to discuss, I recommend simply going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and easy to use user interface for creating.
As soon as you start writing, you can enhance headings, include web links, and style your material just how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of choices for various kinds of material like video clips, web links, images, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise continuously releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a lot more content features relying on when you read 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 readjust some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, picture styles, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever solitary point you can maximize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just try the system free of charge and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a terrific publishing system for any type of newsletter designer.
Below are some of the essential features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Outage
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely very easy to compose and send out emails. I pointed out over some of the important things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll save you some added analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) reside on a website. Consider it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a personalized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or through embed types.
If you already have a website, and want people to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed type. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various alternatives– a complete size, a dealt with 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 settings.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution tracking if you want to ahead UTM specifications for tracking functions– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make sure the team is servicing updates for these, yet I mentioned a couple of issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your checklist to ahead your e-mails to good friends and associates and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually appear numerous e-newsletter firms provide benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you one more opportunity for growing your email listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this article.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership income is absolutely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be really lucrative relying on what your newsletter needs to use. For instance, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the important things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is how tidy and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you need to get going and grow your newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for several customers.
I’m unsure just how the unit economics work on this, yet beehiiv is definitely more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are some of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
- Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters completely free
- Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics
- Lots of versatility with email designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Outage
- Site hosting
- Develop premium alternatives to generate income from
- Surveys
To be sincere, I have not seen another newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet naturally, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I have actually located while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including personalized typefaces
I make use of Webflow as my web site structure platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in too much detail why I like Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow review if you wish to find out more.
Today, there truly is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not like utilizing iframe’s since they often tend to slow down my website a bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the web page. It’s extremely visible when you get on a sluggish net link. However I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a routine Webflow type (which I enjoy utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply add extra prices that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the cons here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually create a far better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a terrific service for anybody aiming to dive into the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform far surpasses many that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed 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 listing is unusual. 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 monthly.
Anyways, I do not compose review messages often. I only do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a good friend.
I wish you discovered some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.