I was reading one of my preferred e-mail e-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 quickly started destroying. Beehiiv Partner Program…
Being a permanent maker is tough. I’m frequently obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I invested the last 6 months trying out various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to aid build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific alternatives for writing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it extremely very easy to write and send emails, and provides me devices that assist me examine metrics and get even more subscribers.
I assume I’ve lastly found the ideal device.
However, I know beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to layout, compose, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the famous newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help makers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly go with it as my newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter system for rather some time now. I have actually put things off hard when it involved lastly launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous newsletter makers admire prominent e-newsletters with millions of clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have great web content, lots of subscribers, and a clever referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more clients.
So, I took place a search to determine just how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they produce a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool truly understand newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the very first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker development.
Since, any creator knows, you need development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the ideal e-newsletter pile (that scales) frequently implies utilizing numerous different devices to assist attain one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was cost-free to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic platform made use of by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own website and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you an internet site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own website already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your site customers straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow people to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to utilize different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
Just how to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that desires a system that enables them to send customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, startup, or content developer, you need to seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely free to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you in fact wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a good indicator that people enjoy reviewing your stuff.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, outside embed kinds, and a lot more. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those seeking a new system to move to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what 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 link 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 internet site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand name colors and design to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described details on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning composing”, “Blog posts”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Evaluate”. And at the very lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot above), Beginning writing is where you create and publish newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your clients are (and break them down into sections), Expand is where you have access 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 advertisements, Style is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you wish to blog about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning composing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and user-friendly interface for composing.
As soon as you begin writing, you can enhance headings, include links, and design your content just how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for different types of material like videos, web links, images, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise continuously launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a whole lot more content features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to design your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to first time customers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, picture layouts, and more. I’m not going to go through ever single thing you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the system totally free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it a great posting system for any type of newsletter designer.
Below are several of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Partner Program
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it super easy to write and send emails. I pointed out above some of things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) live on an internet site. Think about it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, provide you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a customized domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is very important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or through embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and desire people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed type. This is what I make use of on this website (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 different alternatives– a full width, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to forward UTM parameters for tracking functions– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the group is servicing updates for these, yet I mentioned a few problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your listing to onward your emails to good friends and coworkers and if they get other people to register for your listing, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem lots of newsletter business provide incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you one more opportunity for growing your email listing.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this write-up.
Costs memberships
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership revenue is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” problems of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be really profitable relying on what your e-newsletter needs to offer. For example, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that creates millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is just how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you whatever you need to start and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain, surveys, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for many individuals.
I’m unsure just how the unit business economics deal with this, but beehiiv is absolutely less costly (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are a few of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
- Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters free of charge
- Tidy and modern-day client analytics
- Great deals of adaptability with email styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Partner Program
- Web site hosting
- Create costs choices to monetize
- Polls
To be truthful, I haven’t seen another newsletter system that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
But naturally, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m mosting likely to discuss some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding personalized font styles
I utilize Webflow as my website structure system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive information why I like Webflow so much yet you can review my Webflow review if you would love to find out more.
Now, there actually is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not such as utilizing iframe’s because they often tend to slow down my site a little bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s really recognizable when you’re on a slow internet link. However I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a normal Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would simply include added prices that I don’t require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the cons below. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately develop a much better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is an excellent service for anyone aiming to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far surpasses numerous that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly low-cost wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients 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 monthly.
Anyways, I do not create testimonial messages often. I only do when I actually use the device myself and would advise it to a good friend.
I hope you located some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.