I read among my favored e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and immediately began tearing up. Beehiiv Plan Tiers…
Being a full time creator is difficult. I’m often obtaining pitched various devices and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I spent the last 6 months trying different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to aid develop my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific options for composing newsletters. However I could not locate one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me fully customize my newsletter layouts, makes it very simple to write and send out emails, and offers me tools that assist me assess metrics and obtain more clients.
I believe I’ve finally discovered the ideal device.
However, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it very easy to layout, create, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous workers at the famous e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly go with it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter system for rather time currently. I’ve hesitated hard when it pertained to lastly launching my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure many e-newsletter developers respect popular newsletters with numerous customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have great web content, lots of clients, and a smart referral program that permits them to get even a lot more clients.
So, I went on a quest to determine how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device actually understand newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I understood this was going to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Since, any developer knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the appropriate e-newsletter pile (that scales) typically means using multiple different tools to assist achieve one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can get pricey.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was totally free to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a terrific system used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally offers you an internet site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own site already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site customers straight to your beehiiv email list. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to leverage different marketing channels to get your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
How to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content maker that desires a system that allows them to send custom e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or content designer, you should seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you really end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great indicator that individuals love reviewing your stuff.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance personalization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply beginning (or for those searching for a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand colors and design to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin writing”, “Messages”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Examine”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your major control center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you produce and publish newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into sectors), 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 newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you intend to write about, I recommend simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and easy to use interface for writing.
Once you begin writing, you can maximize headings, add web links, and style your content just how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for various sorts of content like videos, web links, photos, and more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally constantly launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a lot much more material features depending upon when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your email template and change some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, font styles, picture layouts, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before solitary thing you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Just try the platform for free and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a terrific posting platform for any e-newsletter developer.
Here are several of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Plan Tiers
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it very easy to write and send e-mails. I pointed out over several of the things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll save you some additional reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely among the better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a web site. Think of it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can sign up for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, provide you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is very important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or with embed types.
If you currently have a site, and desire individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this internet site (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 three different alternatives– a full size, a fixed width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution tracking if you wish to onward UTM criteria for tracking functions– pretty cool.
However, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the team is dealing with updates for these, yet I mentioned a few problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your checklist to forward your emails to buddies and associates and if they obtain other people to sign up for your listing, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever type you want. I’ve appear many newsletter business provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you another avenue for growing your e-mail listing.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this write-up.
Costs subscriptions
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership profits is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be really rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter has to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
One of the things I like regarding beehiiv is just how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer count go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you everything you require to get started and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 per month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for numerous customers.
I’m unsure exactly how the system economics service this, but beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Right here are a few of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
- Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters totally free
- Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics
- Great deals of versatility with e-mail layouts.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Plan Tiers
- Internet site hosting
- Produce costs alternatives to generate income from
- Polls
To be truthful, I have not seen one more newsletter system that has had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But naturally, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m going to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the cons I have actually located while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom fonts
I make use of Webflow as my site building system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow evaluation if you want to discover more.
Today, there truly is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as utilizing iframe’s since they tend to reduce my web site a little bit. Every time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the page. It’s really noticeable when you get on a slow net link. Yet I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not utilize a regular Webflow kind (which I like making use of). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would certainly just add additional expenses that I don’t require. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will at some point create a much better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a great service for anybody aiming to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform far outweighs many that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather low-cost for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create review blog posts typically. I just do when I in fact use the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a pal.
I wish you located some quality on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.