I read among my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and immediately started tearing up. Beehiiv Podcast…
Being a permanent maker is tough. I’m often getting pitched various tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I invested the last six months checking out various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to aid build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful choices for writing newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my newsletter designs, makes it extremely very easy to create and send out emails, and gives me tools that assist me examine metrics and get more customers.
I believe I have actually ultimately located the right tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it simple to layout, compose, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the well-known e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist makers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly choose it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a modern e-newsletter system for rather a long time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it pertained to finally releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain lots of e-newsletter creators appreciate preferred e-newsletters with millions of clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have wonderful content, tons of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get even much more customers.
So, I took place a search to identify exactly how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool 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 several of the initial marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator growth.
Due to the fact that, any designer understands, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the best newsletter pile (that ranges) usually indicates using numerous various devices to help achieve one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was free to start utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is an excellent system utilized by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one option for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own internet site currently, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your site customers directly to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow people to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to utilize various marketing channels to get your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
How to begin using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content developer that desires a system that permits them to send custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or material creator, you should seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to get started and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you really wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent sign that individuals like reviewing your things.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, outside embed types, and a lot more. It’s a really generous offering for those just starting out (or for those searching for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise pick your brand design and colors to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described information on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin writing”, “Blog posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Assess”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot above), Start creating is where you create and release newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your clients are (and break them down right into segments), Expand 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 advertisements, Style is where you create your newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you want to cover, I advise just going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin writing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– focus on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and easy to use user interface for writing.
When you start creating, you can optimize headings, include links, and style your content just how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of options for various kinds of content like videos, web links, images, and more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally constantly releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot a lot more content features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to first time clients, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, picture formats, and much more. I’m not going to experience ever single point you can optimize with your e-mail template because it’s a lot. Simply check out the platform totally free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any e-newsletter designer.
Right here are several of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Podcast
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it super easy to create and send emails. I pointed out above some of things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely one of the better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) live on a site. Think of it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, provide you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a customized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or with embed kinds.
If you already have a website, and want people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, 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 column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three different alternatives– a complete size, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an option for attribution tracking if you intend to ahead UTM parameters for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the team is working on updates for these, yet I discussed a few problems I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your list to ahead your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your listing, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve appear lots of newsletter companies offer benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– offering you an additional opportunity for expanding your email listing.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this short article.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration profits is certainly a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be extremely rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter needs to offer. For example, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
One of the important things I love concerning beehiiv is exactly how tidy and easy the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer count increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you every little thing you need to get started and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit choice for lots of customers.
I’m not exactly sure just how the device economics service this, yet beehiiv is certainly more affordable (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are some of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
- Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters totally free
- Clean and contemporary customer analytics
- Lots of adaptability with email layouts.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Podcast
- Website hosting
- Develop costs alternatives to generate income from
- Polls
To be honest, I haven’t seen one more newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features together so well.
Yet of course, I do not want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to discuss some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including custom-made font styles
I use Webflow as my web site structure platform of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much detail why I like Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow evaluation if you ‘d like to find out more.
Today, there truly is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t like utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to decrease my internet site a bit. Each time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s really obvious when you’re on a slow-moving internet connection. Yet I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t use a routine Webflow form (which I love making use of). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just add extra prices that I do not require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I assumed I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will ultimately create a much better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
In general, beehiiv is a wonderful service for any individual seeking to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform far exceeds lots of that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather low-cost wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not create review messages commonly. I just do when I actually use the tool myself and would advise it to a close friend.
I hope you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.