I was reading among my favored email 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 on it and immediately started tearing up. Beehiiv Polls…
Being a permanent creator is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional since I invested the last six months trying different email and e-newsletter platforms to help construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific options for writing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t discover one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely customize my newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly very easy to write and send out e-mails, and gives me devices that aid me analyze metrics and get more subscribers.
I assume I have actually lastly found the appropriate tool.
Yet, I understand beehiiv may 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 system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to layout, write, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former employees at the popular newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist makers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly go with it as my newsletter system of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a modern newsletter system for fairly a long time now. I’ve postponed hard when it came to ultimately releasing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure numerous e-newsletter designers admire prominent newsletters with countless subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have great web content, tons of customers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at extra subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to figure out how these big newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they create a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool truly comprehend newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the initial marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Due to the fact that, any kind of designer knows, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And finding the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that scales) commonly implies utilizing multiple different devices to assist achieve one goal– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was cost-free to start making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific system utilized by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own internet site and use the system as your all-in-one service for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv also gives you a site similar to Substack. But, if you have your own internet site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your site subscribers straight to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable people to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to leverage various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
How to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content developer that wants a system that allows them to send custom-made e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
The most effective newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or material designer, you ought to seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent sign that people love reviewing your stuff.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, external embed types, and a lot more. It’s a really charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand name colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start composing”, “Messages”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Layout” and” Assess”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your clients are (and break them down into segments), Grow 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you want to write about, I suggest just going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and straightforward interface for composing.
When you begin composing, you can enhance headings, include links, and design your web content exactly how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of choices for various kinds of web content like video clips, links, photos, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is likewise regularly releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a great deal more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, image styles, and a lot more. I’m not going to undergo ever before single thing you can optimize with your email template because it’s a lot. Simply try out the system absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any kind of newsletter designer.
Below are several of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Polls
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it incredibly very easy to write and send emails. I stated above a few of things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the far better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on a site. Think of it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, give you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a customized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is important. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and want people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to make use of an embed kind. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different alternatives– a full width, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to forward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– rather cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working with updates for these, however I mentioned a few problems I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your checklist to forward your emails to buddies and associates and if they get other individuals to register for your checklist, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve seem several e-newsletter companies provide incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional method for expanding your email checklist.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this article.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership revenue is most definitely a monster of its own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be very rewarding depending on what your newsletter has to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that produces millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among things I love concerning beehiiv is just how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you everything you need to get going and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, surveys, and accessibility 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 priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my point of view.
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 per month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for several users.
I’m not sure just how the system business economics work with this, however beehiiv is certainly cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Naturally, with every system, 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
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
- Easy to set up and start sending newsletters absolutely free
- Clean and modern client analytics
- Lots of adaptability with e-mail styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Polls
- Internet site hosting
- Create premium alternatives to generate income from
- Surveys
To be honest, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
But certainly, I don’t want to be biased so I’m going to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including customized fonts
I make use of Webflow as my site building system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much detail why I love Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow review if you want to learn more.
Now, there actually is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not like utilizing iframe’s since they tend to decrease my internet site a little bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s extremely noticeable when you’re on a slow-moving net connection. However I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow kind (which I enjoy utilizing). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just add added prices that I do not need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a much better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is a great option for any individual looking to dive into the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform much exceeds lots of that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively economical of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review posts often. I just do when I actually make use of the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a pal.
I wish you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.