I was reading among my favored e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and immediately began tearing up. Beehiiv Polls Multiple Answer…
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m often getting pitched various tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological since I spent the last six months experimenting with different email and e-newsletter systems to aid construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic choices for writing newsletters. However I could not find one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The concern with several existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully customize my e-newsletter designs, makes it extremely easy to compose and send e-mails, and gives me tools that assist me analyze metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I assume I have actually lastly discovered the best device.
Yet, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it easy to layout, create, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous workers at the famous newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid makers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly opt for it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter system for quite some time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it concerned lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain many newsletter makers respect preferred e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have terrific content, lots of customers, and a creative referral program that permits them to get back at much more subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to figure out just how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they create an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this device actually understand e-newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker growth.
Because, any type of developer understands, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the right e-newsletter pile (that scales) typically implies utilizing several various tools to help achieve one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to set up referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was totally free to begin utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great platform used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a website comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own internet site already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site clients right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable individuals to register for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to utilize different marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
Just how to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content designer that desires a platform that permits them to send out custom newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or material maker, you should seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely free to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you in fact end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indicator that people enjoy reviewing your things.
Enroll in a free plan
The primary step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, outside embed types, and extra. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just starting out (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand colors and design to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once 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 obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning creating”, “Messages”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Evaluate”. And at the really lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot above), Begin composing is where you develop and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and break them down right into sectors), 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 e-newsletter with ads, Style is where you develop your newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you want to blog about, I advise just mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and easy to use interface for composing.
As soon as you begin composing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and design your material how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for various kinds of web content like videos, web links, images, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is also frequently releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a whole lot much more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever solitary point you can optimize with your email template because it’s a lot. Simply try the system for free and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any newsletter maker.
Below are a few of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Polls Multiple Answer
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely easy to write and send out emails. I pointed out over some of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) live on a site. Think about it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and an area where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, offer you a website. However, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom-made domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is essential. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv web site or through embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and want people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three various alternatives– a complete size, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to forward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the team is servicing updates for these, yet I stated a few worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your checklist to forward your emails to close friends and coworkers and if they get other individuals to sign up for your listing, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you want. I have actually seem several newsletter business give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you another method for expanding your email checklist.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this article.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription profits is most definitely a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be very financially rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter has to use. For example, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the things I like concerning beehiiv is exactly how tidy and basic the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer count rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan provides 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 everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain, polls, and accessibility to premium 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 eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for numerous individuals.
I’m uncertain just how the system business economics deal with this, but beehiiv is most definitely more affordable (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are some of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
- Easy to set up and begin sending out newsletters absolutely free
- Tidy and modern customer analytics
- Great deals of versatility with email styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Polls Multiple Answer
- Website hosting
- Develop costs options to generate income from
- Polls
To be honest, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability 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 state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom font styles
I utilize Webflow as my internet site building platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive information why I enjoy Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to learn more.
Now, there actually is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site apart from making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not like making use of iframe’s because they tend to slow down my web site a bit. Each time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s extremely noticeable when you’re on a slow net link. But I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a routine Webflow form (which I like making use of). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier but that would simply add extra costs that I don’t require. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the disadvantages here. I’m also confident that Webflow will at some point create a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a wonderful solution for any individual seeking to study the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform much surpasses numerous that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather affordable wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create review blog posts typically. I only do when I really utilize the device myself and would suggest it to a pal.
I hope you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.