I read among my favored email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and quickly began wrecking. Beehiiv Priority Live Support…
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m typically getting pitched different devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I spent the last six months trying out various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to help build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic options for creating newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me offer a definite “yes”.
The issue with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send out e-mails, and offers me devices that assist me assess metrics and get more subscribers.
I assume I have actually ultimately located the right tool.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system 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 newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the well-known newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally opt for it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a modern e-newsletter platform for rather time now. I’ve hesitated hard when it came to ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure many newsletter creators appreciate popular newsletters with numerous customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have wonderful web content, lots of customers, and a creative referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more subscribers.
So, I went on a hunt to find out just how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device really recognize e-newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Due to the fact that, any type of maker knows, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the best newsletter pile (that scales) often means using several various tools to help accomplish one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to establish referrals. It can get expensive.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was cost-free to start making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a wonderful system utilized by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and make use of the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a website comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your web site clients straight to your beehiiv email list. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow people to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to leverage various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
How to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that desires a platform that permits them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or content designer, you need to seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you actually end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a good sign that people like reviewing your things.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you accessibility to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, external embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a really charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those seeking a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll then create a name and link for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand name colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have described information on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start creating”, “Posts”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Generate income from”, “Style” and” Evaluate”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and break them down into segments), Grow is where you have access to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Design is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and 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 e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you want to blog about, I recommend just going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and easy to use user interface for creating.
When you start composing, you can maximize headings, add web links, and style your material exactly how you like.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for various kinds of web content like video clips, links, pictures, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is also frequently releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a great deal much more content features relying on 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 create your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, image layouts, and more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever single thing you can maximize with your email template because it’s a great deal. Simply try out the platform absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it a fantastic posting platform for any e-newsletter developer.
Below are several of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Priority Live Support
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely easy to create and send out emails. I discussed over a few of the important things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll save you some added analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a web site. Think of it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, offer you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a customized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is essential. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or through embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to use an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different options– a complete width, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s also an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to ahead UTM criteria for tracking functions– pretty cool.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working with updates for these, yet I stated a couple of concerns I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your list to ahead your emails to close friends and coworkers and if they get other individuals to register for your list, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually appear several newsletter business provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional opportunity for growing your email list.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this article.
Premium memberships
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration earnings is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be really financially rewarding depending on what your newsletter needs to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of things I like about beehiiv is just how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client matter rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan gives you everything you require to start and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for lots of users.
I’m unsure exactly how the device business economics deal with this, but beehiiv is absolutely less expensive (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are some of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
- Easy to establish and start sending out e-newsletters absolutely free
- Tidy and modern customer analytics
- Lots of versatility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Priority Live Support
- Internet site hosting
- Produce premium choices to monetize
- Surveys
To be honest, I haven’t seen another e-newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
However certainly, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom fonts
I utilize Webflow as my web site structure system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much detail why I enjoy Webflow so much yet you can review my Webflow evaluation if you would love to discover more.
Right now, there actually is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from using an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to reduce my web site a little bit. Every time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s very recognizable when you get on a slow net connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not utilize a normal Webflow kind (which I enjoy using). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would certainly just include added prices that I do not need. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I thought I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will ultimately develop a much better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful option for any individual looking to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform much surpasses several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively low-cost of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation articles often. I only do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a good friend.
I wish you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.