I was reading one of my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and instantly started tearing up. Beehiiv Pros and Cons…
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last six months trying out different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to aid build my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful choices for writing newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The concern with several existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me totally customize my e-newsletter designs, makes it incredibly easy to create and send emails, and offers me tools that assist me assess metrics and get more subscribers.
I assume I have actually ultimately discovered the right tool.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to style, compose, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately choose it as my e-newsletter system of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a modern-day newsletter system for quite a long time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it pertained to ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of e-newsletter makers appreciate preferred newsletters with countless clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have great content, tons of clients, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get even more customers.
So, I took place a quest to determine how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they create a newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool really recognize newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these designers 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 blew up.
I understood this was going to be a various newsletter system. One that’s focused on developer growth.
Due to the fact that, any type of maker knows, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the right newsletter stack (that ranges) often indicates utilizing several various tools to help accomplish one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to start using, 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 authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a wonderful platform utilized by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your own internet site and use the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also offers you a site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own website currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site subscribers straight to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit individuals to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content maker that wants a platform that permits them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or web content creator, you ought to seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely complimentary to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you actually wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a great indication that individuals like reading your things.
Register for a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you accessibility to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, outside embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your e-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 internet site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning composing”, “Blog posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Generate income from”, “Design” and” Examine”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Control panel is your major control center (screenshot over), Start writing is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your clients are (and break them down into segments), Grow is where you have access to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you wish to blog about, I recommend just going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and straightforward interface for writing.
Once you begin creating, you can maximize headings, include links, and style your content just how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of choices for various types of material like video clips, links, images, and more.
The group at beehiiv is also frequently releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a lot more content features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your email template and change some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo formats, and a lot more. I’m not going to undergo ever before single point you can enhance with your e-mail template because it’s a great deal. Just try out the system totally free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any e-newsletter maker.
Right here are a few of the essential features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Pros and Cons
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly easy to compose and send emails. I stated above several of things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely one of the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) survive an internet site. Think about it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, provide you a web site. However, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom-made domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is very important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or through embed kinds.
If you currently have a site, and want people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed type. This is what I make use of on this website (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 3 various options– a complete size, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– rather cool.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the team is working on updates for these, yet I stated a few worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your list to forward your e-mails to good friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever form you want. I have actually appear numerous e-newsletter companies offer benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional opportunity for expanding your e-mail checklist.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this write-up.
Premium registrations
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership profits is certainly a beast of its very own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” problems of your newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be really lucrative depending upon what your newsletter needs to use. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that produces millions in profits a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among things I love concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you whatever you need to get started and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for several customers.
I’m not exactly sure how the device business economics work with this, yet beehiiv is certainly less costly (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are some of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
- Easy to establish and start sending newsletters absolutely free
- Tidy and modern client analytics
- Great deals of versatility with e-mail styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Pros and Cons
- Website hosting
- Develop costs options to generate income from
- Surveys
To be sincere, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
However obviously, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m going to point out some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the disadvantages I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom fonts
I use Webflow as my web site structure platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to go in too much detail why I like Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow review if you wish to discover more.
Right now, there really is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not like using iframe’s because they have a tendency to slow down my site a little bit. Every time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s really noticeable when you get on a sluggish net link. But I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow type (which I enjoy utilizing). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would certainly just add extra prices that I do not require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I believed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will at some point produce a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful remedy for any individual seeking to study the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform much outweighs many that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather low-cost of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not compose evaluation posts usually. I just do when I in fact make use of the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a close friend.
I hope you discovered some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.