I was reading one of my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantly started destroying. Beehiiv Raises…
Being a full-time developer is difficult. I’m often getting pitched different tools and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional since I invested the last six months trying out various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to aid build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic choices for writing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it super easy to write and send emails, and gives me tools that aid me evaluate metrics and get more subscribers.
I believe I have actually ultimately located the ideal device.
However, I recognize 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 system that makes it very easy to style, write, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous staff members at the renowned e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly go with it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter system for fairly a long time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it concerned lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of newsletter creators respect preferred e-newsletters with millions of customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have excellent content, tons of clients, and a creative referral program that permits them to get back at much more customers.
So, I took place a hunt to identify exactly how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this device really understand newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker growth.
Since, any kind of creator understands, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the ideal e-newsletter stack (that scales) typically implies making use of numerous different tools to aid attain one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up referrals. It can obtain expensive.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary 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, yes there is. Substack is a wonderful system made use of by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your own internet site and use the platform as your all-in-one service for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you an internet site similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own website already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your web site subscribers right to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable people to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack option.
How to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that desires a system that allows them to send out personalized newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or content designer, you need to seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s totally free to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you really wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a great sign that individuals enjoy reading your things.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to register for 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 subscribers, provide you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, exterior embed forms, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those just starting (or for those looking for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also choose your brand name colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have outlined info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning creating”, “Posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Analyze”. And at the really lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you produce and release newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and damage them down into sections), Grow 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 post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you intend to discuss, I suggest just going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and easy to use interface for writing.
When you begin writing, you can maximize headings, add web links, and style your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of options for different kinds of web content like videos, links, pictures, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is likewise regularly launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a great deal a lot more material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, include your logo, activate or off a welcome email to first time customers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, picture formats, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever single thing you can maximize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just experiment with the system absolutely free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a great publishing system for any type of e-newsletter creator.
Below are some of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Raises
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly simple to write and send out e-mails. I mentioned over a few of things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll save you some added reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the far better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) live on an internet site. Think about it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, provide you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom-made domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is essential. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or through embed types.
If you currently have a website, and want individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed form. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different alternatives– a complete size, a dealt with width, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to onward UTM criteria for tracking functions– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the team is working with updates for these, however I stated a couple of concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a service for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your list to ahead your emails to pals and colleagues and if they get other people to sign up for your checklist, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually appear lots of newsletter companies give incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional avenue for growing your email list.
However, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to an extra superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this write-up.
Premium memberships
They claim all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription revenue is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be very financially rewarding depending upon what your newsletter needs to provide. For example, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that creates millions in income a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of things I love regarding beehiiv is exactly how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you need to start and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and access 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 top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for numerous individuals.
I’m not sure exactly how the unit economics work with this, but beehiiv is certainly more affordable (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are several of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
- Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters completely free
- Tidy and modern-day customer analytics
- Great deals of adaptability with email styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Raises
- Internet site hosting
- Develop premium options to monetize
- Surveys
To be straightforward, I have not seen another newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
Yet of course, I do not intend to be biased so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the cons I’ve located while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom-made typefaces
I make use of Webflow as my web site structure system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive information why I like Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you ‘d like to discover more.
Today, there really is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t like using iframe’s because they tend to decrease my internet site a little bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the page. It’s very visible when you’re on a sluggish internet connection. But I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not make use of a regular Webflow type (which I enjoy utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would just add extra prices that I do not require. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I thought I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the disadvantages below. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will ultimately create a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a great service for any person wanting to study the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far exceeds many that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly low-cost for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not create testimonial articles commonly. I only do when I really make use of the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a buddy.
I wish you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.