I was reading one of my preferred e-mail 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 promptly began tearing up. Beehiiv Recommendation Network…
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m typically obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months experimenting with different email and newsletter systems to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent alternatives for composing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me provide a precise “yes”.
The problem with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me fully customize my newsletter layouts, makes it extremely simple to compose and send emails, and gives me tools that assist me examine metrics and obtain even more customers.
I think I have actually lastly found the appropriate device.
However, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to layout, create, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former staff members at the famous e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally select it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a contemporary e-newsletter system for fairly some time now. I have actually put things off hard when it concerned ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make certain lots of e-newsletter developers admire prominent e-newsletters with numerous clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have excellent content, lots of subscribers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get back at much more customers.
So, I went on a search to find out exactly how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device truly comprehend e-newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the initial marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I understood this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Due to the fact that, any type of creator knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the right e-newsletter stack (that ranges) commonly implies using several various devices to assist achieve one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was free to begin using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is an excellent platform used by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your own internet site and use the platform as your all-in-one service for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to obtain the word out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a web site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own website currently, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your website customers directly to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow people to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to utilize various marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack option.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that desires a platform that permits them to send out custom newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or content maker, you should seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you actually end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indicator that individuals enjoy reviewing your things.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you access to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance personalization, analytics, external embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those searching for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally pick your brand name colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed information on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning composing”, “Articles”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Generate income from”, “Style” and” Analyze”. And at the really lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Start creating is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your customers are (and damage them down right into sections), Expand is where you have accessibility 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 develop your newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you wish to blog about, I recommend simply going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning writing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and straightforward user interface for creating.
Once you start creating, you can maximize headings, include web links, and style your material how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of options for different sorts of web content like video clips, web links, photos, and more.
The team at beehiiv is also frequently releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a whole lot more content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your email template and change some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, picture formats, and much more. I’m not going to experience ever single thing you can enhance with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Just check out the system for free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a fantastic publishing system for any newsletter designer.
Right here are several of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Recommendation Network
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely simple to write and send out emails. I mentioned over a few of things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) live on a web site. Consider it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can sign up for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, offer you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a customized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or through embed types.
If you already have an internet site, and desire people to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I use on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various alternatives– a complete size, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution monitoring if you intend to forward UTM criteria for tracking functions– rather neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the team is servicing updates for these, however I stated a couple of problems I had in the pros and cons area 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 creating a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your checklist to forward your e-mails to buddies and associates and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your list, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I have actually appear several e-newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you one more opportunity for expanding your e-mail list.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this post.
Premium registrations
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription revenue is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be extremely financially rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter needs to use. For example, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among the important things I like concerning beehiiv is exactly how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client count increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you whatever you need to begin and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, surveys, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the very same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for several individuals.
I’m uncertain how the device economics work on this, but beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are a few of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
- Easy to establish and begin sending e-newsletters absolutely free
- Tidy and contemporary subscriber analytics
- Great deals of adaptability with email designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Recommendation Network
- Website hosting
- Create premium choices to generate income from
- Polls
To be sincere, I have not seen one more newsletter system that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet of course, I don’t want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to point out some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the disadvantages I’ve located while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding customized fonts
I make use of Webflow as my internet site building system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much information why I love Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow review if you wish to find out more.
Today, there truly is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t like utilizing iframe’s because they tend to decrease my web site a little bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s really visible when you get on a slow-moving net link. But I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow form (which I like using). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would simply include extra expenses that I do not need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the cons right here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will eventually develop a far better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent solution for anyone seeking to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system much outweighs numerous that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively economical for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t compose evaluation posts frequently. I just do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a buddy.
I wish you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.