I read one of my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and immediately began tearing up. Beehiiv Recommendations…
Being a full time developer is tough. I’m often getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last six months trying out different e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific options for writing e-newsletters. However I could not discover one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with several existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it extremely simple to create and send e-mails, and offers me devices that assist me examine metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I assume I have actually lastly found the ideal tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to layout, compose, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former workers at the famous newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly go with it as my newsletter system of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter system for quite some time currently. I’ve postponed hard when it concerned ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous newsletter creators admire popular newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have wonderful web content, lots of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get back at much more subscribers.
So, I went on a hunt to figure out exactly how these big newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device actually comprehend e-newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I understood this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Due to the fact that, any type of maker understands, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that ranges) frequently implies using multiple different devices to assist achieve one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to set up references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to start making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic platform used by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a web site similar to Substack. However, if you have your own site already, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your web site subscribers right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to leverage various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that wants a system that allows them to send custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or web content developer, you should seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to get going and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good indication that people like reading your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, outside embed types, and extra. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply starting (or for those looking for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand colors and design to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin composing”, “Posts”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Examine”. And at the really lower you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot over), Beginning writing is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and break them down right into sections), 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you intend to discuss, I suggest simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and user-friendly user interface for writing.
As soon as you begin writing, you can enhance headings, include links, and style your material exactly how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for various types of web content like videos, links, images, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is also frequently releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a great deal much more material features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your email template and adjust some setups.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome email 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 modify history shades, borders, spacing, fonts, photo styles, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever single thing you can maximize with your e-mail template since it’s a whole lot. Simply try the platform totally free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it a fantastic publishing system for any type of e-newsletter developer.
Here are some of the essential features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Recommendations
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely simple to write and send e-mails. I discussed over several of the important things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) live on a site. Think of it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a location where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, give you a site. However, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is very important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv site or through embed types.
If you already have a web site, and want people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. This is what I make use of on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various options– a complete width, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim embed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s also an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to forward UTM specifications for tracking functions– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is servicing updates for these, but I stated a couple of worries 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 an option for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your list to ahead your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they obtain other people to sign up for your listing, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem several newsletter business provide rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you another method for expanding your email list.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this article.
Premium registrations
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration earnings is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be extremely lucrative relying on what your newsletter needs to offer. For example, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that creates millions in income a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
One of the important things I like regarding beehiiv is how clean and basic the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you require to begin and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain, surveys, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for lots of users.
I’m unsure exactly how the device business economics service this, however beehiiv is absolutely cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are some of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
- Easy to set up and start sending out e-newsletters absolutely free
- Clean and modern-day customer analytics
- Lots of flexibility with e-mail layouts.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Recommendations
- Internet site hosting
- Create costs choices to monetize
- Surveys
To be truthful, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
Yet of course, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I have actually discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding personalized fonts
I utilize Webflow as my site structure platform of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow testimonial if you wish to discover more.
Right now, there really is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not such as utilizing iframe’s since they have a tendency to decrease my site a bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s very visible when you get on a slow net link. However I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a routine Webflow kind (which I enjoy using). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would certainly simply add extra costs that I don’t require. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I believed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the cons below. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will eventually develop a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is an excellent option for anybody looking to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far outweighs lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather affordable wherefore 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 customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t write testimonial blog posts frequently. I just do when I in fact use the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a pal.
I wish you discovered some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.