I was reading among my preferred e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and promptly began destroying. Beehiiv RSS Feed…
Being a full-time creator is difficult. I’m frequently getting pitched different devices and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological since I spent the last six months trying out different email and e-newsletter platforms to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic options for writing newsletters. However I could not discover one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The issue with several existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my newsletter styles, makes it incredibly very easy to write and send e-mails, and gives me tools that aid me analyze metrics and get more clients.
I assume I’ve lastly discovered the ideal tool.
Yet, I understand 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 newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it very easy to design, compose, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former workers at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly select it as my newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter system for fairly some time currently. I’ve procrastinated hard when it involved lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure many newsletter developers appreciate prominent e-newsletters with millions of subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have great web content, lots of clients, and a creative referral program that enables them to get even much more customers.
So, I took place a search to figure out how these big newsletters established 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 develop an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this device truly comprehend e-newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the initial marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I understood this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Since, any maker knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the best e-newsletter stack (that ranges) typically implies utilizing numerous different devices to assist achieve one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to set up references. It can obtain pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was cost-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 currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is an excellent platform made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own website and utilize the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a web site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own web site already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site clients straight to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow people to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to leverage different marketing channels to get your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
Just how to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material maker that wants a platform that permits them to send custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, start-up, or material developer, you ought to seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s completely free to start and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you really wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great indication that individuals love reviewing your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and much more. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply beginning (or for those searching for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise pick your brand name colors and design to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have described information on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin creating”, “Articles”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Generate income from”, “Style” and” Assess”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Control panel is your major control center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down into sectors), Expand 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 ads, Design is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you wish to write about, I recommend simply going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can modify your template and designing later– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and straightforward user interface for composing.
Once you begin writing, you can maximize headings, add web links, and style your material exactly how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for various types of content like video clips, links, pictures, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise constantly launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal extra content features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your email template and change some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history shades, borders, spacing, fonts, image formats, and a lot more. I’m not going to go through ever before single thing you can maximize with your e-mail template because it’s a whole lot. Just try the platform free of cost and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a wonderful posting system for any kind of newsletter designer.
Below are some of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv RSS Feed
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely easy to compose and send e-mails. I mentioned above some of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some added reading.
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 among the much better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) live on an internet site. Consider it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, provide you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a customized domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv web site or through embed forms.
If you currently have an internet site, and want people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 different options– a complete size, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for attribution tracking if you want to onward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– quite neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the group is servicing updates for these, however I pointed out a few concerns I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is an option for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your checklist to forward your e-mails to buddies and associates and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your listing, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve seem numerous e-newsletter companies give rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional avenue for expanding your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription earnings is definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying clients. This can be really financially rewarding depending upon what your newsletter has to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
One of the things I love about beehiiv is exactly how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer matter rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you everything you need to begin and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for many individuals.
I’m unsure just how the device business economics work on this, however beehiiv is absolutely less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
- Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters free of cost
- Tidy and modern subscriber analytics
- Great deals of flexibility with e-mail styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv RSS Feed
- Site hosting
- Produce costs choices to monetize
- Polls
To be honest, I haven’t seen another e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet certainly, I do not wish to be biased so I’m going to point out some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the cons I’ve found while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including personalized font styles
I use Webflow as my website structure platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much detail why I like Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow review if you ‘d like to find out more.
Today, there actually is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as making use of iframe’s because they tend to decrease my website a bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s really recognizable when you’re on a slow-moving internet connection. Yet I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a normal Webflow type (which I enjoy making use of). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would certainly simply include extra expenses that I do not require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I thought I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the disadvantages here. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually develop a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a terrific service for anybody seeking to dive into the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform far surpasses lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively low-cost wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write review posts often. I just do when I in fact make use of the device myself and would certainly advise it to a pal.
I wish you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.