I read one of my favorite email e-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 instantaneously began wrecking. Beehiiv Slack Community…
Being a full time designer is tough. I’m often obtaining pitched different devices and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I spent the last 6 months experimenting with different email and newsletter systems to aid construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic options for writing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me totally customize my e-newsletter designs, makes it extremely very easy to write and send emails, and gives me tools that aid me evaluate metrics and obtain even more clients.
I think I have actually lastly discovered the right device.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it very easy to design, write, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the famous newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly select it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day e-newsletter system for rather a long time now. I’ve procrastinated hard when it involved ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous e-newsletter designers appreciate prominent newsletters with countless customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have wonderful content, lots of customers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get back at more customers.
So, I took place a hunt to determine exactly how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this device actually comprehend newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Since, any maker understands, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the right newsletter stack (that scales) typically means using numerous different devices to aid achieve one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish recommendations. It can get costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was free to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific system utilized by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and utilize the system as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a website comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own site already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your site customers right to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to permit individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to take advantage of different marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Exactly how to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that desires a platform that allows them to send out customized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most successful newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or web content designer, you need to seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely free to get started and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you in fact wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent indication that people love reviewing your things.
Enroll in a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, external embed types, and a lot more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those trying to find a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise choose your brand name design and colors to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described details on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning creating”, “Blog posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Generate income from”, “Design” and” Examine”. And at the really lower you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you create and publish newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view 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 advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you design your newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you intend to cover, I advise just going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use interface for composing.
Once you start writing, you can enhance headings, add links, and style your material just how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for different types of content like video clips, links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is also constantly launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot much more content features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo, activate or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify background colors, borders, spacing, fonts, photo styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever single point you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Just try the system totally free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it a great publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter designer.
Here are a few of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Slack Community
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it super very easy to create and send emails. I pointed out above some of things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) live on a web site. Think of it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, provide you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom-made domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and want individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed kind. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three different alternatives– a complete width, a dealt with width, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution tracking if you want to ahead UTM criteria for tracking functions– quite cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the group is dealing with updates for these, but I mentioned a few worries 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 e-newsletter system, is a service for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your listing to ahead your e-mails to friends and associates and if they obtain other people to sign up for your checklist, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve appear lots of e-newsletter business provide benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you another avenue for growing your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this write-up.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration earnings is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be really financially rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter has to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of things I like about beehiiv is how tidy and easy the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to get going and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, personalized domain, polls, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for many users.
I’m uncertain how the unit economics work with this, yet beehiiv is certainly less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Below are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of option:
- Easy to establish and start sending newsletters completely free
- Clean and modern client analytics
- Great deals of flexibility with email styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Slack Community
- Internet site hosting
- Produce premium choices to monetize
- Surveys
To be sincere, I have not seen another newsletter system that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet naturally, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding customized fonts
I utilize Webflow as my site building system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much yet you can review my Webflow testimonial if you want to discover more.
Today, there really is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than using an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as using iframe’s because they have a tendency to slow down my site a little bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s extremely visible when you’re on a slow-moving web connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not make use of a regular Webflow kind (which I enjoy utilizing). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply add extra prices that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the cons below. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually develop a much better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful remedy for any individual aiming to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system much outweighs lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively cheap for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create testimonial articles usually. I just do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would suggest it to a friend.
I hope you located some quality on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.