I was reading one of my preferred e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and quickly started wrecking. Beehiiv Special Offer…
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m often getting pitched various tools and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional since I spent the last six months trying out different e-mail and newsletter systems to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful options for composing e-newsletters. However I could not discover one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The concern with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me completely customize my newsletter styles, makes it super simple to write and send out emails, and gives me tools that aid me assess metrics and get even more subscribers.
I assume I’ve ultimately located the ideal tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it very easy to layout, write, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former staff members at the famous newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help developers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m going to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally choose it as my newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day newsletter system for rather a long time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it involved ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure several e-newsletter makers respect prominent e-newsletters with countless clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have excellent content, tons of customers, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get even extra clients.
So, I took place a quest to find out exactly how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more customers? How do they develop an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool truly recognize newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Since, any type of maker understands, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the best newsletter pile (that scales) frequently implies utilizing several different devices to help attain one goal– one system for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was free to begin utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is an excellent system used by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your very own website and make use of the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv also offers you a website similar to Substack. But, if you have your own website currently, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your internet site subscribers right to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable people to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to utilize different marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
How to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that wants a system that enables them to send custom e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or web content maker, you ought to seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s completely free to get going and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you in fact end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indicator that individuals love reviewing your things.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, outside embed types, and extra. It’s a really charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those looking for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also pick your brand colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin writing”, “Articles”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Layout” and” Evaluate”. And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Begin composing is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and damage them down into sectors), Expand 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 ads, Layout is where you design your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Assess 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 creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you intend to cover, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and straightforward interface for writing.
Once you start creating, you can enhance headings, include links, and design your material how you like.
beehiiv offers you lots of alternatives for different kinds of material like video clips, web links, photos, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally frequently launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a great deal more material features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to design your email template and change some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, font styles, picture layouts, and extra. I’m not going to experience ever before single point you can enhance with your email template because it’s a lot. Simply check out the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a fantastic publishing system for any kind of e-newsletter designer.
Here are a few of the necessary features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Special Offer
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it super simple to compose and send out e-mails. I mentioned above a few of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive a site. Think about it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, provide you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom-made domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter right from your beehiiv website or with embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire individuals 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 website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various choices– a full width, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution tracking if you wish to ahead UTM specifications for tracking objectives– quite neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the team is working on updates for these, yet 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 e-newsletter system, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your list to ahead your e-mails to good friends and associates and if they get other people to sign up for your checklist, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually appear several newsletter companies provide benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional avenue for growing your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs memberships
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription income is certainly a monster of its very own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be really financially rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among things I love concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count.
You get access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer count increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you whatever you need to start and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain, polls, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for numerous customers.
I’m not sure exactly how the unit economics work with this, but beehiiv is absolutely more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are some of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
- Easy to set up and start sending out e-newsletters absolutely free
- Clean and modern customer analytics
- Great deals of adaptability with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Special Offer
- Website hosting
- Produce costs options to monetize
- Polls
To be truthful, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But certainly, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to point out some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I’ve located while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including customized fonts
I use Webflow as my website structure platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much but you can read my Webflow evaluation if you ‘d like to discover more.
Today, there actually is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides using an iframe embed. I directly don’t like making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to slow down my website a bit. Every time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s extremely visible when you’re on a slow-moving web link. Yet I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a routine Webflow kind (which I like utilizing). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would certainly just include extra prices that I do not require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the cons right here. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point create a much better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a great solution for any person looking to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system much exceeds numerous that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively cheap of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create evaluation blog posts often. I only do when I in fact use the device myself and would recommend it to a good friend.
I wish you discovered some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.