I read one of my favored 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 instantaneously began destroying. Beehiiv Subscription…
Being a full time designer is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched various devices and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I invested the last six months trying out different e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great alternatives for writing newsletters. But I could not find one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The issue with several existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my newsletter designs, makes it super very easy to compose and send e-mails, and provides me tools that help me analyze metrics and get more customers.
I believe I’ve lastly located the appropriate tool.
Yet, I understand beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to design, write, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by previous workers at the renowned e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly choose it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a modern-day newsletter platform for fairly some time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it involved ultimately launching my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure numerous newsletter designers admire popular newsletters with numerous subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have excellent content, lots of customers, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get back at a lot more customers.
So, I went on a hunt to identify just how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they create an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that built this device truly recognize e-newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker development.
Because, any kind of maker knows, you require growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the best e-newsletter pile (that ranges) frequently means utilizing several various devices to aid attain one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to set up references. It can get pricey.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was free to start using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic platform made use of by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your very own site and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you an internet site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own web site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site subscribers right to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to utilize various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
How to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that wants a system that permits them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or material creator, you must seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you actually end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indicator that people like reading your things.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, outside embed kinds, and much more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also pick your brand name design and colors to see to it 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 certainly have detailed info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning creating”, “Messages”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Generate income from”, “Design” and” Examine”. And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Start creating is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down into sectors), Grow is where you have access to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Design is where you develop 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 things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you want to discuss, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can modify your template and styling later– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and straightforward user interface for creating.
Once you start creating, you can optimize headings, add links, and style your material how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for various kinds of web content like video clips, links, images, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise frequently launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a great deal much more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your email template and change some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, photo formats, and more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before solitary point you can enhance with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Simply try the system absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it an excellent posting system for any e-newsletter designer.
Below are some of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Subscription
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it incredibly easy to create and send out e-mails. I stated over several of things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll save you some extra reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) survive on an internet site. Think of it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, offer you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a personalized domain to eliminate 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, people can register for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv web site or with embed forms.
If you already have a website, and desire people to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 various options– a complete size, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s also an option for attribution monitoring if you wish to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the group is working on updates for these, yet I discussed a few problems I had in the pros and cons area below.
Referral program
Among 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 clients on your checklist to ahead your emails to friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your checklist, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever type you want. I have actually seem lots of newsletter companies provide benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you another opportunity for expanding your e-mail listing.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to an extra premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription income is certainly a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be very rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter has to provide. For example, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that generates millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among things I like about beehiiv is how tidy and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client matter increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you whatever you require to begin and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain, polls, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for lots of individuals.
I’m not sure just how the system business economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is absolutely less costly (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are a few of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
- Easy to establish and begin sending newsletters totally free
- Tidy and contemporary customer analytics
- Lots of versatility with email designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Subscription
- Site hosting
- Produce costs alternatives to generate income from
- Surveys
To be straightforward, I have not seen one more e-newsletter platform that has had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However naturally, I do not want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to point out some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the cons I’ve located while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including custom font styles
I utilize Webflow as my internet site building system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in too much information why I love Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to discover more.
Now, there actually is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as using iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to decrease my internet site a bit. Every time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s really noticeable when you’re on a sluggish net connection. However I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow form (which I love utilizing). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would simply include extra costs that I do not need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the cons right here. I’m also confident that Webflow will at some point develop a much better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for any person wanting to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system much surpasses many that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively cheap of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unheard of. 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 per month.
Anyways, I don’t write testimonial messages typically. I just do when I really make use of the device myself and would certainly advise it to a pal.
I wish you located some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.