I was reading among my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and quickly started tearing up. Beehiiv Templates…
Being a full-time creator is difficult. I’m frequently obtaining pitched various tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I invested the last 6 months trying out various e-mail and newsletter systems to assist develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic alternatives for writing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t discover one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with several existing newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my newsletter styles, makes it very simple to create and send out emails, and provides me devices that aid me assess metrics and obtain even more clients.
I think I have actually ultimately discovered the best device.
But, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to design, compose, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous staff members at the popular newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m going to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately go with it as my newsletter platform of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for rather time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it came to ultimately launching my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure several newsletter makers look up to preferred newsletters with numerous customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have wonderful material, lots of customers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at extra customers.
So, I went on a quest to figure out how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this device really understand newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Because, any type of maker recognizes, you need growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that ranges) often implies making use of multiple various devices to help accomplish one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to establish references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was complimentary to begin making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic platform used by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your very own site and use the platform as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you an internet site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own website already, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your site customers directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit people to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to leverage different marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that desires a system that allows them to send customized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or web content creator, you should seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to start and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you really end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indication that individuals like reviewing your things.
Sign up 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” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those seeking a new system to move to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise pick your brand name colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed info on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin composing”, “Messages”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Evaluate”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Beginning composing is where you create and release e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your customers are (and break them down into segments), Expand 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 advertisements, Layout is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you want to blog about, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Start creating”.
You can modify your template and styling later– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and straightforward user interface for composing.
When you start writing, you can optimize headings, include links, and style your content exactly how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for different types of web content like videos, web links, photos, and more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise regularly launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a lot a lot more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your e-mail template and change some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, photo layouts, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before solitary point you can optimize with your e-mail template because it’s a whole lot. Just experiment with the platform totally free and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a fantastic posting platform for any type of newsletter maker.
Below are a few of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Templates
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it super easy to compose and send out emails. I mentioned over some of the things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) reside on a website. Think of it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and an area where people can register for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, provide you a web site. However, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a personalized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is very important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv site or through embed forms.
If you currently have a website, and want people to sign up 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 embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different alternatives– a complete width, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s also a choice for attribution monitoring if you want to onward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working with updates for these, yet I stated a few concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your checklist to forward your emails to pals and colleagues and if they get other people to register for your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve appear numerous e-newsletter firms offer rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you another method for growing your e-mail checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium registrations
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription revenue is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” problems of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be really rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to provide. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I like regarding beehiiv is exactly how clean and easy the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right 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 listed below.
The (free) Launch plan gives you whatever you require to get started and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain name, surveys, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for several users.
I’m unsure how the device economics deal with this, but beehiiv is certainly cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Below are some of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
- Easy to set up and start sending newsletters free of charge
- Clean and modern-day subscriber analytics
- Lots of flexibility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Templates
- Internet site hosting
- Create costs choices to generate income from
- Surveys
To be truthful, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
But of course, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m mosting likely to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I’ve discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including customized typefaces
I make use of Webflow as my website structure system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much detail why I like Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow evaluation if you would love to discover more.
Now, there truly is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as using iframe’s because they often tend to decrease my site a bit. Every time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s very noticeable when you get on a slow net connection. However I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not make use of a normal Webflow type (which I like utilizing). There are methods around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would simply add extra costs that I don’t need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I thought I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much exceed the disadvantages here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will ultimately produce a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a wonderful remedy for anyone looking to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform far exceeds several that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively economical for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation posts frequently. I only do when I really utilize the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a pal.
I wish you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.