I was reading one of my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and promptly started destroying. Beehiiv The Popehat Report…
Being a full-time maker is difficult. I’m commonly getting pitched different tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I invested the last 6 months checking out different email and newsletter systems to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic choices for creating newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my newsletter styles, makes it very easy to create and send e-mails, and gives me devices that aid me assess metrics and get more subscribers.
I assume I’ve lastly discovered the ideal tool.
But, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to design, compose, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former staff members at the famous newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly choose it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter platform for fairly some time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it pertained to ultimately launching my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain lots of newsletter creators admire prominent newsletters with countless subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have wonderful content, lots of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get back at extra customers.
So, I went on a hunt to determine just how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they produce a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this device truly understand newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I recognized this was going to be a various newsletter system. One that’s focused on developer development.
Because, any developer recognizes, you need development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the ideal newsletter stack (that scales) typically suggests making use of several different devices to help accomplish one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to set up referrals. It can obtain expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, 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 already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a wonderful system utilized by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one option for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your site clients right to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to utilize different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that wants a system that allows them to send custom-made e-newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
The most effective newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or material creator, you need to seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to get going and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you actually wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great sign that individuals love reading your stuff.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you access to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, exterior embed forms, and more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just starting (or for those trying to find a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand name colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have described info on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning composing”, “Blog posts”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Generate income from”, “Design” and” Analyze”. And at the very lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your major control center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your clients are (and break them down into sections), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you design your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you want to blog about, I advise simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning writing”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly interface for writing.
As soon as you begin creating, you can optimize headings, include web links, and style your content just how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of options for various sorts of web content like video clips, links, photos, and more.
The team at beehiiv is also continuously launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot more material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to design your email template and readjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, photo layouts, and much more. I’m not going to experience ever solitary point you can maximize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply try the platform completely free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of impressive features that make it an excellent publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter maker.
Below are some of the essential features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv The Popehat Report
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it extremely very easy to create and send emails. I mentioned above several of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the much better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on a web site. Think about it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, offer you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom-made domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is very important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or with embed forms.
If you already have a website, and want individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three various options– a full size, a fixed width, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for attribution monitoring if you want to forward UTM parameters for tracking functions– quite cool.
However, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the group is servicing updates for these, but I stated a couple of worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your list to forward your e-mails to good friends and colleagues and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your list, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I’ve seem several newsletter firms provide benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another opportunity for growing your e-mail listing.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this article.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership income is absolutely a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” problems of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be extremely financially rewarding relying on what your newsletter needs to use. For example, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among things I like regarding beehiiv is how clean and easy the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer matter go up is absolutely 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 every little thing you require to get going and grow your newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain, polls, and accessibility to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 each month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for several individuals.
I’m not exactly sure just how the system economics work with this, but beehiiv is certainly more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
- Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters completely free
- Clean and contemporary client analytics
- Lots of versatility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv The Popehat Report
- Site hosting
- Create premium alternatives to generate income from
- Polls
To be honest, I have not seen another newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But naturally, I do not want to be biased so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom font styles
I utilize Webflow as my website structure system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter too much detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow review if you wish to discover more.
Today, there actually is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site apart from making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t like using iframe’s since they have a tendency to decrease my website a little bit. Every time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s really noticeable when you get on a sluggish web link. Yet I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not use a normal Webflow form (which I enjoy utilizing). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would simply include added prices that I do not need. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I thought I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the cons below. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point produce a better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is a fantastic option for any individual looking to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter system far exceeds numerous that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather inexpensive wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create evaluation articles typically. I only do when I really make use of the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a close friend.
I wish you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.