I was reading one of my preferred email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and instantly started tearing up. Beehiiv Trustpilot…
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m frequently obtaining pitched different tools and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological since I spent the last 6 months trying out various e-mail and newsletter platforms to assist develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent choices for composing newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me totally tailor my newsletter layouts, makes it very easy to compose and send out emails, and offers me tools that assist me assess metrics and get more subscribers.
I assume I have actually lastly discovered the ideal device.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually 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 easy to design, compose, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the famous newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short article, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly select it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter system for rather a long time now. I’ve put things off hard when it pertained to finally launching my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make certain numerous e-newsletter designers look up to preferred newsletters with numerous subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have great web content, lots of clients, and a clever referral program that permits them to get back at a lot more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to figure out just how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device really recognize e-newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the very first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I understood this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on designer development.
Because, any type of developer recognizes, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the appropriate newsletter stack (that scales) frequently indicates using several various tools to aid accomplish one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was totally free to begin using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great system utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own website and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to get the word out.
beehiiv also gives you a website similar to Substack. But, if you have your own site currently, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your website subscribers straight to your beehiiv email list. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to subscribe to your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack choice.
Exactly how to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that desires a platform that enables them to send custom newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media company, startup, or material developer, you should seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you actually wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent indication that individuals love reviewing your stuff.
Register for a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, exterior embed types, and much more. It’s a very charitable offering for those just starting (or for those searching for a new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally pick your brand design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed info on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning writing”, “Blog posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Examine”. And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Start creating is where you create and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your clients are (and damage them down into segments), Expand is where you have accessibility 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you intend to cover, I advise just going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and straightforward interface for composing.
As soon as you start composing, you can maximize headings, add web links, and style your material how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of options for various types of content like video clips, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is also constantly launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a lot more material features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a description, include your logo design, activate 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 colors, borders, spacing, fonts, image formats, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before single point you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the system free of cost and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it an excellent posting system for any e-newsletter developer.
Here are a few of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv Trustpilot
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it incredibly easy to compose and send emails. I pointed out over several of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll save you some extra reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) survive an internet site. Think of it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, provide you a web site. However, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a personalized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is essential. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv web site or via embed forms.
If you already have a web site, and desire people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed form. This is what I utilize on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different options– a full size, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s also an alternative for attribution monitoring if you want to ahead UTM parameters for tracking purposes– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the group is working with updates for these, yet I pointed out a few concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your list to forward your e-mails to good friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to register for your listing, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve appear lots of newsletter business provide incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you one more method for growing your email list.
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 on in this write-up.
Costs memberships
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription earnings is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be extremely rewarding depending upon what your newsletter needs to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that produces millions in income a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of the important things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer matter increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you need to get going and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for many customers.
I’m unsure exactly how the unit economics service this, however beehiiv is absolutely cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are a few of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
- Easy to set up and start sending out e-newsletters free of cost
- Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics
- Lots of versatility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Trustpilot
- Web site hosting
- Create costs choices to generate income from
- Polls
To be honest, I haven’t seen another e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
But naturally, I do not intend to be biased so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the cons I have actually located while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including customized fonts
I make use of Webflow as my site building platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much detail why I like Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow review if you wish to discover more.
Now, there truly is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from using an iframe embed. I directly don’t like utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to reduce my internet site a little bit. Each time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s very recognizable when you get on a slow-moving internet connection. But I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not utilize a normal Webflow kind (which I love utilizing). There are methods around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would simply add added prices that I do not require. To be sincere, this is even 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 surpass the disadvantages here. I’m also confident that Webflow will eventually develop a much better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Generally, beehiiv is a wonderful option for any person aiming to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform much outweighs lots of that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also rather economical for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is unheard of. 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 each month.
Anyways, I do not write testimonial messages often. I just do when I really use the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a good friend.
I hope you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.