I was reading one of my favored email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and instantly began tearing up. Beehiiv Tutorials…
Being a full-time developer is difficult. I’m frequently getting pitched various tools and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I spent the last 6 months trying out different email and newsletter platforms to aid build my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic alternatives for writing newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me completely customize my e-newsletter designs, makes it super very easy to create and send out e-mails, and offers me devices that help me assess metrics and get even more customers.
I think I’ve finally found the best tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it very easy to style, write, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the renowned newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally select it as my newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter system for quite a long time now. I have actually put things off hard when it concerned finally releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure several e-newsletter designers look up to preferred newsletters with numerous subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have fantastic material, lots of customers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get back at much more subscribers.
So, I went on a search to determine how these huge 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 create a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this device actually recognize e-newsletter production 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 employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I recognized this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Since, any kind of developer understands, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate e-newsletter pile (that ranges) commonly implies utilizing multiple different tools to assist achieve one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to set up references. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was cost-free to start using, 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, indeed there is. Substack is a wonderful system made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own web site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a website comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own internet site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site clients straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to enable people to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to leverage different marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
Exactly how to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content maker that desires a system that enables them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or material creator, you ought to seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s totally free to get started and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indication that people enjoy 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 website.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and a lot more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply starting (or for those trying to find a new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also choose your brand name colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin creating”, “Articles”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Assess”. And at the really lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot over), Begin writing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your customers are (and damage them down into sections), Grow is where you have accessibility 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 e-newsletter with ads, Design is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you want to blog about, I recommend simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and easy to use interface for writing.
When you begin writing, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your content exactly how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of choices for different types of content like video clips, web links, photos, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is also regularly releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a great deal more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo, activate or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background shades, borders, spacing, fonts, image styles, and more. I’m not going to undergo ever solitary point you can enhance with your e-mail template because it’s a great deal. Just experiment with the system free of cost and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any kind of newsletter designer.
Here are a few of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Tutorials
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it very very easy to compose and send out emails. I pointed out over some of the things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the much better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) reside on a website. Think about it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a personalized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is very important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or with embed types.
If you currently have a website, and want individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed form. This is what I utilize on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various choices– a full width, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for attribution tracking if you wish to ahead UTM parameters for tracking purposes– rather cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working with updates for these, but I stated a few worries I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your list to onward your emails to friends and colleagues and if they obtain other people to sign up for your listing, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I have actually appear many e-newsletter business give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you one more method for growing your email listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this article.
Premium registrations
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration earnings is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be really financially rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter needs to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that creates millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of things I love about beehiiv is just how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you whatever you need to begin and grow your newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for numerous individuals.
I’m not sure how the system business economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is certainly cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are several of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
- Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters free of charge
- Tidy and modern customer analytics
- Lots of adaptability with email designs.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Tutorials
- Site hosting
- Create premium options to monetize
- Polls
To be honest, I have not seen one more e-newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However of course, I do not wish to be biased so I’m going to point out some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including personalized typefaces
I use Webflow as my site structure platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive information why I like Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow evaluation if you want to discover more.
Right now, there actually is no other means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site apart from using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to slow down my web site a bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the page. It’s extremely obvious when you get on a slow internet connection. Yet I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a normal Webflow form (which I enjoy utilizing). There are means around this by using a device like Zapier but that would certainly simply include additional costs that I do not require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the disadvantages right here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a great remedy for anyone wanting to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system far exceeds numerous 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 additionally fairly affordable wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write testimonial blog posts often. I only do when I really utilize the device myself and would suggest it to a pal.
I hope you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.