I read among my favored email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and promptly began destroying. Beehiiv VICE…
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched various tools and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I invested the last six months checking out different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful options for composing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t locate one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me totally tailor my newsletter layouts, makes it super simple to write and send e-mails, and provides me devices that aid me examine metrics and get even more clients.
I think I’ve ultimately discovered the appropriate device.
However, I understand beehiiv might 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 very easy to style, write, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the famous e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m going to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately go with it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a modern-day e-newsletter system for fairly a long time now. I’ve put things off hard when it involved lastly launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain several e-newsletter makers appreciate preferred e-newsletters with numerous customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have fantastic content, tons of subscribers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at extra clients.
So, I took place a search to find out just how these big e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed 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 examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the initial marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer development.
Because, any developer understands, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the right e-newsletter pile (that scales) often implies using numerous various tools to help accomplish one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to establish referrals. It can get expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was totally free to start using, it was a no-brainer 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 wonderful platform made use of by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own web site and utilize the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own website already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your site clients straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow individuals to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to utilize different marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
How to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material maker that desires a platform that allows them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or material maker, you must seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely complimentary to begin and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you in fact end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good indication that individuals love reading your things.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you accessibility to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance personalization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a really generous offering for those just beginning (or for those seeking a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, 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 e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also pick your brand design and colors to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have described info on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start writing”, “Blog posts”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Generate income from”, “Style” and” Analyze”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning writing is where you create and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your customers are (and damage them down right into segments), Expand is where you have access 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, Style is where you make your newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you wish to blog about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and user-friendly interface for creating.
As soon as you start composing, you can maximize headings, add web links, and design your material how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for various sorts of web content like videos, web links, images, and more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally regularly launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a great deal more material features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to design your email template and adjust some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, image styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before solitary thing you can maximize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the platform for free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a fantastic posting system for any kind of newsletter creator.
Below are several of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Beehiiv VICE
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it super simple to create and send out e-mails. I discussed over several of the things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive a site. Think about it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, provide you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a personalized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and desire individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed form. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various choices– a complete size, a fixed width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution monitoring if you wish to ahead UTM criteria for tracking objectives– quite neat.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is servicing updates for these, yet I mentioned a couple of issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your list to forward your e-mails to buddies and colleagues and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever type you want. I have actually appear lots of e-newsletter business provide benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you another avenue for growing your e-mail list.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to an extra superior plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership income is certainly a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be extremely lucrative depending on what your newsletter needs to use. For instance, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that produces millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among things I like regarding beehiiv is how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you everything you require to begin and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit option for several customers.
I’m uncertain exactly how the device business economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
- Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters totally free
- Tidy and modern client analytics
- Lots of flexibility with e-mail styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv VICE
- Website hosting
- Create costs options to monetize
- Surveys
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has been able 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 state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom typefaces
I utilize Webflow as my web site structure system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow testimonial if you wish to discover more.
Today, there really is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not like utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to slow down my website a little bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s very recognizable when you’re on a slow web link. However I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not utilize a normal Webflow kind (which I enjoy using). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly just include additional costs that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I thought I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the disadvantages below. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a far better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a fantastic option for any person wanting to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform much outweighs several that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively affordable of 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 subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not compose testimonial posts commonly. I only do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a pal.
I wish you discovered some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.