I was reading among my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and instantly began tearing up. Beehiiv Vs ActiveCampaign…
Being a full-time creator is tough. I’m frequently obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I spent the last 6 months experimenting with various e-mail and newsletter systems to aid develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific choices for creating e-newsletters. But I could not find one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The concern with several existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my newsletter styles, makes it super simple to create and send emails, and gives me tools that assist me assess metrics and get more customers.
I assume I’ve finally located the ideal tool.
Yet, I understand beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal 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 layout, compose, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous staff members at the popular newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly opt for it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter platform for fairly a long time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it pertained to ultimately launching my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure several newsletter creators admire preferred e-newsletters with millions of customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have great web content, lots of customers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get back at a lot more customers.
So, I went on a hunt to figure out how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this device truly 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 employees at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I understood this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Since, any type of creator understands, you need growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the best e-newsletter pile (that scales) usually means utilizing numerous various tools to assist achieve one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was cost-free to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful system made use of by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own website and use the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you an internet site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own site currently, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your site clients directly to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to take advantage of different marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack choice.
Exactly how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content creator that desires a system that allows them to send customized newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or material creator, you need to seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you in fact wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a great indicator that people like reviewing your stuff.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you access to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, exterior embed types, and a lot more. It’s a really charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those seeking a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand design and colors to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin composing”, “Posts”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Generate income from”, “Style” and” Examine”. And at the very lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Control panel is your main control center (screenshot over), Beginning creating is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can watch who your customers are (and break them down right into sections), Grow 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 ads, Style is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin stuff.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you intend to cover, I recommend simply going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Start creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and easy to use user interface for writing.
Once you start composing, you can enhance headings, include web links, and style your content how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of alternatives for different sorts of web content like video clips, links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is also constantly releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a lot much more material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your email template and change some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history colors, borders, spacing, font styles, picture styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever single point you can maximize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the system completely free and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a great posting platform for any kind of newsletter developer.
Here are a few of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Vs ActiveCampaign
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it super very easy to write and send out emails. I pointed out above some of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely among the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on an internet site. Think about it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom-made domain to get rid of 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 a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or with embed types.
If you already have a website, and desire individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this site (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 different alternatives– a complete size, a repaired width, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to forward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the group is dealing with updates for these, however I mentioned a couple of problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your checklist to forward your emails to good friends and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your checklist, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve appear lots of newsletter companies offer rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you another avenue for growing your email list.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this write-up.
Costs registrations
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription income is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be really financially rewarding relying on what your newsletter has to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among the important things I love regarding beehiiv is how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client count rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you need to begin and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and access to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for many individuals.
I’m uncertain exactly how the unit economics work on this, yet beehiiv is certainly more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are some of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
- Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters completely free
- Tidy and contemporary subscriber analytics
- Lots of adaptability with e-mail styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Vs ActiveCampaign
- Internet site hosting
- Develop premium alternatives to generate income from
- Polls
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen another newsletter platform that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet of course, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to mention some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I have actually located while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom fonts
I utilize Webflow as my website structure system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in too much detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow review if you wish to discover more.
Today, there truly is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from using an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as making use of iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my site a bit. Each time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s extremely obvious when you get on a sluggish internet link. But I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can not utilize a regular Webflow kind (which I enjoy utilizing). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier but that would certainly simply include added costs that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I believed I would state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately create a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a great option for any individual looking to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system far outweighs lots of that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively low-cost wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not write testimonial blog posts frequently. I only do when I really make use of the tool myself and would suggest it to a buddy.
I wish you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.