I read among my favored e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and instantly began tearing up. Beehiiv Webinars…
Being a full-time maker is tough. I’m frequently getting pitched various tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months checking out various email and e-newsletter platforms to help build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic alternatives for writing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me totally personalize my newsletter styles, makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send e-mails, and provides me devices that aid me analyze metrics and get even more clients.
I believe I’ve ultimately discovered the appropriate tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really 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 very easy to style, write, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former staff members at the renowned e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist designers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally go with it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter platform for fairly time now. I have actually put things off hard when it involved finally introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure many e-newsletter designers admire popular e-newsletters with millions of customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have wonderful web content, tons of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get even more subscribers.
So, I went on a search to identify how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they create a newsletter style that stays 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 tool truly understand e-newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the initial marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I knew this was going to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Because, any kind of maker knows, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the appropriate newsletter stack (that ranges) typically indicates utilizing several different devices to aid achieve one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up references. It can get pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was free to begin utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a terrific system utilized by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your very own internet site and use the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you an internet site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own web site currently, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your internet site customers straight to your beehiiv email list. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable people to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to utilize different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content maker that desires a platform that enables them to send customized newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or content maker, you must seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a great sign that people enjoy reviewing your stuff.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, external embed kinds, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll experience 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 type of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll then produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll likewise select your brand name colors and design to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start composing”, “Messages”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Evaluate”. And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning creating is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your customers are (and break them down into segments), 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 ads, Layout is where you develop your newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you wish to write about, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start composing”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use user interface for composing.
When you begin writing, you can optimize headings, include links, and design your web content just how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for various sorts of material like video clips, web links, photos, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise constantly launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot much more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, fonts, image layouts, and extra. I’m not going to undergo ever before single point you can maximize with your email template because it’s a lot. Simply try the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a fantastic posting system for any kind of newsletter maker.
Below are a few of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Webinars
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very very easy to write and send out emails. I stated above a few of things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on a website. Think about it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can register for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, offer you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a personalized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv site or with embed forms.
If you already have a site, and want individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various alternatives– a full width, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to onward UTM criteria for tracking functions– quite cool.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the team is servicing updates for these, however I pointed out a couple of worries I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your list to ahead your emails to buddies and coworkers and if they obtain other people to register for your checklist, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you want. I’ve appear many newsletter companies offer benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you an additional avenue for growing your e-mail checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this article.
Costs memberships
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership profits is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent out to paying subscribers. This can be extremely rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to use. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that generates millions in income a year just by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
One of the important things I like concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer count go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you need to get going and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain, polls, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for many individuals.
I’m not sure how the system business economics service this, yet beehiiv is absolutely cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
- Easy to set up and start sending out e-newsletters free of charge
- Clean and modern-day client analytics
- Lots of flexibility with e-mail layouts.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Webinars
- Site hosting
- Develop costs options to monetize
- Surveys
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter platform that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However obviously, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding customized fonts
I use Webflow as my website building system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much detail why I enjoy Webflow so much yet you can review my Webflow testimonial if you want to find out more.
Now, there actually is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t like using iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to slow down my internet site a bit. Every single time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the page. It’s very recognizable when you get on a slow-moving net link. However I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a regular Webflow form (which I love utilizing). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier but that would certainly simply add added prices that I do not require. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I believed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a great remedy for any individual aiming to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter system much outweighs numerous that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively inexpensive of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not write testimonial messages often. I just do when I really utilize the device myself and would recommend it to a pal.
I wish you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.