I read one of my preferred e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and immediately started tearing up. Beehiiv Website Builder…
Being a full time creator is tough. I’m usually getting pitched various tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last six months experimenting with various e-mail and newsletter systems to assist develop my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great alternatives for writing e-newsletters. However I could not discover one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my newsletter designs, makes it incredibly easy to write and send e-mails, and offers me tools that assist me evaluate metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I think I have actually lastly found the ideal tool.
However, I understand beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it very easy to style, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous staff members at the renowned e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly opt for it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day newsletter system for quite some time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it involved lastly releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous e-newsletter makers look up to preferred e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have excellent material, lots of clients, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get even a lot more subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to figure out exactly how these huge newsletters set up 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 produce a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool actually understand e-newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I recognized this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker development.
Due to the fact that, any kind of maker knows, you need growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the appropriate newsletter stack (that scales) often implies utilizing several various tools to aid attain one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up referrals. It can obtain costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was totally free to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic system made use of by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while developing 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 advantage of far better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own internet site currently, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your web site clients directly to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to utilize different marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
Just how to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that wants a platform that enables them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, startup, or material maker, you must seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to start and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you really wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a good indication that people like reading your things.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, outside embed forms, and extra. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting out (or for those seeking a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have described details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning writing”, “Blog posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Evaluate”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and damage them down into sectors), Grow is where you have access 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, Layout is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you want to write about, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– focus on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and straightforward user interface for composing.
When you begin composing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and style your content how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for various kinds of material like videos, web links, photos, and more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally frequently releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a lot extra material features relying on when you read this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
Once you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, picture styles, and more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before solitary point you can optimize with your email template since it’s a lot. Just try out the system completely free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it an excellent posting system for any newsletter developer.
Below are a few of the essential features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Website Builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it super very easy to compose and send emails. I pointed out over several of things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) reside on a site. Think about it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, give you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or with embed types.
If you already have a website, and desire individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed type. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various choices– a full width, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution monitoring if you wish to onward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the group is dealing with updates for these, however I mentioned a couple of issues I had in the pros and cons area 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 solution for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your list to ahead your e-mails to close friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem lots of e-newsletter firms give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you another method for expanding your email checklist.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs memberships
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership income is certainly 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” issues of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying subscribers. This can be extremely financially rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter needs to use. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
One of things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is just how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer count increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you need to start and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the very same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for several customers.
I’m unsure exactly how the system business economics work with this, but beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
- Easy to establish and begin sending newsletters totally free
- Clean and modern-day client analytics
- Lots of versatility with email styles.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Website Builder
- Web site hosting
- Develop premium options to monetize
- Polls
To be sincere, I haven’t seen another newsletter system that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But naturally, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the disadvantages I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including custom fonts
I use Webflow as my internet site structure system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much detail why I like Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow testimonial if you wish to find out more.
Today, there actually is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website aside from using an iframe embed. I directly don’t like using iframe’s because they often tend to slow down my website a little bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s really obvious when you get on a sluggish internet link. However I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow type (which I love utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would simply include additional prices that I do not require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I thought I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the cons right here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a terrific option for anyone looking to study the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system far surpasses many that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively cheap of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose evaluation blog posts commonly. I just do when I in fact use the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a pal.
I hope you located some clarity on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.