I read one of my favored e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantaneously started wrecking. Beehiiv Welcome Sequence…
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m often getting pitched different devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months experimenting with various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to assist develop my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great alternatives for composing newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The issue with several existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it super easy to create and send out emails, and provides me devices that help me examine metrics and get even more subscribers.
I assume I have actually finally discovered the ideal tool.
But, I know beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to layout, compose, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by previous staff members at the popular e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern newsletter system for fairly some time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it concerned ultimately releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure numerous e-newsletter developers admire prominent newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have fantastic material, tons of clients, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get even extra subscribers.
So, I took place a search to find out how these large e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they develop a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool truly recognize newsletter creation and development.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on developer development.
Since, any type of maker understands, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the appropriate newsletter stack (that ranges) commonly suggests using several various tools to aid achieve one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up references. It can get costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was cost-free to begin using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great system used by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your very own internet site and use the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you an internet site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own internet site already, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site customers straight to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow individuals to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to leverage various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack choice.
Just how to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content creator that wants a platform that allows them to send custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or material designer, you ought to seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to get started and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you in fact end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a great indication that people enjoy reading your stuff.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, external embed types, and extra. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those trying to find a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally choose your brand name design and colors to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin composing”, “Posts”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Assess”. And at the really lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Begin creating is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can watch who your clients are (and damage them down right into segments), Expand is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Layout is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you wish to write about, I suggest just mosting likely to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– focus on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and easy to use user interface for creating.
Once you begin writing, you can enhance headings, include links, and style your material exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of alternatives for different 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 make sure there will certainly be a whole lot more content features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your email template and readjust some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture layouts, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever solitary thing you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just experiment with the platform absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it a fantastic posting platform for any kind of e-newsletter maker.
Below are some of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Beehiiv Welcome Sequence
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely easy to write and send emails. I pointed out above some of things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The thing 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.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) survive a site. Think of it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, provide you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a personalized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or through embed forms.
If you currently have a web site, and desire people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed kind. This is what I utilize 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 complete size, a dealt with size, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to onward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– rather cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working with updates for these, but I mentioned a few concerns 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 e-newsletter platform, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your list to forward your e-mails to good friends and associates and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually appear lots of newsletter companies provide benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– offering you an additional opportunity for expanding your e-mail list.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this post.
Premium memberships
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription earnings is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be extremely lucrative depending upon what your e-newsletter has to use. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among things I like about beehiiv is how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client count increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you everything you require to begin and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the exact same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for lots of users.
I’m not sure just how the unit economics service this, however beehiiv is definitely less expensive (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
- Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters free of cost
- Tidy and modern customer analytics
- Lots of adaptability with e-mail layouts.
- Referral program feature Beehiiv Welcome Sequence
- Web site hosting
- Create costs options to generate income from
- Surveys
To be honest, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
Yet obviously, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I’ve found while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom-made fonts
I use Webflow as my site structure platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive information why I enjoy Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow evaluation if you wish to find out more.
Now, there actually is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site other than making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not like using iframe’s because they often tend to decrease my web site a bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s really visible when you’re on a slow-moving internet connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not utilize a regular Webflow kind (which I like using). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly simply add extra prices that I don’t require. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I believed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately create a better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a terrific service for any individual aiming to dive into the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform far outweighs numerous that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly cheap wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t create testimonial messages frequently. I just do when I actually use the device myself and would certainly advise it to a friend.
I wish you located some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.