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 on it and instantly began tearing up. Boardbit Beehiiv…
Being a full-time maker is difficult. I’m usually getting pitched various tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months experimenting with various email and e-newsletter systems to assist construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great alternatives for creating e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t discover one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with several existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me fully tailor my newsletter styles, makes it extremely very easy to create and send e-mails, and offers me tools that help me assess metrics and obtain even more clients.
I believe I have actually lastly located the appropriate tool.
But, I understand beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to design, write, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the renowned e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately opt for it as my newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter system for fairly some time now. I have actually put things off hard when it involved lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of e-newsletter developers respect 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 excellent content, lots of customers, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get even a lot more clients.
So, I went on a search to identify exactly how these big newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built 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 founders were a few of the initial marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Because, any kind of creator recognizes, you require development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the ideal newsletter pile (that ranges) frequently indicates using numerous various devices to aid attain one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish references. It can get costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was totally free to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific system utilized by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one option for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a site similar to Substack. But, if you have your own site already, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit people to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
How to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that wants a platform that allows them to send personalized newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, start-up, or material creator, you need to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s entirely free to get going and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you really wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indication that individuals like reading your things.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, exterior embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a really generous offering for those just starting out (or for those seeking a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll likewise select your brand name design and colors to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have described details on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin composing”, “Posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Generate income from”, “Style” and” Analyze”. And at the really bottom you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you produce and release newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into segments), Grow is where you have accessibility 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 newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you develop your newsletter landing page and message template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you wish to write about, I recommend simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and user-friendly interface for creating.
As soon as you begin creating, you can enhance headings, add links, and design your material exactly how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for different kinds of web content like video clips, web links, images, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is also constantly launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a lot extra content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and change some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a description, add your logo, activate or off a welcome email to very first time clients, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history shades, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, picture layouts, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the system completely free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a great posting system for any e-newsletter creator.
Right here are a few of the necessary features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Boardbit Beehiiv
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it super easy to compose and send out e-mails. I mentioned over some of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) survive a web site. Consider it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, give you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a personalized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various alternatives– a complete width, a repaired width, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to onward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
However, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the team is working on updates for these, yet I stated a few concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your listing to onward your e-mails to good friends and colleagues and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your list, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever form you want. I’ve seem many e-newsletter firms offer incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional avenue for growing your email list.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership revenue is certainly a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” issues of your newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be really financially rewarding depending on what your newsletter needs to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the important things I like about beehiiv is just how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client matter go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you everything you require to start and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 per month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for lots of individuals.
I’m not exactly sure just how the system economics work with this, but beehiiv is absolutely less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Naturally, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
- Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters totally free
- Clean and contemporary client analytics
- Great deals of adaptability with e-mail layouts.
- Referral program feature Boardbit Beehiiv
- Web site hosting
- Produce premium choices to monetize
- Surveys
To be truthful, I have not seen another e-newsletter system that has been able to package every one of these features together so well.
But certainly, I do not want to be biased so I’m going to mention some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I have actually found while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom-made typefaces
I utilize Webflow as my site structure system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive detail why I like Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow review if you ‘d like to discover more.
Today, there truly is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website aside from using an iframe embed. I personally do not like utilizing iframe’s since they have a tendency to slow down my internet site a little bit. Every single time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s really obvious when you’re on a slow web connection. However I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a routine Webflow form (which I like making use of). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just include extra expenses that I do not require. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage yet I assumed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the cons right here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will at some point develop a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
In general, beehiiv is a wonderful remedy for any individual wanting to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system much exceeds numerous that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather inexpensive of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t write testimonial blog posts often. I only do when I actually make use of the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a buddy.
I hope you discovered some clarity on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.