I read among my favored email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantly began tearing up. Brian Schneider Beehiiv…
Being a permanent developer is tough. I’m often getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months trying out various email and e-newsletter systems to assist develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic choices for creating e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t locate one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with many existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me fully customize my newsletter layouts, makes it very simple to write and send out e-mails, and gives me tools that help me examine metrics and obtain more customers.
I assume I’ve finally discovered the best tool.
But, I know beehiiv may 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 system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it very easy to layout, write, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous employees at the popular e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this article, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly go with it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter platform for fairly time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it involved finally releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure several newsletter developers respect prominent e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have fantastic material, lots of clients, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get even more subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to identify exactly how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this device really understand newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the very first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Due to the fact that, any designer understands, you need growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the right e-newsletter stack (that ranges) frequently indicates using several different tools to aid attain one goal– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to establish referrals. It can get expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin utilizing, 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, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic platform utilized by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own site and use the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv also gives you a site similar to Substack. But, if you have your own site currently, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site customers directly to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable individuals to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to utilize different marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack option.
How to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that wants a platform that permits them to send custom newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or material creator, you ought to seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to get going and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you actually end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good sign that individuals like reading your stuff.
Register for a free plan
The primary step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, external embed kinds, and much more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just starting (or for those trying to find a new system to move to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand colors and design to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described info on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start creating”, “Messages”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Analyze”. And at the very lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Start creating is where you develop and publish newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your clients are (and break them down right into sectors), 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 design your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you want to cover, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly interface for creating.
Once you begin writing, you can optimize headings, include web links, and style your material exactly how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for various types of content like videos, links, images, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise continuously launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a lot much more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome email to first time clients, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify background colors, borders, spacing, font styles, picture styles, and more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever single point you can maximize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply check out the platform for free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a wonderful posting system for any kind of e-newsletter developer.
Here are a few of the crucial features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Brian Schneider Beehiiv
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly easy to write and send emails. I pointed out over several of the important things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll save you some additional reading.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) reside on a site. Think about it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, offer you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom-made domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is very important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv website or with embed forms.
If you currently have a website, and want individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed form. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different options– a full size, a repaired size, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for attribution tracking if you want to onward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the group is servicing updates for these, yet I stated a few worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your listing to onward your emails to close friends and coworkers and if they get other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I have actually appear several e-newsletter business offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you one more method for growing your email listing.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this post.
Premium memberships
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership earnings is most definitely a monster 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 just sent out to paying clients. This can be very rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among things I like regarding beehiiv is exactly how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you need to begin and expand your newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, surveys, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit option for several customers.
I’m not exactly sure exactly how the system economics work with this, however beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Below are some of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
- Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters for free
- Tidy and contemporary client analytics
- Great deals of versatility with e-mail styles.
- Referral program feature Brian Schneider Beehiiv
- Site hosting
- Produce premium options to monetize
- Polls
To be truthful, I have not seen another newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features together so well.
Yet certainly, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve located while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom-made typefaces
I make use of Webflow as my web site structure system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter excessive detail why I like Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow review if you ‘d like to discover more.
Now, there really is no other way I can integrate 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 reduce my web site a bit. Whenever a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s very recognizable when you get on a slow-moving web link. Yet I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow form (which I like utilizing). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would simply add additional prices that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the cons below. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually produce a much better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for anybody looking to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform much surpasses several 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 rather cheap wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is uncommon. 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 per month.
Anyways, I do not compose testimonial blog posts typically. I only do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a close friend.
I hope you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.