I was reading one of my favorite 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 destroying. Bullseye Beehiiv…
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m frequently getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological since I invested the last six months experimenting with different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to help develop my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great options for creating e-newsletters. However I couldn’t locate one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The problem with many existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my newsletter designs, makes it extremely very easy to create and send e-mails, and offers me tools that aid me evaluate metrics and get even more subscribers.
I believe I have actually lastly discovered the appropriate device.
But, I recognize beehiiv may not be for every person. 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 e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to design, create, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately go with it as my newsletter system of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually watched for a modern newsletter system for quite some time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it concerned finally launching my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous e-newsletter creators appreciate preferred newsletters with millions of customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have fantastic content, lots of customers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get back at more clients.
So, I took place a search to identify how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they develop a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool truly understand newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer growth.
Since, any maker understands, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the right e-newsletter pile (that scales) often implies using multiple various tools to aid accomplish one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to set up references. It can obtain costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was totally free to start making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a wonderful platform made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own website and use the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a web site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own web site already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your website customers directly to your beehiiv email list. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to permit people to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to utilize various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
How to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that desires a system that enables them to send customized newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most successful newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or content maker, you need to seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s entirely free to get started and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you actually end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indication that individuals enjoy reading your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll then develop a name and link 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 website link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand name design and colors to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have outlined information on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin composing”, “Messages”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Layout” and” Evaluate”. And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot above), Begin composing is where you create and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down right into segments), Expand is where you have access 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you develop your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you want to cover, I recommend just going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Begin writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and straightforward interface for composing.
When you begin creating, you can optimize headings, add links, and style your web content just how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of options for different kinds of material like video clips, links, pictures, and more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise continuously launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a great deal more content features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to make your email template and readjust some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to first time clients, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, fonts, image formats, and extra. I’m not going to undergo ever before single point you can enhance with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Just experiment with the system completely free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a fantastic publishing system for any newsletter maker.
Below are a few of the crucial features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Bullseye Beehiiv
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it super simple to write and send out e-mails. I discussed over a few of the important things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) reside on a site. Consider it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where people can sign up for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you a web site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter right from your beehiiv website or through embed forms.
If you currently have a website, and want people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed type. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three different alternatives– a full width, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to forward UTM parameters for tracking functions– quite cool.
However, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the team is dealing with updates for these, yet I discussed a couple of problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your checklist to ahead your emails to good friends and colleagues and if they obtain other individuals to register for your listing, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve appear numerous e-newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your customers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional method for expanding your e-mail listing.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this post.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership revenue is certainly a monster of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be very profitable relying on what your newsletter needs to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that creates millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of the important things I love about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count.
You get access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four 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 e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit choice for numerous users.
I’m not exactly sure how the unit economics work with this, yet beehiiv is most definitely less costly (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
- Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters free of cost
- Tidy and contemporary client analytics
- Lots of versatility with email styles.
- Referral program feature Bullseye Beehiiv
- Website hosting
- Create costs options to monetize
- Polls
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter platform that has had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
However naturally, I do not intend to be biased so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the disadvantages I have actually located while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including customized font styles
I make use of Webflow as my website structure platform of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much information why I like Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow evaluation if you want to learn more.
Now, there truly is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site apart from making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not such as using iframe’s because they tend to decrease my internet site a little bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s really noticeable when you get on a slow-moving web connection. But I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not make use of a regular Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would certainly just add additional expenses that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the cons here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will at some point develop a far better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a terrific remedy for any individual aiming to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system far surpasses many that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively cheap of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review posts usually. I only do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would advise it to a friend.
I hope you located some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.