I was reading among my preferred e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and instantly began tearing up. Can I Use Beehiiv For Free…
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m frequently getting pitched various tools and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last six months experimenting with various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to assist construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent options for composing newsletters. But I could not find one that made me offer a definite “yes”.
The concern with several existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter layouts, makes it extremely simple to write and send out e-mails, and provides me tools that assist me evaluate metrics and get more subscribers.
I assume I’ve lastly located the right device.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv may 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 e-newsletter system that makes it easy to layout, create, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former workers at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist developers 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 explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally choose it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter platform for quite a long time now. I’ve put things off hard when it pertained to ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure numerous e-newsletter makers admire preferred newsletters with countless clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have excellent material, lots of customers, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get even extra customers.
So, I went on a quest to identify how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they produce an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool truly recognize e-newsletter creation and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I recognized this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on developer growth.
Because, any kind of creator recognizes, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that scales) often means using multiple various devices to assist achieve one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to set up recommendations. It can get expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was totally free to begin utilizing, it was a piece of cake 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 platform used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you an internet site similar to Substack. But, if you have your own internet site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your website customers straight to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to leverage various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
How to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that wants a platform that allows them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or content creator, you need to seriously thinking about trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to get started and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you actually wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good sign that individuals like reading your things.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, outside embed kinds, and much more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those trying to find a new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally choose your brand design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined information on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start composing”, “Blog posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Generate income from”, “Layout” and” Evaluate”. And at the very lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot over), Start creating is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and break them down right into sectors), Grow is where you have access to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with ads, Design is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you want to cover, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and straightforward interface for composing.
As soon as you begin composing, you can optimize headings, include links, and style your web content exactly how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for different types of web content like video clips, web links, pictures, and more.
The team at beehiiv is also constantly releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a great deal more material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and readjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time clients, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history colors, borders, spacing, fonts, photo layouts, and extra. I’m not going to undergo ever before solitary point you can optimize with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Just experiment with the platform free of charge and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any kind of e-newsletter developer.
Right here are some of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Can I Use Beehiiv For Free
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it super very easy to create and send emails. I stated above a few of the important things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the far better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) survive on a website. Think about it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can register for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, provide you an internet site. However, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or with embed forms.
If you already have an internet site, and desire individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed form. This is what I make use of on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various options– a full width, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for acknowledgment tracking if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the group is servicing updates for these, however I discussed a couple of issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your listing to ahead your e-mails to pals and associates and if they get other people to register for your checklist, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve seem many e-newsletter companies give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another opportunity for growing your email listing.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this article.
Costs subscriptions
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription income is absolutely a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be extremely rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter has to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among the things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you whatever you need to get started and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for lots of users.
I’m not exactly sure how the device business economics work on this, but beehiiv is most definitely less costly (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, 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 some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of option:
- Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters free of charge
- Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics
- Great deals of flexibility with email styles.
- Referral program feature Can I Use Beehiiv For Free
- Internet site hosting
- Produce costs choices to generate income from
- Polls
To be honest, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter system that has had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But certainly, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to mention some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the disadvantages I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom-made typefaces
I make use of Webflow as my internet site building platform of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much information why I love Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow testimonial if you want to learn more.
Right now, there actually is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not like making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to slow down my web site a bit. Every single time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s extremely recognizable when you get on a sluggish web link. However I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t use a normal Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would just add additional expenses that I don’t need. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the disadvantages below. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will eventually produce a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful option for anybody aiming to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system far surpasses several that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively economical for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create review blog posts typically. I only do when I really utilize the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a close friend.
I hope you discovered some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.