I was reading one of my preferred email 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 instantaneously started destroying. Can You Use Beehiiv For Free…
Being a permanent developer is tough. I’m often getting pitched various tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional since I invested the last 6 months trying various email and newsletter platforms to assist construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent options for writing e-newsletters. But I could not discover one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The concern with several existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me totally personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it very simple to create and send out e-mails, and gives me devices that assist me examine metrics and get even more customers.
I assume I’ve ultimately discovered the right device.
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 e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to style, create, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former workers at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help makers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly choose it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I have actually watched for a modern-day newsletter system for quite time currently. I’ve hesitated hard when it concerned ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous newsletter makers respect prominent newsletters with numerous subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have fantastic web content, tons of customers, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get back at much more subscribers.
So, I took place a hunt to determine how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this device really comprehend newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I recognized this was going to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Since, any creator knows, you require growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the right e-newsletter pile (that ranges) frequently implies utilizing several different devices to aid achieve one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up references. It can get pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was free to start making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great system utilized by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv also provides you a site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own internet site currently, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site subscribers straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to utilize various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Exactly how to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content designer that wants a platform that permits them to send customized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or web content developer, you must seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you in fact end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a good sign that individuals like reading your stuff.
Enroll in 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 site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those searching for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise select your brand design and colors to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start writing”, “Posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Assess”. And at the really bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot above), 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 watch who your customers are (and damage them down right into sections), 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, Style is where you design your newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you want to write about, I recommend simply going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and easy to use interface for composing.
When you begin writing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and design your material just how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for various kinds of web content like videos, links, images, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise continuously releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a great deal more content features depending upon when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your e-mail template and change some setups.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, photo formats, and more. I’m not going to go through ever before solitary thing you can maximize with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Just check out the system absolutely free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any newsletter designer.
Right here are several of the necessary features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Can You Use Beehiiv For Free
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely very easy to write and send emails. I stated over some of the important things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on an internet site. Think of it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, give you a website. However, the free plan areas your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a customized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is very important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or with embed types.
If you currently have a website, and want people to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need 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 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 personally utilize the slim installed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for attribution monitoring if you intend to ahead UTM specifications for tracking purposes– pretty cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working on updates for these, but I stated a few worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your listing to forward your emails to close friends and colleagues and if they get other people to sign up for your checklist, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I have actually appear many newsletter firms offer incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you an additional avenue for growing your email list.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to an extra superior plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this post.
Premium registrations
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription revenue is definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be really lucrative depending upon what your e-newsletter has to provide. For example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that generates millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
One of the important things I like about beehiiv is just how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you everything you require to get going and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, surveys, and access to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite generous in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 per month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit choice for several customers.
I’m not exactly sure just how the system business economics work on this, however beehiiv is certainly more affordable (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are several of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
- Easy to set up and start sending newsletters totally free
- Tidy and contemporary client analytics
- Great deals of versatility with e-mail styles.
- Referral program feature Can You Use Beehiiv For Free
- Site hosting
- Develop premium options to generate income from
- Surveys
To be truthful, I haven’t seen another newsletter platform that has been able to package all of these features together so well.
But naturally, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to point out some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the cons I’ve discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including customized fonts
I utilize Webflow as my site structure platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive information why I enjoy Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow testimonial if you want to learn more.
Today, there truly is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as using iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to reduce my web site a little bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the page. It’s extremely obvious when you’re on a slow net connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow form (which I love making use of). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would simply include additional prices that I don’t require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the cons below. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will at some point produce a much better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Generally, beehiiv is a terrific solution for any individual looking to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system far surpasses numerous that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively inexpensive of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have a 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 testimonial blog posts typically. I just do when I really use the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a close friend.
I wish you located some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.