I read one of my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and immediately started destroying. Dakota Robertson Beehiiv…
Being a full time creator is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched various tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months trying different e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to help construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful choices for writing newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me totally customize my newsletter styles, makes it extremely easy to write and send e-mails, and offers me devices that assist me analyze metrics and obtain even more customers.
I believe I’ve ultimately discovered the ideal tool.
But, I understand beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact appropriate for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it very easy to design, create, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former workers at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly go with it as my newsletter system of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a modern-day e-newsletter system for quite a long time currently. I’ve postponed hard when it pertained to finally releasing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure several e-newsletter developers respect preferred newsletters with millions of customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have fantastic content, lots of subscribers, and a clever referral program that permits them to get even extra subscribers.
So, I went on a hunt to figure out just how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool truly understand e-newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the very first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Because, any kind of developer recognizes, you require development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And finding the appropriate newsletter pile (that ranges) typically indicates utilizing several different tools to help achieve one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can get costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was free to start 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 writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a wonderful system made use of by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own web site and make use of the system as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own site currently, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site subscribers right to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to permit people to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack choice.
Just how to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that wants a platform that allows them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, startup, or content creator, you ought to seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to start and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you in fact wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great sign that individuals like reading your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you accessibility to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, outside embed forms, and more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting (or for those searching for a new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then create a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise select your brand colors and design to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have outlined info on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin composing”, “Articles”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Examine”. And at the very lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot above), Start creating is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your customers are (and break them down into sections), 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 create your newsletter landing page and post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you wish to discuss, I suggest simply going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and user-friendly interface for creating.
When you begin composing, you can enhance headings, add links, and style your content just how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for various sorts of web content like videos, web links, photos, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is additionally frequently launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a lot more content features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, image layouts, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever single point you can optimize with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Simply experiment with the system absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it a great posting platform for any kind of newsletter maker.
Below are a few of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Dakota Robertson Beehiiv
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it super easy to compose and send out e-mails. I discussed above several of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the far better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on a website. Think about it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and an area where people can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, offer you a website. However, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a personalized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is very important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or via embed types.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed type. This is what I use on this 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 3 various choices– a full size, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution monitoring if you intend to onward UTM parameters for tracking functions– pretty cool.
However, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is servicing updates for these, but I pointed out a couple of issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your checklist to forward your emails to buddies and coworkers and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your listing, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you desire. I have actually seem several newsletter business give incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another avenue for expanding your email listing.
Nevertheless, to get 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.
Costs memberships
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription revenue is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be extremely lucrative depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to supply. For example, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that creates millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of the important things I like about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You get 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 require to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer count go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you need to get going and expand your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit option for numerous customers.
I’m not sure how the system economics work on this, yet beehiiv is certainly cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of choice:
- Easy to establish and begin sending e-newsletters completely free
- Tidy and modern-day customer analytics
- Lots of flexibility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature Dakota Robertson Beehiiv
- Internet site hosting
- Create costs alternatives to monetize
- Surveys
To be sincere, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
But certainly, I do not wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including custom fonts
I utilize Webflow as my site building system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive information why I enjoy Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow evaluation if you want to discover more.
Now, there really is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside 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. Each time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s really visible when you get on a sluggish internet connection. Yet I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow form (which I enjoy utilizing). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just include added prices that I don’t need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I believed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the cons here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will ultimately develop a far better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for any person aiming to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far outweighs lots of that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather low-cost for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not create testimonial articles usually. I only do when I really make use of the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a close friend.
I wish you discovered some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.