I was reading one of my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and instantly started tearing up. Does Beehiiv Give You a Website…
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m often getting pitched different tools and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was emotional because I spent the last six months checking out various email and e-newsletter platforms to aid develop my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific choices for composing newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The problem with many existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it extremely very easy to write and send out e-mails, and offers me tools that aid me examine metrics and obtain even more customers.
I assume I have actually finally discovered the appropriate tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact appropriate 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 very easy to style, create, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by previous workers at the renowned e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist designers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately go with it as my newsletter system of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for fairly time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it concerned lastly launching my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make certain several newsletter creators admire prominent newsletters with numerous subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have fantastic web content, tons of customers, and a creative referral program that enables them to get even extra customers.
So, I took place a hunt to find out exactly how these big newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to respond to all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool truly recognize e-newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Because, any designer understands, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate newsletter pile (that scales) frequently suggests using several different devices to aid attain one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to set up referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was cost-free to begin making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a wonderful platform made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own website and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv also provides you a website similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own website currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site clients directly to your beehiiv email list. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit individuals to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to utilize different marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack option.
Just how to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material maker that wants a platform that enables them to send customized newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, start-up, or material designer, you ought to seriously taking into consideration trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you actually end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indicator that individuals enjoy reviewing your things.
Register for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, exterior embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a very charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those looking for a new system to move to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise select your brand name design and colors to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed information on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin writing”, “Messages”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Generate income from”, “Design” and” Evaluate”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you create and publish e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view 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 advertisements, Design is where you make your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you intend to write about, I advise just going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and easy to use interface for creating.
When you start writing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and design your material exactly how you such as.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for different kinds of material like videos, links, pictures, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is additionally regularly releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal a lot more content features depending upon when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your email template and change some setups.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo design, turn 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 modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, picture layouts, and much more. I’m not going to go through ever single thing you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a great deal. Simply try out the system totally free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a great publishing platform for any type of newsletter maker.
Below are a few of the vital features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Does Beehiiv Give You a Website
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it super simple to write and send out e-mails. I pointed out over a few of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the better email editors I have actually 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 website. Think about it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, offer you an internet site. However, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a customized domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or through embed kinds.
If you already have an internet site, and desire people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 different choices– a full width, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to onward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– rather neat.
Nevertheless, 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 stated a few worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your list to onward your emails to pals and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your listing, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually appear many e-newsletter business offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– offering you an additional method for growing your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this short article.
Costs registrations
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription earnings is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be really profitable relying on what your newsletter needs to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of things I like concerning beehiiv is how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan gives you everything you need to begin and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, surveys, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for numerous users.
I’m unsure just how the device economics service this, but beehiiv is absolutely less costly (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
- Easy to establish and begin sending out newsletters free of charge
- Tidy and contemporary subscriber analytics
- Lots of flexibility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature Does Beehiiv Give You a Website
- Internet site hosting
- Create premium choices to monetize
- Surveys
To be truthful, I haven’t seen another e-newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
However naturally, I don’t want to be biased so I’m going to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including personalized fonts
I utilize Webflow as my internet site structure platform of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive information why I love Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow evaluation if you wish to learn more.
Right now, there truly is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site apart from utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not like making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to slow down my internet site a bit. Each time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s extremely obvious when you get on a slow web connection. But I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow type (which I enjoy utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply add extra prices that I do not require. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the disadvantages below. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a far better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
In general, beehiiv is a wonderful remedy for any person wanting to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter system much exceeds many that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly economical for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t write review blog posts frequently. I just do when I really make use of the device myself and would advise it to a close friend.
I wish you discovered some quality on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.