I was reading one of my favored e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and immediately started destroying. Does Beehiiv Have a Free Plan…
Being a full time developer is tough. I’m commonly obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last six months experimenting with various e-mail and newsletter platforms to help build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent choices for composing e-newsletters. Yet I could not find one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with several existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me completely customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send out e-mails, and offers me devices that assist me assess metrics and get even more customers.
I assume I’ve ultimately discovered the right tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to design, write, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous workers at the well-known e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short article, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to ultimately choose it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for quite some time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it involved ultimately introducing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of newsletter developers look up to prominent e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have fantastic web content, lots of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get even more subscribers.
So, I took place a hunt to find out how these large newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool truly comprehend newsletter development and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the very first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I understood this was going to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Since, any type of designer understands, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the ideal e-newsletter pile (that scales) usually means using numerous various devices to aid attain one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to establish references. It can obtain costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was cost-free to begin utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific platform used by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your own internet site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one service for sending out emails (while creating 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 encourage your existing clients to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also provides you a website comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own website already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your site clients right to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to leverage different marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack alternative.
Just how to begin making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that wants a system that enables them to send personalized newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or web content maker, you ought to seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you really wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indication that individuals enjoy reviewing your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, external embed kinds, and extra. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just starting (or for those searching for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL 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 internet site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand name colors and design to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined information on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin creating”, “Articles”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Examine”. And at the very lower you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you develop and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down right into sections), Grow is where you have accessibility 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 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 every one of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you wish to write about, I advise just going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– focus on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly user interface for writing.
Once you begin writing, you can maximize headings, include links, and style your content how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of choices for various kinds of content like videos, web links, photos, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is also regularly releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a lot extra material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
As soon as you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo design, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, image formats, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever single thing you can maximize with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Simply try out the system for free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a great publishing platform for any kind of newsletter designer.
Here are some of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Does Beehiiv Have a Free Plan
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly simple to compose and send out e-mails. I stated above some of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the much better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on a site. Consider it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, offer you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a custom domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv site or via embed types.
If you currently have a web site, and desire people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed form. This is what I make use of on this internet 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 complete size, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to forward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is servicing updates for these, yet I pointed out a few problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your listing to ahead your e-mails to close friends and coworkers and if they get other individuals to register for your listing, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve seem numerous e-newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you an additional opportunity for growing your email list.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs memberships
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration earnings is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be very profitable relying on what your newsletter has to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred premium e-newsletter that creates millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among things I love regarding beehiiv is how clean and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer count go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you everything you require to get started and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable 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 (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for lots of users.
I’m uncertain exactly how the system economics work with this, but beehiiv is certainly less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some 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 client analytics
- Lots of flexibility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature Does Beehiiv Have a Free Plan
- Site hosting
- Develop costs options to monetize
- Surveys
To be sincere, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet naturally, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m going to point out some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the disadvantages I have actually found while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including personalized typefaces
I utilize Webflow as my site structure system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much detail why I love Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you would love to learn more.
Today, there really is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site apart from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not such as using iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to reduce my internet site a little bit. Every time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s very visible when you’re on a slow web link. But I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not utilize a regular Webflow form (which I love utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would simply include additional expenses that I do not need. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I assumed I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the disadvantages right here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a far better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a terrific solution for anybody aiming to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system far outweighs numerous that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly economical of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist 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 right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create testimonial blog posts frequently. I only do when I actually make use of the device myself and would advise it to a friend.
I wish you discovered some quality on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.