I read among my favored email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and promptly started destroying. Does Beehiiv Have a Free Version…
Being a permanent maker is tough. I’m typically getting pitched different tools and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months trying various e-mail and newsletter systems to aid develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent options for writing newsletters. However I could not discover one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my newsletter styles, makes it very simple to compose and send e-mails, and offers me tools that aid me analyze metrics and get even more customers.
I think I’ve ultimately located the best device.
But, I understand beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to layout, compose, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former workers at the famous newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m going to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly select it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for quite time now. I’ve put things off hard when it came to lastly releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure several newsletter creators admire prominent newsletters with numerous customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have terrific content, lots of customers, and a creative referral program that allows them to get back at more clients.
So, I took place a quest to determine exactly how these large newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they develop a newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool actually recognize newsletter production and growth.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the very first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I recognized this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Because, any kind of developer understands, you require development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the ideal newsletter pile (that ranges) usually suggests using several various devices to assist attain one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up referrals. It can obtain pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was free to begin using, 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 system made use of by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your own web site and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your website subscribers right to your beehiiv email checklist. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable people to register for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to take advantage of different marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack alternative.
How to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that wants a platform that permits them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or material developer, you ought to seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to begin and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you actually wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indication that individuals like reading your stuff.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, external embed types, and more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply starting (or for those seeking a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll likewise select your brand colors and design to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described info on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning writing”, “Posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Evaluate”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you produce and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and damage them down right into sections), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with ads, Design is where you develop your newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you wish to blog about, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use user interface for creating.
Once you start creating, you can optimize headings, include web links, and style your material just how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of choices for various kinds of web content like videos, links, images, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is likewise frequently launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot much more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, image styles, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before single point you can enhance with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply experiment with the platform totally free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a fantastic posting system for any e-newsletter maker.
Here are a few of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Does Beehiiv Have a Free Version
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send emails. I stated above several of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely one of the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) reside on a website. Consider it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, offer you an internet site. However, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a personalized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or with embed kinds.
If you currently have a web site, and want individuals to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various options– a complete width, a fixed size, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s also an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you want to ahead UTM criteria for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working on updates for these, yet I discussed a few issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your checklist to ahead your e-mails to buddies and coworkers and if they obtain other people to register for your list, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually appear lots of newsletter companies provide rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you another opportunity for growing your email listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium registrations
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration earnings is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying subscribers. This can be very rewarding depending upon what your newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that creates millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
One of things I love concerning 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 subscriber matter.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on just how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you whatever you require to start and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite charitable in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit choice for numerous users.
I’m unsure just how the device economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are a few of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
- Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters completely free
- Tidy and modern subscriber analytics
- Great deals of adaptability with e-mail layouts.
- Referral program feature Does Beehiiv Have a Free Version
- Site hosting
- Develop premium options to generate income from
- Polls
To be sincere, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter system that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But of course, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding personalized typefaces
I make use of Webflow as my website structure system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive detail why I love Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to find out more.
Today, there truly is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t like utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to decrease my website a little bit. Whenever a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s extremely visible when you get on a slow-moving internet link. However I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would certainly just include additional prices that I don’t require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I thought I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the cons below. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will eventually create a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is a great service for any person wanting to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter system far outweighs lots of that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather low-cost of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t create testimonial posts frequently. I only do when I actually make use of the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a buddy.
I wish you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.