I read among my favored e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and quickly began destroying. Female Startup Club Beehiiv…
Being a full time designer is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched different tools and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological because I invested the last six months experimenting with different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to aid build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful options for composing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it incredibly simple to write and send e-mails, and gives me tools that aid me assess metrics and get even more subscribers.
I think I have actually finally located the ideal tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to style, compose, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous employees at the well-known newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist designers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately choose it as my newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for fairly a long time now. I have actually postponed hard when it involved ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up using beehiiv.
I make sure several newsletter designers respect preferred e-newsletters with millions of subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have great web content, tons of clients, and a smart referral program that enables them to get back at a lot more subscribers.
So, I took place a search to figure out how these large newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to answer all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool truly comprehend e-newsletter development and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Because, any kind of developer recognizes, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the ideal e-newsletter pile (that scales) frequently indicates using numerous different tools to aid achieve one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to set up references. It can get costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was free to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is an excellent platform used by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own site and make use of the system as your all-in-one service for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own site already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site subscribers straight to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow people to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to utilize various marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
How to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content maker that desires a platform that permits them to send customized newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most successful newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or material creator, you should seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to begin and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you actually wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indication that individuals like reviewing your things.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and a lot more. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those looking for a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise 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 every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning creating”, “Blog posts”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Evaluate”. And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Beginning creating is where you produce and publish newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your customers are (and damage them down right into segments), Grow 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 newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you want to blog about, I advise just going to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and easy to use user interface for composing.
When you begin composing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and design your material just how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of options for different types of content like video clips, web links, photos, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a lot extra content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your e-mail template and change some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time clients, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image styles, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before single point you can enhance with your e-mail template because it’s a great deal. Just check out the platform absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a wonderful posting system for any type of e-newsletter designer.
Here are some of the crucial features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Female Startup Club Beehiiv
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it very simple to write and send out e-mails. I pointed out over some of things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll save you some extra reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) reside on an internet site. Think of it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, give you an internet site. However, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a customized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or through embed forms.
If you currently have an internet site, and want people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to use an embed kind. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various choices– a full width, a dealt with width, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the team is working on updates for these, but I stated a couple of issues I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your list to onward your emails to good friends and colleagues and if they obtain other people to sign up for your checklist, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem numerous newsletter companies provide benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you another method for expanding your email listing.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this post.
Costs registrations
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership earnings is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” problems of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be very rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter has to provide. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the things I love about beehiiv is exactly how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter go up is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you everything you need to get started and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and accessibility to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for several customers.
I’m not sure just how the unit business economics deal with this, however beehiiv is absolutely less costly (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are a few 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 newsletter platform of choice:
- Easy to set up and start sending out e-newsletters for free
- Clean and modern-day client analytics
- Great deals of flexibility with e-mail styles.
- Referral program feature Female Startup Club Beehiiv
- Website hosting
- Develop costs options to monetize
- Polls
To be truthful, I have not seen another newsletter platform that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However of course, I do not wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the cons I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding personalized typefaces
I make use of Webflow as my internet site structure system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow evaluation if you would love to discover more.
Today, there really is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides using an iframe embed. I directly don’t like utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to slow down my site a little bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s really obvious when you’re on a slow-moving web link. But I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a regular Webflow form (which I love making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just include added costs that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the cons below. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point produce a much better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
On the whole, beehiiv is a terrific remedy for any individual seeking to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter platform much surpasses several that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly inexpensive of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not compose testimonial articles usually. I only do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would advise it to a good friend.
I wish you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.