I read one of my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and promptly started tearing up. Generative AI Beehiiv…
Being a full-time maker is tough. I’m typically getting pitched various devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last six months trying various e-mail and newsletter platforms to help construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great choices for writing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t discover one that made me give a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me totally customize my e-newsletter designs, makes it super very easy to create and send out e-mails, and provides me devices that aid me evaluate metrics and obtain even more clients.
I believe I’ve ultimately found the ideal tool.
Yet, I understand beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it simple to layout, write, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals 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, things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly go with it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern newsletter system for quite a long time now. I’ve hesitated hard when it came to ultimately launching my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous e-newsletter designers admire prominent newsletters with millions of subscribers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have great material, tons of clients, and a clever referral program that permits them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I went on a hunt to figure out how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they develop a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to all of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this device actually understand e-newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Since, any type of developer understands, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the right e-newsletter stack (that scales) usually implies utilizing numerous various devices to help achieve one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to establish references. It can get costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was free to start making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is an excellent system utilized by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your very own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you an internet site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own website currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your site clients straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to utilize various marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack choice.
How to begin utilizing beehiiv email marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that desires a system that allows them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or material designer, you should seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you really end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a good sign that people like reading your things.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you accessibility to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, exterior embed types, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those seeking a new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand name design and colors to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
Once you reach your major control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start creating”, “Blog posts”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Assess”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot over), Begin writing is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your clients are (and damage them down into sectors), Expand is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you wish to cover, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and straightforward interface for creating.
When you begin creating, you can optimize headings, include web links, and design your web content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of options for various kinds of web content like video clips, links, images, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise constantly launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot a lot more content features depending upon when you read this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to design your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background colors, borders, spacing, font styles, image styles, and much more. I’m not going to undergo ever before single point you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a great deal. Simply experiment with the system completely free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a wonderful publishing platform for any type of e-newsletter designer.
Below are several of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Generative AI Beehiiv
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it incredibly simple to write and send e-mails. I stated over a few of things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the far better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) survive a website. Think about it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a place where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, offer you a website. However, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is very important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv website or with embed types.
If you currently have a site, and desire people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed form. This is what I utilize on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different choices– a complete width, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution tracking if you want to ahead UTM parameters for tracking functions– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the team is dealing with updates for these, however I discussed a couple of issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your list to forward your emails to buddies and associates and if they get other individuals to register for your checklist, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem numerous e-newsletter companies provide rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you another opportunity for expanding your email listing.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium registrations
They claim all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership income is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying subscribers. This can be extremely rewarding depending upon what your newsletter needs to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that produces millions in income a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is exactly how clean and easy the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you whatever you need to get going and grow your newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom domain name, polls, and access to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit choice for numerous individuals.
I’m not sure how the device business economics deal with this, but beehiiv is absolutely cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Right here are some of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
- Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters absolutely free
- Clean and modern-day subscriber analytics
- Lots of flexibility with e-mail styles.
- Referral program feature Generative AI Beehiiv
- Internet site hosting
- Create premium alternatives to monetize
- Surveys
To be honest, I have not seen one more newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But naturally, I do not intend to be biased so I’m going to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the disadvantages I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including customized typefaces
I make use of Webflow as my site building platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to go in too much detail why I enjoy Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to discover more.
Right now, there truly is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t like utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to slow down my website a little bit. Every time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s really obvious when you get on a sluggish net link. But I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow type (which I enjoy utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would just include added expenses that I don’t need. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately produce a much better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
In general, beehiiv is a wonderful option for anyone looking to study the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform much exceeds numerous that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively low-cost of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation articles typically. I just do when I really utilize the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a pal.
I hope you discovered some quality on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.