I read one of my preferred email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and quickly began destroying. How Does Beehiiv Work…
Being a full time developer is difficult. I’m typically getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological since I invested the last 6 months experimenting with various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to help build my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific alternatives for creating e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely customize my newsletter designs, makes it super very easy to write and send emails, and provides me tools that assist me examine metrics and obtain more customers.
I assume I’ve lastly located the right device.
Yet, I understand beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it very easy to design, create, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the popular e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly opt for it as my newsletter system of selection.
My individual 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-day e-newsletter system for quite time currently. I’ve hesitated hard when it involved ultimately launching my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of e-newsletter creators appreciate preferred newsletters with millions of customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have wonderful content, lots of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get back at much more customers.
So, I went on a search to determine how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they create an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool actually comprehend e-newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I understood this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker development.
Since, any developer recognizes, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that scales) commonly indicates using several various devices to help accomplish one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was totally free to begin using, 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 great platform utilized by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own site and utilize the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally gives you a web site similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own website currently, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your web site clients directly to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to leverage various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content designer that desires a system that enables them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or web content developer, you need to seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to start and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you actually end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent indication that people like reading your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you access to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, exterior embed types, and more. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply beginning (or for those seeking a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally pick your brand name colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have outlined information on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning creating”, “Articles”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Generate income from”, “Design” and” Evaluate”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Start creating is where you develop and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down into sectors), 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 newsletter with ads, Layout is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you want to discuss, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and straightforward user interface for writing.
When you begin writing, you can optimize headings, include web links, and style your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for different kinds of content like video clips, links, pictures, and more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise constantly launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a great deal more material features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your email template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history shades, borders, spacing, font styles, picture styles, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template because it’s a whole lot. Simply experiment with the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter creator.
Here are several of the essential features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder How Does Beehiiv Work
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it incredibly very easy to write and send out e-mails. I stated above several of the important things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely among the far better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on an internet site. Consider it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a place where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, offer you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a personalized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or through embed kinds.
If you currently have a web site, and want individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed form. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 different options– a full size, a taken care of width, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to forward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make certain the team is dealing with updates for these, however I mentioned a few issues I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your checklist to forward your e-mails to close friends and coworkers and if they get other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually appear several e-newsletter firms give incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you one more method for growing your e-mail checklist.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this article.
Costs memberships
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership revenue is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be very financially rewarding depending on what your newsletter needs to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of the things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is just how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count.
You get access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you everything you need to get going and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the very same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for numerous customers.
I’m not exactly sure how the device economics work on this, yet beehiiv is certainly less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
- Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters for free
- Tidy and modern-day customer analytics
- Lots of versatility with email styles.
- Referral program feature How Does Beehiiv Work
- Internet site hosting
- Develop costs options to generate income from
- Polls
To be truthful, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter platform that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
However certainly, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including customized typefaces
I make use of Webflow as my website structure system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive information why I love Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to learn more.
Today, there really is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site apart from using an iframe embed. I personally do not such as making use of iframe’s because they often tend to decrease my web site a little bit. Each time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the page. It’s extremely noticeable when you get on a slow-moving net link. However I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t use a routine Webflow kind (which I love using). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would just add additional costs that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I thought I would state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m also confident that Webflow will at some point produce a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is a terrific solution for any individual aiming to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system much surpasses lots of that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively inexpensive wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not create testimonial posts frequently. I only do when I actually make use of the device myself and would certainly advise it to a buddy.
I hope you located some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.