I was reading among my preferred email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and quickly began wrecking. Invest in Beehiiv…
Being a full time developer is tough. I’m typically obtaining pitched various devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months trying different email and e-newsletter platforms to help develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great choices for writing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t locate one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me completely personalize my e-newsletter designs, makes it incredibly simple to write and send emails, and offers me devices that help me examine metrics and obtain even more clients.
I assume I’ve ultimately discovered the appropriate tool.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate 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 very easy to layout, compose, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the renowned newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally opt for it as my newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve watched for a modern e-newsletter system for rather a long time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it concerned ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure several newsletter makers look up to prominent newsletters with millions of subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have excellent content, lots of subscribers, and a smart referral program that permits them to get even more clients.
So, I went on a quest to figure out just how these large newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device truly understand newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these developers 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 brain took off.
I recognized this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Due to the fact that, any type of designer recognizes, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the right newsletter stack (that scales) usually suggests making use of numerous various tools to aid accomplish one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to set up references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was free to begin making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a fantastic platform used by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a web site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own web site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your internet site clients straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to leverage various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
How to begin using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that desires a platform that permits them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or web content developer, you must seriously thinking about trying out beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you in fact end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent sign that individuals like reading your stuff.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just starting out (or for those searching for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise pick your brand design and colors to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
Once you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start composing”, “Blog posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Evaluate”. And at the very lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you create and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your customers are (and damage them down right into sectors), Grow 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 ads, Design is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you want to discuss, I suggest just going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and user-friendly interface for writing.
Once you begin creating, you can optimize headings, include web links, and design your material exactly how you like.
beehiiv offers you lots of alternatives for various sorts of content like video clips, links, images, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is likewise continuously releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will be a great deal a lot more material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to design your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and much more. I’m not going to go through ever solitary thing you can maximize with your e-mail template because it’s a lot. Just check out the platform free of charge and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a terrific posting system for any type of e-newsletter creator.
Below are a few of the important features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Invest in Beehiiv
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it very simple to write and send e-mails. I stated above several of things you can do with your settings and email design so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) live on a website. Consider it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a place where people can register for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, provide you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a personalized domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or via embed kinds.
If you already have an internet site, and desire people to register for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed form. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 different options– a complete size, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working with updates for these, yet I discussed a couple of worries I had in the pros and cons area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is an option for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your listing to ahead your emails to close friends and associates and if they obtain other people to register for your listing, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I have actually appear many newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you an additional opportunity for growing your email listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a much more premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this article.
Costs subscriptions
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership income is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be really rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to supply. For example, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that creates millions in income a year simply by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the important things I like about beehiiv is how tidy and easy the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer matter go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you whatever you need to start and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 per month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the very same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for many customers.
I’m not exactly sure just how the unit economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is certainly less costly (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Below are several of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
- Easy to establish and begin sending newsletters completely free
- Tidy and contemporary customer analytics
- Lots of adaptability with e-mail styles.
- Referral program feature Invest in Beehiiv
- Website hosting
- Develop costs alternatives to monetize
- Polls
To be sincere, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter system that has been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
However of course, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m going to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the disadvantages I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including personalized font styles
I make use of Webflow as my internet site structure system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much information why I love Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow testimonial if you wish to find out more.
Now, there truly is nothing else method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not such as making use of iframe’s since they tend to slow down my website a bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s really noticeable when you’re on a sluggish net connection. But I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow kind (which I love making use of). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly simply include additional expenses that I don’t require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I thought I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the cons below. I’m also confident that Webflow will ultimately develop a far better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a fantastic service for any person wanting to study the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform far outweighs several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather low-cost of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review posts usually. I just do when I really use the tool myself and would suggest it to a friend.
I wish you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.