I was reading among my favored email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and quickly started tearing up. Is Beehiiv Like Substack…
Being a full time designer is tough. I’m commonly obtaining pitched various devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I invested the last six months checking out various e-mail and newsletter platforms to aid construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful alternatives for composing newsletters. However I couldn’t locate one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter designs, makes it super very easy to create and send e-mails, and provides me devices that aid me analyze metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I think I’ve ultimately found the ideal device.
But, I understand beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate 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 easy to design, create, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous staff members at the popular e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help developers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this short article, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly opt for it as my newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter platform for quite some time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it involved ultimately introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure lots of e-newsletter designers admire preferred e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have excellent content, tons of customers, and a creative referral program that enables them to get even a lot more customers.
So, I took place a search to figure out how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they produce an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device really understand newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s focused on designer development.
Due to the fact that, any kind of designer recognizes, you need growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the ideal e-newsletter stack (that scales) commonly suggests utilizing numerous various devices to help achieve one goal– one system for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish references. It can obtain pricey.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary to start utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is an excellent platform used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own website and make use of the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out emails (while developing 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 benefit of far better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv also provides you an internet site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own website already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site customers right to your beehiiv email list. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to permit individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Just how to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that desires a system that permits them to send custom newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
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 author, media firm, startup, or content maker, you must seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to start and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you actually end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indication that people like reading your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, provide you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, external embed kinds, and more. It’s a very charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those looking for a new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand colors and design to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
When you reach your main control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning writing”, “Messages”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Generate income from”, “Layout” and” Analyze”. And at the very lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you develop and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and damage them down right into segments), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you make your newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you intend to blog about, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can modify your template and styling later– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and user-friendly interface for creating.
As soon as you start creating, you can enhance headings, include web links, and style your web content exactly how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of choices for different sorts of content like video clips, links, photos, and more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise constantly launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will be a whole lot extra content features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing 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 adjust some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, image layouts, and more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever single thing you can maximize with your e-mail template since it’s a lot. Just try out the platform completely free and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it an excellent publishing platform for any type of e-newsletter creator.
Below are some of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Is Beehiiv Like Substack
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very simple to write and send e-mails. I pointed out over some of things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some additional reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on a web site. Think about it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, give you a site. However, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is very important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or with embed kinds.
If you already have a website, and desire individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I use 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 kinds, you have 3 various options– a full width, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise a choice for attribution monitoring if you intend to forward UTM specifications for tracking functions– quite cool.
However, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the team is servicing updates for these, yet I mentioned 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 service for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your listing to forward your e-mails to friends and coworkers and if they obtain other people to subscribe to your listing, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever type you desire. I have actually appear lots of newsletter companies offer incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you another method for expanding your e-mail checklist.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this article.
Costs registrations
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership earnings is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” issues of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be extremely lucrative depending upon what your e-newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that produces millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the things I enjoy concerning beehiiv is just how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on just 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 view on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer matter rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you everything you need to get started and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and access to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the same amount– making beehiiv an excellent Kit alternative for many individuals.
I’m uncertain exactly how the unit economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is definitely cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are some of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
- Easy to set up and start sending newsletters totally free
- Clean and modern-day customer analytics
- Lots of adaptability with email layouts.
- Referral program feature Is Beehiiv Like Substack
- Website hosting
- Produce costs alternatives to monetize
- Surveys
To be honest, I have not seen one more e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet of course, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to mention some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the cons I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding personalized font styles
I make use of Webflow as my web site structure platform of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive detail why I like Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow testimonial if you wish to learn more.
Right now, there truly is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as making use of iframe’s because they often tend to reduce my internet site a bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the page. It’s extremely noticeable when you’re on a slow web connection. But I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t use a routine Webflow form (which I enjoy making use of). There are methods around this by using a device like Zapier however that would just include added costs that I do not need. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will eventually create a much better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is an excellent service for any person seeking to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system much surpasses many that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly economical of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create testimonial blog posts often. I only do when I actually use the tool myself and would advise it to a pal.
I wish you located some quality on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.