I was reading one of my favored email 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 began tearing up. Jake Hurd Beehiiv…
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m usually obtaining pitched different tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last six months trying various e-mail and newsletter platforms to help develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific alternatives for writing e-newsletters. However I could not locate one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter systems is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it very easy to write and send out e-mails, and provides me tools that help me assess metrics and get even more clients.
I think I have actually ultimately discovered the ideal tool.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everybody. 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 newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it very easy to style, create, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former staff members at the popular e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to lastly choose it as my newsletter platform of choice.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter system for rather a long time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it pertained to finally introducing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain lots of newsletter makers respect prominent e-newsletters with countless clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have excellent web content, lots of clients, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I went on a search to identify just how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to answer every one of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool actually understand e-newsletter production and development.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the very first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on developer growth.
Because, any designer recognizes, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate newsletter pile (that scales) frequently means making use of multiple various tools to aid attain one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to set up references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was free to begin 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, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic system made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own web site and utilize the system as your all-in-one option for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to obtain the word out.
beehiiv also provides you a web site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own web site already, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site clients right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to permit individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
How to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that wants a platform that allows them to send out personalized newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most effective e-newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media company, start-up, or material maker, you must seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to begin and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you really end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent indication that people love reading your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you accessibility to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, outside embed forms, and extra. It’s an extremely generous offering for those just beginning (or for those trying to find a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally select your brand design and colors to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have described information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start composing”, “Articles”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Evaluate”. And at the really lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Beginning composing is where you create and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and break them down into sections), Grow is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Design is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you wish to blog about, I advise simply going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and straightforward interface for writing.
As soon as you begin composing, you can enhance headings, add links, and design your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of options for different types of web content like videos, web links, images, and more.
The team at beehiiv is also frequently launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot a lot more material features relying on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your email template and adjust some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to first time clients, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, photo layouts, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before single point you can optimize with your e-mail template because it’s a whole lot. Just try the system for free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it a great publishing system for any newsletter designer.
Here are some of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Jake Hurd Beehiiv
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely simple to create and send out e-mails. I mentioned over a few of the important things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the much better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) live on a site. Think about it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, give you a website. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to include a personalized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is essential. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or with embed types.
If you already have a site, and want individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different options– a complete size, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution tracking if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking functions– quite cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the team is working with updates for these, yet I stated a few worries I had in the pros and cons section 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 encourage existing subscribers on your checklist to onward your emails to buddies and colleagues and if they get other people to subscribe to your checklist, you can reward them. These incentives can be in whatever form you want. I have actually seem many newsletter business provide benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you one more method for expanding your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this post.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Membership revenue is definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be really financially rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter has to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred costs 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 concerning beehiiv is just how clean and easy the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you every little thing you require to get started and grow your newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 each month for the same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for many customers.
I’m uncertain how the device economics work with this, but beehiiv is definitely cheaper (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
- Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters for free
- Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics
- Great deals of versatility with email styles.
- Referral program feature Jake Hurd Beehiiv
- Website hosting
- Create premium alternatives to generate income from
- Surveys
To be honest, I have not seen another newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But certainly, I do not intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I’ve discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including personalized typefaces
I use Webflow as my web site structure platform of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive information why I love Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow evaluation if you would love to find out more.
Right now, there actually is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site besides utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t like making use of iframe’s because they often tend to slow down my website a bit. Each time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s very obvious when you’re on a sluggish internet connection. However I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a regular Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would just include additional costs that I do not require. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I assumed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the cons here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point develop a better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
Overall, beehiiv is a wonderful option for anybody wanting to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far surpasses several that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly affordable of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose evaluation articles usually. I just do when I actually make use of the device myself and would recommend it to a buddy.
I wish you located some clarity on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.