I was reading one of my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and immediately started tearing up. Ken White Beehiiv…
Being a full time developer is tough. I’m often getting pitched various devices and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological since I spent the last six months trying different e-mail and newsletter systems to help build my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic options for writing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me totally tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it super easy to write and send out emails, and gives me tools that assist me evaluate metrics and get more customers.
I believe I’ve lastly located the ideal tool.
Yet, I understand beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to style, create, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former workers at the popular newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist designers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this short article, I’m mosting likely to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually watched for a modern newsletter system for quite time now. I’ve procrastinated hard when it came to lastly launching my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure several e-newsletter makers admire prominent newsletters with countless clients– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have wonderful content, tons of clients, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get even more customers.
So, I went on a hunt to find out how these large e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they create an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device truly recognize newsletter development and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I understood this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Since, any kind of designer recognizes, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the appropriate newsletter pile (that ranges) typically indicates using multiple various devices to assist accomplish one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish references. It can get costly.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was totally free to start utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic system used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv also provides you a website comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own web site currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your website clients right to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to utilize different marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
How to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content maker that wants a system that allows them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most effective newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or material designer, you must seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to get started and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you really end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great sign that individuals love reading your things.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough personalization, analytics, outside embed types, and extra. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply beginning (or for those seeking a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise pick your brand design and colors to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have detailed details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start writing”, “Articles”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Assess”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you develop and release newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down into sections), 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 ads, Design is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you wish to write about, I recommend simply going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and straightforward user interface for composing.
When you begin composing, you can optimize headings, include links, and design your web content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of choices for different types of web content like videos, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is also constantly releasing product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a lot more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to develop your email template and change some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever before single point you can optimize with your email template since it’s a great deal. Simply try the platform completely free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it an excellent publishing platform for any type of newsletter designer.
Below are a few of the essential features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Ken White Beehiiv
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it super simple to create and send out emails. I mentioned over a few of things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll save you some extra reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely among the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) survive an internet site. Consider it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your newsletter, and an area where people can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, offer you a web site. However, the free plan areas your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is important. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter right from your beehiiv website or via embed types.
If you already have an internet site, and want people to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to make use of an embed type. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various options– a complete size, a dealt with width, and a slim installed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution monitoring if you want to onward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the team is servicing updates for these, however I stated a couple of concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks section 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 subscribers on your listing to onward your e-mails to friends and coworkers and if they get other people to register for your checklist, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever type you want. I’ve seem many newsletter firms offer rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional avenue for expanding your email list.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs subscriptions
They claim all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration profits is definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be really lucrative relying on what your e-newsletter needs to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that produces millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of the things I like about beehiiv is just how tidy and easy the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you everything you need to get started and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for lots of users.
I’m uncertain how the unit business economics work on this, yet beehiiv is absolutely less expensive (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
- Easy to establish and begin sending out newsletters totally free
- Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics
- Great deals of flexibility with email layouts.
- Referral program feature Ken White Beehiiv
- Website hosting
- Develop costs choices to monetize
- Polls
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen one more newsletter system that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
But naturally, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m going to point out some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I’ve found while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding customized fonts
I make use of Webflow as my web site structure system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter too much detail why I love Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow testimonial if you would love to find out more.
Right now, there truly is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website aside from making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not such as utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my site a little bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s really visible when you get on a slow-moving internet connection. However I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can’t use a routine Webflow kind (which I enjoy making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would simply include additional expenses that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I thought I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will at some point create a much better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent solution for any individual seeking to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform far surpasses many that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly economical wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose testimonial messages often. I only do when I actually make use of the tool myself and would advise it to a pal.
I wish you located some clarity on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.