I was reading among my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and quickly started wrecking. Lucky Culture Beehiiv…
Being a full time designer is tough. I’m often obtaining pitched various devices and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I invested the last six months trying out various e-mail and newsletter systems to aid build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some excellent options for creating e-newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my e-newsletter layouts, makes it very easy to create and send emails, and gives me devices that help me evaluate metrics and obtain even more customers.
I believe I’ve finally discovered the ideal tool.
Yet, I understand beehiiv may 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 newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to design, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the popular e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this short article, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally go with it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually watched for a contemporary newsletter system for rather time currently. I’ve postponed hard when it pertained to ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of newsletter creators look up to popular newsletters with numerous subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have wonderful material, tons of clients, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get back at much more subscribers.
So, I went on a hunt to figure out just how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they create a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that constructed this device really understand e-newsletter creation and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Due to the fact that, any kind of creator understands, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the best newsletter pile (that scales) usually implies making use of several different devices to assist attain one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to set up referrals. It can get pricey.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was complimentary 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 platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a wonderful platform utilized by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your very own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv also offers you a web site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own website currently, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your website subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable individuals to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing channels to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
How to start making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that desires a platform that permits them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or content creator, you should seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to get started and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a great sign that individuals love reviewing your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance personalization, analytics, exterior embed types, and more. It’s a very charitable offering for those just beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally pick your brand design and colors to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have outlined info on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin writing”, “Posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Generate income from”, “Layout” and” Analyze”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot over), Begin writing is where you develop and publish newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down into segments), Expand is where you have access 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 newsletter with ads, Design is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups 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 rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you wish to discuss, I recommend simply going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a clean and user-friendly interface for writing.
As soon as you start composing, you can enhance headings, include links, and design your material just how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for various sorts of material like videos, links, photos, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise regularly releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a lot extra content features relying on when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to design your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a description, include your logo, activate or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, picture styles, and extra. I’m not going to experience ever before solitary point you can optimize with your e-mail template because it’s a whole lot. Just try out the platform free of cost and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a great publishing platform for any kind of e-newsletter maker.
Below are several of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Lucky Culture Beehiiv
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely easy to write and send e-mails. I pointed out over several of things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) reside on a website. Think of it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, give you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom-made domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is very important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv website or via embed types.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to use an embed form. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 various choices– a full size, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can find the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise a choice for attribution monitoring if you intend to forward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working with updates for these, but I discussed a few issues I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your listing to onward your emails to close friends and associates and if they obtain other people to register for your list, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually appear several newsletter business give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you another method for growing your e-mail listing.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this post.
Costs memberships
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Subscription earnings is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” issues of your newsletter that are just sent to paying clients. This can be extremely rewarding depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among things I like about beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that customer count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you whatever you need to get started and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) offers you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for lots of users.
I’m uncertain how the system economics service this, but beehiiv is definitely cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
- Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters for free
- Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics
- Great deals of adaptability with email styles.
- Referral program feature Lucky Culture Beehiiv
- Site hosting
- Produce costs alternatives to generate income from
- Polls
To be truthful, I haven’t seen another e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
However naturally, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the cons I have actually discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom typefaces
I use Webflow as my web site structure platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much information why I like Webflow so much however you can read my Webflow review if you would love to find out more.
Today, there actually is no other way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from using an iframe embed. I personally don’t like using iframe’s because they tend to reduce my website a little bit. Every time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to pack on the web page. It’s really obvious when you get on a slow-moving web link. Yet I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t use a normal Webflow kind (which I enjoy making use of). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would certainly just include additional costs that I do not require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I thought I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the cons right here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will eventually develop a far better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
In general, beehiiv is a wonderful service for anybody looking to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform much exceeds many that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather inexpensive for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write testimonial blog posts commonly. I only do when I really use the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a good friend.
I wish you discovered some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.