I read among my favorite 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 instantaneously started wrecking. Prequel Beehiiv…
Being a full time creator is difficult. I’m typically getting pitched different tools and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months trying different email and e-newsletter platforms to assist develop my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful options for composing newsletters. Yet I could not discover one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me totally personalize my newsletter layouts, makes it super simple to write and send out e-mails, and offers me tools that assist me examine metrics and get even more subscribers.
I believe I have actually finally discovered the best tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really 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 very easy to layout, compose, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous staff members at the famous newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally opt for it as my newsletter system of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter system for fairly time now. I’ve put things off hard when it involved ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure several e-newsletter developers look up to preferred e-newsletters with countless subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have great content, lots of subscribers, and a smart referral program that allows them to get even extra customers.
So, I took place a search to determine just how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more clients? How do they produce a newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device truly recognize e-newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the very first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on creator growth.
Because, any kind of developer recognizes, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the best e-newsletter pile (that ranges) typically indicates utilizing multiple different tools to help accomplish one goal– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up references. It can obtain costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was totally free to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a wonderful system used by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own site and utilize the system as your all-in-one option for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a website similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own site already, you can additionally utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your site clients right to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable individuals to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the versatility to leverage various marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
How to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content developer that wants a platform that permits them to send customized newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
The most successful newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or material designer, you must seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s totally free to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you actually wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a good sign that individuals enjoy 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 on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you accessibility to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, exterior embed types, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those just starting (or for those looking for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand name colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin composing”, “Messages”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Analyze”. And at the really bottom you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot over), Beginning composing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and damage them down into segments), Grow is where you have access 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you create your 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 things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you want to blog about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and user-friendly user interface for creating.
Once you begin creating, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your material exactly how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of choices for various types of web content like videos, links, photos, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is additionally constantly releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a whole lot a lot more content features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome email to first time customers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, font styles, picture formats, and extra. I’m not going to undergo ever solitary point you can maximize with your email template since it’s a great deal. Simply experiment with the system free of cost and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any e-newsletter creator.
Below are some of the crucial features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Prequel Beehiiv
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it super very easy to create and send emails. I stated above some of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly one of the better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive an internet site. Consider it as a site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a location where people can register for your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, give you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is essential. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or via embed forms.
If you currently have a web site, and desire individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various choices– a complete width, a dealt with width, and a slim installed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to onward UTM specifications for tracking functions– pretty cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make sure the team is working on updates for these, yet I stated a few worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing subscribers on your list to ahead your e-mails to close friends and colleagues and if they get other people to sign up for your listing, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually seem many newsletter business provide incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– offering you one more opportunity for expanding your email list.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this short article.
Premium registrations
They say all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration earnings is most definitely a beast of its own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely profitable depending on what your e-newsletter has to offer. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that produces millions in income a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of the things I love about beehiiv is how tidy and simple the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber matter increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you everything you require to get going and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom domain name, polls, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the very same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for lots of individuals.
I’m not exactly sure just how the system economics deal with this, however beehiiv is certainly less costly (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are several of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
- Easy to establish and begin sending newsletters totally free
- Clean and modern-day client analytics
- Great deals of adaptability with email styles.
- Referral program feature Prequel Beehiiv
- Web site hosting
- Produce costs options to generate income from
- Polls
To be sincere, I have not seen another newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But of course, I don’t want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to point out some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom fonts
I use Webflow as my internet site building platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much information why I love Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to learn more.
Right now, there actually is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not such as using iframe’s since they have a tendency to slow down my website a little bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s really visible when you get on a sluggish net connection. But I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not make use of a normal Webflow kind (which I like utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would certainly simply include added expenses that I do not need. To be honest, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the cons right here. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately create a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is a fantastic option for anyone seeking to study the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform much outweighs several that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively affordable for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unprecedented. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not compose review blog posts usually. I just do when I in fact make use of the device myself and would certainly advise it to a close friend.
I wish you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is an excellent system for you.