I was reading one of my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and quickly began destroying. Prompt Warrior Beehiiv…
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m typically getting pitched different tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological because I invested the last six months experimenting with different email and newsletter systems to assist build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful options for creating e-newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it extremely easy to create and send emails, and provides me devices that assist me evaluate metrics and obtain more clients.
I assume I have actually lastly discovered the ideal device.
But, I know beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it easy to style, write, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by previous workers at the popular newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist makers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally select it as my newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I inadvertently came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter platform for rather a long time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it pertained to ultimately launching my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure several e-newsletter designers admire preferred e-newsletters with countless customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have terrific content, tons of clients, and a clever referral program that permits them to get back at more customers.
So, I took place a search to identify exactly how these huge e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they produce a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool actually comprehend e-newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the initial marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I understood this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker growth.
Since, any developer knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate newsletter pile (that scales) typically suggests utilizing multiple various devices to help accomplish one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was totally free to begin utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great platform used by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise provides you a web site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own website currently, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your internet site subscribers straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow individuals to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to leverage various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
How to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that wants a platform that allows them to send customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most effective e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, startup, or web content developer, you must seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to get going and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you in fact wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good indicator that individuals like reading your stuff.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, external embed types, and more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also select your brand colors and design to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have described information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin composing”, “Articles”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Evaluate”. And at the really lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Begin composing is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous 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 ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with ads, Design is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you want to discuss, I suggest just mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– focus on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and easy to use interface for composing.
Once you start writing, you can maximize headings, include links, and design your web content exactly how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of alternatives for various types of material like video clips, web links, photos, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is also constantly launching item feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a lot much 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 out, it’s time to design your email template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, include your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to very first time customers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before solitary point you can enhance with your e-mail template because it’s a great deal. Simply try the platform for free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any kind of newsletter creator.
Here are a few of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder Prompt Warrior Beehiiv
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely very easy to compose and send emails. I mentioned above a few of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the much better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) reside on an internet site. Think of it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, provide you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a customized domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is essential. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or with embed types.
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 site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three different options– a full size, a repaired width, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an option for attribution tracking if you wish to ahead UTM specifications for tracking objectives– rather cool.
However, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the team is servicing updates for these, however I mentioned a couple of concerns 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 remedy for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your listing to onward your e-mails to pals and colleagues and if they get other individuals to sign up for your list, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve seem numerous newsletter business provide rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you one more avenue for expanding your e-mail list.
Nonetheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra premium plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this short article.
Premium memberships
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership earnings is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be really profitable depending on what your e-newsletter needs to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Data analytics
Among the important things I like about beehiiv is how tidy and simple the analytics are. You get real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter.
You get access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you need to get started and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit alternative for numerous customers.
I’m not sure exactly how the unit economics service this, yet beehiiv is absolutely less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Below are several of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
- Easy to set up and start sending out newsletters totally free
- Tidy and modern-day customer analytics
- Lots of adaptability with email layouts.
- Referral program feature Prompt Warrior Beehiiv
- Website hosting
- Develop costs options to monetize
- Surveys
To be sincere, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet naturally, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to point out some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the cons I have actually discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including custom-made font styles
I use Webflow as my web site building platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive detail why I like Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow testimonial if you would love to find out more.
Now, there actually is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from using an iframe embed. I directly don’t like making use of iframe’s because they often tend to slow down my internet site a bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s extremely recognizable when you get on a slow-moving internet link. Yet I can navigate that.
The major complaint I have is that I can not make use of a routine Webflow type (which I enjoy utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would certainly just include extra expenses that I don’t require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I thought I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the cons right here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will ultimately produce a much better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a terrific remedy for anyone aiming to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system much exceeds numerous that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly inexpensive for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not compose testimonial posts usually. I just do when I really use the device myself and would advise it to a pal.
I wish you discovered some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.