I read among my favorite e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and quickly started tearing up. Substack or Beehiiv…
Being a full time developer is difficult. I’m often getting pitched various devices and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I invested the last six months checking out various email and e-newsletter systems to assist develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific choices for composing newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me provide a definite “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully customize my newsletter designs, makes it incredibly very easy to create and send e-mails, and offers me devices that aid me analyze metrics and get more customers.
I believe I’ve finally found the right device.
But, I know beehiiv might 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 e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it very easy to layout, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous employees at the well-known newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m going to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately select it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a contemporary e-newsletter system for rather a long time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it concerned ultimately introducing my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain numerous newsletter designers respect popular e-newsletters with numerous clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have fantastic web content, tons of clients, and a creative referral program that permits them to get even more subscribers.
So, I went on a search to figure out how these large e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they produce a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this device really recognize newsletter development and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the very first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on designer growth.
Because, any maker knows, you require development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the best newsletter stack (that scales) often implies making use of numerous different devices to assist achieve one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was cost-free to start making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic platform made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own internet site and utilize the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a web site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your website subscribers right to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
Just how to begin using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content maker that desires a system that allows them to send out customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or content developer, you should seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s entirely free to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you really wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s possibly a great indicator that individuals love reading your things.
Register for a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you accessibility to web site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and extra. It’s a very charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those seeking a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally pick your brand design and colors to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have described details on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning composing”, “Articles”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Layout” and” Examine”. And at the really lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Start creating is where you create and release e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your customers are (and damage them down into sections), 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 advertisements, Style is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you intend to write about, I recommend just mosting likely to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and user-friendly user interface for creating.
As soon as you begin creating, you can optimize headings, add links, and design your web content how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of alternatives for different sorts of material like videos, links, photos, and more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally constantly launching product feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a great deal extra material features relying on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to create your email template and readjust some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to very first time clients, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify history shades, boundaries, spacing, font styles, picture formats, and more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the platform free of cost and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it a wonderful posting platform for any newsletter designer.
Below are some of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Substack or Beehiiv
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it super easy to compose and send out e-mails. I stated over several of the things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s definitely one of the much better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) reside on a site. Think of it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, offer you a website. However, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv site or via embed forms.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to use an embed form. This is what I make use of on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 different alternatives– a complete width, a dealt with width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for attribution monitoring if you want to forward UTM specifications for tracking purposes– quite cool.
However, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the team is working with updates for these, however I mentioned a couple of worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your listing to onward your e-mails to pals and coworkers and if they get other individuals to register for your list, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually appear several newsletter business provide benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional opportunity for growing your email list.
However, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more exceptional plan. I’ll review all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership income is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “premium” problems of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying customers. This can be really profitable relying on what your newsletter has to provide. For example, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that produces millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of things I love about beehiiv is how tidy and easy the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client matter increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you whatever you require to get started and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 per month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for lots of users.
I’m unsure just how the unit economics deal with this, but beehiiv is most definitely cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Certainly, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Right here are several of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of option:
- Easy to establish and start sending newsletters free of cost
- Clean and modern customer analytics
- Great deals of versatility with e-mail layouts.
- Referral program feature Substack or Beehiiv
- Website hosting
- Produce premium alternatives to monetize
- Polls
To be sincere, I haven’t seen one more newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
But naturally, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to discuss some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the cons I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including personalized fonts
I utilize Webflow as my web site building system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive information why I like Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow review if you ‘d like to discover more.
Right now, there truly is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site other than making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as making use of iframe’s since they often tend to decrease my web site a little bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s very visible when you’re on a sluggish web connection. However I can navigate that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t use a normal Webflow type (which I enjoy making use of). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just add additional prices that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m also confident that Webflow will at some point produce a better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a great solution for anyone looking to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far surpasses several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly cheap for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not create evaluation posts frequently. I only do when I actually utilize the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a friend.
I wish you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.