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 first time. I clicked it and immediately began destroying. Substack Vs Beehiiv…
Being a full time developer is tough. I’m often getting pitched different devices and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last six months trying out different email and e-newsletter platforms to help construct my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful alternatives for writing newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The issue with numerous existing e-newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter platform that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it incredibly very easy to compose and send out e-mails, and offers me tools that help me analyze metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I think I’ve finally found the right tool.
However, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal 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 design, compose, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the renowned newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist designers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally opt for it as my newsletter system of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern newsletter platform for fairly time currently. I have actually put things off hard when it pertained to ultimately launching my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain several e-newsletter makers respect popular e-newsletters with countless customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have fantastic web content, tons of customers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get back at much more customers.
So, I went on a hunt to determine just how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool actually understand newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the first marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I recognized this was going to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s focused on developer growth.
Because, any maker knows, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that ranges) often indicates using multiple various devices to help attain one objective– one system for your newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to establish referrals. It can get expensive.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was complimentary to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great platform utilized by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own site and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv also gives you a web site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own site currently, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site customers straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow people to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to take advantage of various marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
Exactly how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that desires a system that permits them to send out customized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or content maker, you must seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to start and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you in fact end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great sign that people like reading your things.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance personalization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and extra. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those trying to find a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll also pick your brand name colors and design to make certain 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 certainly have described information on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start composing”, “Posts”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Evaluate”. And at the really lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your clients are (and damage them down right 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you develop your newsletter landing page and message template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just beginning, and have a concept you want to write about, I advise simply going to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor provides a tidy and easy to use user interface for writing.
Once you start creating, you can enhance headings, include links, and design your material just how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of options for different kinds of web content like videos, links, images, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is additionally continuously releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a whole lot extra content features relying on when you read this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your email template and adjust some setups.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, include your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify history colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, image styles, and extra. I’m not going to go through ever single point you can maximize with your e-mail template since it’s a whole lot. Simply experiment with the platform completely free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it an excellent posting platform for any kind of newsletter designer.
Here are several of the crucial features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Substack Vs Beehiiv
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly simple to write and send out e-mails. I mentioned above several of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely among the better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on a website. Think of it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the cost-free one, offer you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom-made domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is necessary. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or via embed types.
If you already have an internet site, and want individuals to register for your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed type. This is what I make use of on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different options– a full size, a dealt with size, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to onward UTM parameters for tracking functions– quite cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make sure the team is dealing with updates for these, yet I stated a few problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your checklist to onward your e-mails to friends and associates and if they get other people to register for your checklist, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually seem many e-newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another avenue for growing your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this short article.
Premium memberships
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Subscription earnings is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” issues of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be very lucrative relying on what your e-newsletter needs to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that produces millions in income a year just by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I like about beehiiv is just how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client matter increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you whatever you require to get started and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, polls, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 each month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for several users.
I’m unsure how the unit economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is definitely less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Below are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
- Easy to set up and start sending e-newsletters absolutely free
- Tidy and modern subscriber analytics
- Lots of adaptability with email layouts.
- Referral program feature Substack Vs Beehiiv
- Site hosting
- Develop costs choices to monetize
- Polls
To be sincere, I have not seen an additional newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
Yet certainly, I do not 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 have actually located while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including customized typefaces
I use Webflow as my internet site building system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive information why I like Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to discover more.
Now, there truly is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website besides making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t like using iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to decrease my website a bit. Every time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s very recognizable when you get on a slow-moving web link. Yet I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not use a routine Webflow kind (which I enjoy using). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier however that would certainly simply add added expenses that I don’t need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I assumed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much outweigh the disadvantages here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately develop a much better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent option for any individual wanting to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter system much exceeds lots of that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly low-cost of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not compose testimonial messages typically. I just do when I in fact use the device myself and would advise it to a friend.
I hope you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.