I read among my favored e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and instantaneously started destroying. The Neuron Beehiiv…
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched various tools and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological because I invested the last six months trying out different e-mail and newsletter systems to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic options for composing newsletters. But I couldn’t discover one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my e-newsletter styles, makes it extremely simple to compose and send out e-mails, and offers me tools that aid me examine metrics and obtain more clients.
I believe I’ve lastly located the ideal tool.
However, I recognize 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 e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it very easy to layout, write, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the well-known newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist makers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly select it as my newsletter platform of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter platform for fairly some time now. I’ve put things off hard when it came to finally introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure many e-newsletter makers look up to prominent newsletters with millions of clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have terrific content, tons of subscribers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to figure out exactly how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool truly understand newsletter production and development.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I understood this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer growth.
Since, any kind of developer understands, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the right newsletter stack (that scales) typically means using numerous different devices to assist accomplish one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish recommendations. It can obtain expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was cost-free to start making use of, 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, yes there is. Substack is a wonderful system used by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own web site and utilize the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv likewise gives you an internet site similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own site already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site clients straight to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit people to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to take advantage of various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack choice.
Exactly how to begin making use of beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content developer that desires a system that allows them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or content maker, you ought to seriously thinking about experimenting with beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to get started and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you really end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great 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 “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, outside embed types, and extra. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply starting out (or for those searching for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise select your brand name colors and design to ensure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start writing”, “Posts”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Generate income from”, “Layout” and” Assess”. And at the really lower you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you produce and release newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and damage them down right into segments), Grow is where you have access to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you design your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you want to write about, I advise just mosting likely to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can modify your template and designing later on– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and user-friendly interface for writing.
Once you begin creating, you can optimize headings, include links, and design your material just how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of options for various kinds of web content like videos, web links, images, and much more.
The group at beehiiv is also frequently releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a great deal more material features depending on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to create your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time clients, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, image formats, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever single thing you can enhance with your email template because it’s a lot. Simply try the platform for free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it an excellent posting platform for any type of newsletter developer.
Below are some of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder The Neuron Beehiiv
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it incredibly simple to write and send e-mails. I discussed above several of the things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely one of the better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a web site. Consider it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a place where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, provide you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom-made domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter directly from your beehiiv internet site or through embed forms.
If you currently have a website, and desire individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed form. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different alternatives– a full width, a fixed width, and a slim installed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s also an alternative for attribution tracking if you intend to forward UTM specifications for tracking functions– pretty neat.
However, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to 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 area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your listing to onward your emails to close friends and associates and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your checklist, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I have actually seem lots of newsletter firms offer rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you an additional method for growing your e-mail checklist.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this post.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership profits is certainly a beast of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be extremely lucrative depending on what your newsletter has to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
One of the important things I love concerning beehiiv is how tidy and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer matter increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan provides you every little thing you need to get started and grow your newsletter (up to 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit choice for numerous customers.
I’m not exactly sure just how the unit economics deal with this, however beehiiv is certainly more affordable (currently) than what it can be.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are some of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
- Easy to establish and start sending newsletters free of charge
- Tidy and modern-day subscriber analytics
- Lots of adaptability with email layouts.
- Referral program feature The Neuron Beehiiv
- Internet site hosting
- Create premium options to monetize
- Surveys
To be sincere, I haven’t seen another newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
However obviously, I don’t want to be biased so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are some of the cons I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding customized fonts
I make use of Webflow as my web site building platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter too much information why I like Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to find out more.
Today, there actually is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site apart from using an iframe embed. I directly don’t like making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to slow down my internet site a little bit. Each time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s very recognizable when you get on a slow net link. But I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t make use of a routine Webflow kind (which I love using). There are methods around this by using a device like Zapier however that would just include extra expenses that I don’t need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I thought I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the disadvantages below. I’m also enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately develop a much better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Generally, beehiiv is a great solution for anybody seeking to study the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter platform much outweighs many that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly inexpensive of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not compose testimonial blog posts usually. I just do when I in fact use the tool myself and would suggest it to a good friend.
I wish you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.