I read among my preferred email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and immediately started tearing up. The Stories Beehiiv…
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological since I spent the last six months trying different e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to assist develop my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some fantastic options for composing newsletters. Yet I could not find one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The concern with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me completely tailor my newsletter styles, makes it extremely easy to compose and send e-mails, and offers me tools that aid me examine metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I think I have actually finally found the right device.
Yet, I know beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it simple to layout, create, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former workers at the well-known e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly go with it as my newsletter system of option.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a modern newsletter system for rather a long time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it pertained to lastly releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of various other indie systems. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous e-newsletter creators appreciate preferred newsletters with countless customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I admired a lot. They have wonderful material, tons of subscribers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even a lot more customers.
So, I went on a search to find out just how these huge 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 subscribers? How do they produce a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool truly comprehend newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the very first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on creator development.
Because, any developer knows, you require growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the appropriate newsletter stack (that scales) typically suggests utilizing numerous different devices to assist attain one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one system to establish references. It can get expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was complimentary to start making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a wonderful platform used by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your own website and use the platform as your all-in-one service for sending out emails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own site currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your website clients straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow people to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to take advantage of different marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
Just how to begin using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content developer that wants a system that enables them to send custom newsletters with or without needing to have a site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or material maker, you need to seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you really wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a great sign that people like reading your things.
Register for a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development modification, analytics, exterior embed forms, and extra. It’s a very charitable offering for those just starting (or for those searching for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise pick your brand name colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin writing”, “Blog posts”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Generate income from”, “Layout” and” Analyze”. And at the very lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you develop and publish e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and break them down right into segments), Grow 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, Design is where you create your e-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.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you want to discuss, I suggest simply going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can modify your template and designing later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and user-friendly interface for creating.
Once you start writing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and design your content exactly how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for different sorts of material like video clips, links, images, and more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally frequently releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a great deal much more content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture layouts, and much more. I’m not going to go through ever single thing you can maximize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Simply experiment with the system absolutely free and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it an excellent posting platform for any kind of e-newsletter designer.
Here are a few of the necessary features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder The Stories Beehiiv
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely simple to write and send out emails. I discussed above several of things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll spare you some extra reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the much better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) reside on a website. Think about it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, provide you an internet site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom-made domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or through embed kinds.
If you already have a site, and desire people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to make use of an embed type. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different options– a complete width, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you want to forward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– rather cool.
However, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the group is dealing with updates for these, but I stated a couple of concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your checklist to ahead your e-mails to buddies and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to register for your list, you can award them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve appear several newsletter firms provide rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you an additional method for growing your email list.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this short article.
Premium registrations
They state all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription income is absolutely a beast of its very own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be extremely financially rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter has to use. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that creates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among the things I love about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber matter.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter go up is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you every little thing you require to get going and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) gives you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom domain, polls, and accessibility to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite generous in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a great Kit option for numerous customers.
I’m not exactly sure exactly how the system economics deal with this, however beehiiv is most definitely less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are a few of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of selection:
- Easy to set up and start sending newsletters free of cost
- Clean and modern-day subscriber analytics
- Lots of adaptability with email designs.
- Referral program feature The Stories Beehiiv
- Web site hosting
- Create costs alternatives to monetize
- Surveys
To be honest, I have not seen one more newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
However of course, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I have actually located while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including personalized fonts
I make use of Webflow as my website building platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive detail why I like Webflow a lot however you can read my Webflow evaluation if you would love to learn more.
Now, there really is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not like utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to decrease my web site a bit. Every time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to fill on the web page. It’s very noticeable when you get on a slow-moving net connection. However I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not use a routine Webflow type (which I love making use of). There are ways around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would certainly simply include additional expenses that I do not require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv disadvantage however I thought I would certainly discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the cons right here. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will eventually create a better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
In general, beehiiv is an excellent service for anybody aiming to dive into the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform much exceeds many that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you actually have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively cheap of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review blog posts frequently. I only do when I really use the device myself and would advise it to a close friend.
I wish you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.