I read one of my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked on it and promptly began tearing up. Why Is Beehiiv Better Than Substack…
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m typically obtaining pitched various devices and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months trying different e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to assist develop my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific options for creating e-newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with many existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me fully customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it extremely very easy to create and send emails, and provides me devices that help me examine metrics and obtain more clients.
I believe I’ve ultimately located the ideal device.
Yet, I know beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it very easy to design, compose, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the renowned newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to help designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m going to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly opt for it as my e-newsletter system of selection.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter platform for rather some time now. I have actually procrastinated hard when it concerned ultimately releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And finally, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain lots of e-newsletter creators admire prominent e-newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have great web content, lots of customers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even a lot more customers.
So, I went on a quest to find out just how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they produce a newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to respond to all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool truly understand e-newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the very first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker development.
Because, any maker knows, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the appropriate e-newsletter pile (that ranges) usually means making use of multiple different devices to assist attain one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can obtain pricey.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to start utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a terrific system used by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own site and utilize the system as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, more style flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a website similar to Substack. However, if you have your very own site currently, you can likewise make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your web site customers right to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to allow individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing channels to get your newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
Exactly how to start making use of beehiiv email marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that wants a system that enables them to send customized newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, startup, or material creator, you must seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to get going and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you actually wind up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indicator that people enjoy reading your stuff.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial 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 permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and much more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply starting (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise select your brand name design and colors to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed info on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Begin creating”, “Articles”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Layout” and” Analyze”. And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Begin creating is where you create and release newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down right into segments), Grow is where you have accessibility 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 e-newsletter with ads, Layout is where you make your newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you wish to discuss, I suggest just going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin creating”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and user-friendly user interface for composing.
Once you begin creating, you can optimize headings, include links, and style your content how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for different kinds of content like videos, web links, pictures, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is additionally regularly releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a lot much more content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing 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 adjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, image layouts, and much more. I’m not going to go through ever solitary thing you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Simply try out the platform totally free and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of amazing features that make it an excellent publishing system for any kind of newsletter maker.
Here are several of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Why Is Beehiiv Better Than Substack
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it super simple to create and send emails. I discussed above several of the important things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The thing to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you want) survive a site. Think of it as a web site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a place where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, give you a web site. However, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or via embed forms.
If you currently have a website, and want people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various choices– a complete size, a fixed width, and a slim installed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can locate the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise a choice for attribution monitoring if you intend to forward UTM criteria for tracking functions– rather neat.
However, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working on updates for these, yet I discussed a couple of concerns I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your listing to onward your emails to close friends and colleagues and if they get other individuals to sign up for your list, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I’ve appear several e-newsletter firms offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you one more method for expanding your e-mail checklist.
However, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this write-up.
Costs memberships
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Registration earnings is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be really profitable relying on what your newsletter needs to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that creates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of the things I love about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and simple the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client count.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you need to get started and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom domain name, surveys, and access to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 per month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 each month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit choice for numerous users.
I’m unsure exactly how the device economics work with this, yet beehiiv is certainly cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
- Easy to set up and begin sending out newsletters absolutely free
- Clean and contemporary client analytics
- Great deals of versatility with e-mail styles.
- Referral program feature Why Is Beehiiv Better Than Substack
- Site hosting
- Develop premium choices to generate income from
- Surveys
To be sincere, I have not seen another newsletter platform that has had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
But certainly, I don’t want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the cons I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around including personalized fonts
I make use of Webflow as my web site structure platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to go in too much detail why I enjoy Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to learn more.
Today, there truly is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site apart from using an iframe embed. I directly do not like utilizing iframe’s since they have a tendency to reduce my web site a bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s really visible when you get on a sluggish internet connection. But I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not utilize a normal Webflow form (which I enjoy making use of). There are ways around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly simply include additional prices that I do not require. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I believed I would state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will ultimately develop a better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict
Overall, beehiiv is a fantastic option for any person looking to study the world of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform far surpasses numerous that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly affordable wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I do not create review blog posts frequently. I just do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a pal.
I wish you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.