I read among my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and immediately began destroying. Working at Beehiiv…
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m typically obtaining pitched various devices and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional since I invested the last 6 months checking out various email and e-newsletter platforms to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great choices for composing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t locate one that made me give a definite “yes”.
The problem with many existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter layouts, makes it very simple to write and send out e-mails, and provides me devices that help me examine metrics and obtain even more customers.
I assume I’ve ultimately located the best device.
However, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually appropriate 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 layout, compose, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m going to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately go with it as my newsletter system of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I mistakenly came across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter system for fairly a long time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it pertained to finally launching my newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure several newsletter makers admire popular newsletters with numerous customers– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have terrific content, tons of clients, and a smart referral program that enables them to get back at extra clients.
So, I went on a quest to find out how these large newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get even more subscribers? How do they create a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address every one of my inquiries. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this tool truly comprehend e-newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on creator growth.
Because, any type of maker understands, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the ideal e-newsletter pile (that ranges) often implies using several various devices to assist achieve one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one platform to set up references. It can get costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was free to start utilizing, 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, of course there is. Substack is a fantastic system utilized by countless independent writers. With Substack you get your own web site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own site currently, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your website clients directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to permit people to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to take advantage of different marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
Exactly how to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that desires a system that enables them to send out custom-made e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
The most effective newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or content creator, you must seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to start and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you actually end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly an excellent indicator that individuals like reviewing your things.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and much more. It’s a really generous offering for those simply starting (or for those searching for a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll likewise choose your brand design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described info on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start writing”, “Posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Examine”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can see who your clients are (and damage them down into sections), Expand is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Style is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just beginning, and have an idea you wish to blog about, I advise just going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– concentrate on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and easy to use interface for writing.
As soon as you begin composing, you can optimize headings, add web links, and style your content how you such as.
beehiiv gives you tons of options for different types of content like video clips, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot much more content features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your email template and readjust some setups.
Here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, include 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 layout.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, typefaces, picture layouts, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever before solitary point you can optimize with your e-mail template because it’s a lot. Simply check out the system free of charge and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a terrific posting system for any newsletter creator.
Below are several of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder Working at Beehiiv
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely easy to create and send e-mails. I discussed over some of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the far better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive a web site. Think about it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, give you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a personalized domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or via embed kinds.
If you currently have a web site, and want people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed form. This is what I make use of on this internet site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various alternatives– a complete size, a repaired size, and a slim installed. I personally use the slim embed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for attribution tracking if you want to ahead UTM specifications for tracking purposes– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the team is dealing with updates for these, yet I discussed a few problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your listing to onward your e-mails to friends and associates and if they obtain other individuals to subscribe to your listing, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever type you desire. I’ve seem lots of e-newsletter firms provide benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you one more method for expanding your e-mail listing.
However, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this short article.
Premium memberships
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration profits is absolutely a beast of its own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be very profitable depending upon what your newsletter needs to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the things I love concerning beehiiv is exactly how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count go up is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you require to begin and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 39/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and accessibility to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of priority support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly generous in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit option for numerous individuals.
I’m not sure how the unit business economics work with this, but beehiiv is certainly less costly (right now) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every platform, it has its pros and cons. Right here are several of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of selection:
- Easy to establish and start sending newsletters for free
- Clean and modern customer analytics
- Great deals of versatility with email layouts.
- Referral program feature Working at Beehiiv
- Web site hosting
- Create premium choices to generate income from
- Surveys
To be sincere, I haven’t seen another e-newsletter platform that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But certainly, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the cons I’ve found while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv
- Limitations around adding customized fonts
I utilize Webflow as my web site building system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to enter way too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you ‘d like to learn more.
Today, there truly is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they have a tendency to decrease my website a bit. Each time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s very visible when you get on a slow net link. But I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow form (which I enjoy using). There are means around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would simply add extra costs that I do not require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I thought I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the cons below. I’m also confident that Webflow will at some point produce a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is a wonderful option for any individual aiming to study the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter platform much surpasses many that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly inexpensive wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not write testimonial messages typically. I just do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a friend.
I hope you located some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.