Building an e-newsletter shouldn’t feel like a second job. You’ve already got sufficient on your plate handling web content, clients, perhaps even a full-time gig. I was reading one of my favored 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 instantly started destroying. Prequel Beehiiv…
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full time creator is tough. I’m typically obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last six months experimenting with different e-mail and e-newsletter systems to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great options for composing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with many existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me completely customize my newsletter styles, makes it extremely simple to compose and send out e-mails, and gives me devices that assist me analyze metrics and obtain more clients.
I assume I have actually lastly located the ideal device.
But, I understand beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months earlier, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for rather some time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it concerned ultimately releasing my e-newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure numerous newsletter creators admire preferred e-newsletters with numerous subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a lot. They have wonderful web content, lots of clients, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get back at extra subscribers.
So, I took place a search to find out exactly how these big e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they create a newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this device really recognize newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I understood this was going to be a various newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer growth.
Due to the fact that, any type of designer knows, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the best newsletter stack (that scales) typically means using multiple different tools to aid achieve one goal– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one platform to establish references. It can obtain pricey.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to start utilizing, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it easy to style, create, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former employees at the well-known newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this article, I’m going to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally select it as my e-newsletter system of option.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific platform made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own internet site and make use of the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own internet site currently, you can also use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site clients straight to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable people to subscribe to your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to leverage various marketing channels to get your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
Just how to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that desires a system that allows them to send out custom-made newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media company, startup, or web content maker, you ought to seriously thinking about trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely free to get going and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you really wind up having to spend for beehiiv it’s probably a good indicator that individuals like reading your things.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan gives you whatever you need to get started and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 34.40/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, surveys, and accessibility to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76.80/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for numerous users.
I’m uncertain just how the system business economics deal with this, but beehiiv is definitely less costly (presently) than what it can be.
Enroll in a free plan
The very first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance modification, analytics, outside embed kinds, and much more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll after that produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site URL might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally choose your brand design and colors to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed details on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning composing”, “Articles”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Generate income from”, “Layout” and” Examine”. And at the really lower you’ll see the setups option.
Dashboard is your primary control center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you produce and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your customers are (and break them down right into sections), 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 newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you intend to cover, I advise just mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Begin creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and easy to use user interface for composing.
When you start writing, you can maximize headings, include links, and style your content how you like.
beehiiv gives you lots of choices for different sorts of material like videos, web links, photos, and a lot more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise frequently releasing item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a great deal more material features depending upon when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo, activate or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo formats, and more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before solitary thing you can enhance with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just check out the system for free and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a terrific posting platform for any type of e-newsletter creator.
Below are several of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it very very easy to write and send out emails. I discussed above a few of the things you can do with your setups and email design so I’ll save you some added analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the much better email editors I’ve ever written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive an internet site. Think about it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and an area where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, offer you an internet site. However, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a personalized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining subscribers is important. Besides, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or with embed forms.
If you currently have an internet site, and desire individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed type. This is what I make use of on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three various options– a complete size, a repaired size, and a slim embed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to ahead UTM parameters for tracking functions– rather cool.
However, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is dealing with updates for these, but I discussed a couple of concerns I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can motivate existing customers on your listing to forward your emails to good friends and coworkers and if they get other people to sign up for your checklist, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever form you want. I’ve appear lots of newsletter business give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another avenue for growing your e-mail listing.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium registrations
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership income is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be really profitable relying on what your newsletter has to offer. For example, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the important things I love concerning beehiiv is just how tidy and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that client matter rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Naturally, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Below are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of choice:
- Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters for free
- Clean and modern-day subscriber analytics
- Great deals of flexibility with email designs.
- Referral program feature
- Web site hosting
- Create premium alternatives to generate income from
- Polls
To be straightforward, I have not seen one more newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet naturally, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and Prequel Beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom fonts
I utilize Webflow as my web site structure system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter too much detail why I like Webflow a lot however you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to discover more.
Now, there actually is no other method I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as making use of iframe’s because they have a tendency to reduce my internet site a bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s really noticeable when you get on a slow-moving internet connection. Yet I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can’t utilize a regular Webflow type (which I enjoy utilizing). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just include added costs that I don’t need. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I thought I would state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the disadvantages below. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will eventually develop a much better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought: Prequel Beehiiv
Overall, beehiiv is a terrific remedy for anyone wanting to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform far outweighs lots of that are currently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly economical 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 subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t write evaluation messages commonly. I just do when I actually make use of the device myself and would certainly suggest it to a buddy.
I hope you located some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a good system for you.