Developing a newsletter should not feel like a sideline. You’ve already obtained sufficient on your plate managing material, clients, perhaps even a full-time gig. I read one of my favored email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and quickly started wrecking. Beehiiv For Food Writers…
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent maker is tough. I’m usually obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months trying out various email and newsletter systems to aid build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some fantastic alternatives for composing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t find one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The concern with several existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me fully customize my e-newsletter layouts, makes it super simple to create and send e-mails, and offers me tools that help me evaluate metrics and get even more customers.
I think I have actually ultimately found the ideal tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually ideal for you.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern-day newsletter platform for rather a long time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it involved ultimately introducing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I make sure several e-newsletter makers appreciate popular e-newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have great content, tons of clients, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get even more subscribers.
So, I took place a hunt to identify how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they create a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that constructed this tool actually understand newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the very first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer growth.
Because, any designer knows, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And discovering the right newsletter pile (that scales) often means making use of numerous various tools to assist attain one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up recommendations. It can obtain expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these points in one system, and it was complimentary to start making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it easy to style, write, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous staff members at the well-known newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist developers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to finally go with it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
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 great platform utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your own internet site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise offers you an internet site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own website already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I use) to send your site subscribers directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable people to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to utilize different marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack alternative.
Just how to start using beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content developer that desires a system that permits them to send custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or material maker, you should seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s totally complimentary to get started and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you really wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent sign that individuals like reading your stuff.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (totally free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you need to get going and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 34.40/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain, polls, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76.80/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are rather charitable in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a terrific Kit choice for many customers.
I’m unsure how the unit business economics work on this, yet beehiiv is most definitely less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, offer you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement modification, analytics, external embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting (or for those trying to find a new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you utilized?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll after that create a name and URL for your newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise select your brand name colors and design to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed details on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning composing”, “Messages”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Evaluate”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your major nerve center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you create and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into sections), Expand is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run ads, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with ads, Design is where you make your newsletter landing page and message template, Assess 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 easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you intend to discuss, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Start composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and straightforward interface for composing.
Once you begin writing, you can enhance headings, add links, and style your content exactly how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for different sorts of content like videos, web links, images, and more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise frequently launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
As soon as you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your e-mail template and change some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, add your logo, activate or off a welcome email to first time customers, and much more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background shades, borders, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and much more. I’m not going to experience ever solitary thing you can enhance with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Simply check out the platform for free and see it on your own!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of impressive features that make it a terrific posting platform for any type of e-newsletter developer.
Right here are some of the essential features you can find with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it extremely easy to compose and send e-mails. I mentioned above a few of the important things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll save you some additional reading.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely one of the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive on an internet site. Think of it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous concerns of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, provide you an internet site. However, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or with embed types.
If you already have an internet site, and desire people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to utilize an embed kind. This is what I make use of on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have 3 different options– a full size, a repaired size, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution tracking if you wish to ahead UTM parameters for tracking purposes– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working with updates for these, but I stated a couple of concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your listing to onward your e-mails to friends and colleagues and if they obtain other people to register for your checklist, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I have actually seem lots of e-newsletter companies offer benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you one more opportunity for expanding your e-mail listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this write-up.
Costs subscriptions
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration profits is most definitely a monster of its very own. If you’re searching for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” problems of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be really lucrative depending on what your newsletter has to offer. For example, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year just by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Data analytics
One of the important things I like regarding beehiiv is how tidy and basic the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Obviously, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
- Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters free of charge
- Tidy and contemporary customer analytics
- Lots of versatility with email layouts.
- Referral program feature
- Internet site hosting
- Produce costs choices to generate income from
- Surveys
To be straightforward, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter system that has had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
Yet of course, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the cons I have actually found while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and Beehiiv For Food Writers
- Limitations around adding custom typefaces
I utilize Webflow as my internet site structure platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in excessive information why I like Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow evaluation if you wish to discover more.
Now, there truly is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I directly do not like making use of iframe’s because they often tend to decrease my internet site a bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the page. It’s extremely recognizable when you’re on a slow net connection. But I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not utilize a routine Webflow kind (which I like making use of). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier but that would just add added costs that I don’t need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much surpass the disadvantages here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will at some point develop a far better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict: Beehiiv For Food Writers
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent service for anyone wanting to dive into the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system much outweighs several that are currently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively inexpensive of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your list is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not compose review messages often. I only do when I really utilize the tool myself and would recommend it to a good friend.
I wish you located some clarity on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.