Building an e-newsletter shouldn’t seem like a second job. You’ve currently got enough on your plate managing web content, clients, maybe even a full time gig. I read one of my favorite email newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and quickly began tearing up. Beehiiv Vs EmailOctopus…
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time creator is difficult. I’m frequently obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last six months trying different email and e-newsletter platforms to assist develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific alternatives for composing e-newsletters. But I could not locate one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The concern with many existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me fully customize my newsletter designs, makes it very very easy to create and send out emails, and offers me tools that help me examine metrics and get more subscribers.
I think I’ve ultimately found the best tool.
However, I understand beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really appropriate for you.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern newsletter platform for fairly a long time currently. I’ve hesitated hard when it involved lastly launching my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain many e-newsletter creators appreciate prominent e-newsletters with numerous clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a lot. They have terrific web content, tons of subscribers, and a brilliant referral program that allows them to get back at extra subscribers.
So, I took place a hunt to determine exactly how these big newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to address every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool truly comprehend e-newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the very first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Due to the fact that, any kind of developer understands, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the right e-newsletter pile (that scales) often suggests using several different tools to aid accomplish one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one platform to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can get expensive.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was cost-free to begin making use of, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to style, write, send, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous staff members at the popular newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist developers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to clarify my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I love (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally opt for it as my newsletter platform of option.
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 terrific system utilized by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own internet site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one option for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
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 design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own internet site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your site clients straight to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to register for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the versatility to leverage various marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack choice.
Just how to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that desires a platform that enables them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a web site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or content creator, you should seriously taking into consideration checking out beehiiv. It’s entirely complimentary to get started and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you really end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a good sign that individuals enjoy reading your things.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you everything you require to start and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 34.40/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain name, polls, and access to costs registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76.80/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with addition of top priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my opinion.
For example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 each month for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit choice for lots of individuals.
I’m not sure just how the system business economics work with this, but beehiiv is definitely cheaper (right now) than what it can be.
Enroll in a free plan
The primary step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, outside embed types, and extra. It’s a very generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those looking for a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s 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 likewise select your brand name colors and design to see to it your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined information on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start creating”, “Articles”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Design” and” Assess”. And at the very lower you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Begin composing is where you develop and publish newsletters, Messages is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can watch who your subscribers are (and damage them down into segments), Expand 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, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin stuff.
Composing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting out, and have an idea you intend to discuss, I suggest simply going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and straightforward user interface for creating.
When you start composing, you can maximize headings, add links, and style your content just how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for various kinds of web content like videos, links, photos, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is also continuously releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a lot much more content features depending upon when you read this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, provide it a description, add your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time subscribers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture layouts, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever single point you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just check out the platform free of cost and see it on your own!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a fantastic posting platform for any e-newsletter developer.
Below are several of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it extremely easy to create and send e-mails. I mentioned above a few of the important things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll save you some additional analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely among the much better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on a site. Consider it as a site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, give you a site. However, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a custom-made domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or through embed types.
If you already have a site, and desire people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed kind. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various choices– a complete width, a taken care of width, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an alternative for attribution monitoring if you intend to forward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– quite cool.
However, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is dealing with updates for these, however I stated a few worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages area below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can encourage existing subscribers on your listing to ahead your emails to friends and coworkers and if they get other individuals to register for your checklist, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I have actually appear lots of e-newsletter business provide rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your subscribers into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you another avenue for growing your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this short article.
Premium memberships
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership revenue is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be really lucrative depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to use. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent premium e-newsletter that produces millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the things I like about beehiiv is just how clean and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer count.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on just how your e-newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer count rise is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are a few of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while making use of 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 e-newsletters for free
- Clean and contemporary client analytics
- Great deals of flexibility with email styles.
- Referral program feature
- Site hosting
- Develop premium alternatives to monetize
- Surveys
To be honest, I have not seen another newsletter platform that has actually been able to package all of these features with each other so well.
However naturally, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the cons I have actually found while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and Beehiiv Vs EmailOctopus
- Limitations around adding custom-made font styles
I make use of Webflow as my internet site building system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much information why I like Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow review if you ‘d like to learn more.
Today, there truly is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than using an iframe embed. I personally don’t like making use of iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to decrease my web site a little bit. Every time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s very obvious when you’re on a slow internet connection. Yet I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can not make use of a regular Webflow form (which I like making use of). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would just include extra costs that I don’t require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the disadvantages below. I’m also confident that Webflow will ultimately develop a far better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion: Beehiiv Vs EmailOctopus
On the whole, beehiiv is a great solution for anybody seeking to dive into the world of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter system much outweighs several that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise rather economical of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t write review blog posts usually. I only do when I really make use of the tool myself and would recommend it to a close friend.
I hope you located some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.