Building an e-newsletter should not seem like a sideline. You’ve currently got enough on your plate juggling content, customers, perhaps even a full time job. I read one of my preferred e-mail 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 immediately began wrecking. Beehiiv Welcome Sequence…
I had not been certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m frequently obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological because I invested the last 6 months trying out various email and e-newsletter systems to aid build my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific choices for composing e-newsletters. Yet I could not discover one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The issue with lots of existing newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter designs, makes it extremely simple to write and send out e-mails, and provides me tools that aid me analyze metrics and get more customers.
I assume I’ve finally discovered the appropriate device.
But, I understand beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact ideal for you.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months back, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a modern-day newsletter system for quite some time now. I’ve postponed hard when it concerned finally releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a couple of other indie systems. Then, Substack. And finally, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure many e-newsletter creators appreciate prominent newsletters with millions of clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have wonderful web content, lots of clients, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get back at much more subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to figure out exactly how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they develop an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to answer all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool actually understand newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few 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 different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Due to the fact that, any kind of creator understands, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the ideal e-newsletter pile (that ranges) often means making use of multiple various devices to assist attain one goal– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to establish references. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was free to begin making use of, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it very easy to design, create, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the well-known newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help creators launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately select it as my newsletter system of option.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic system utilized by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your very own web site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a website comparable to Substack. However, if you have your very own website currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your site customers straight to your beehiiv e-mail listing. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable people to register for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to utilize different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack option.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that wants a system that enables them to send customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to develop and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or web content maker, you must seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to get started and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you actually wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a good indicator that people like reading your stuff.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you require to get started and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 34.40/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, customized domain, polls, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76.80/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the very same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for several users.
I’m uncertain exactly how the system business economics work with this, however beehiiv is certainly cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you access to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, outside embed kinds, and a lot more. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those seeking a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying clients?”, and much more.
You’ll after that create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise select your brand name colors and design to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
Once you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed details on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Beginning creating”, “Posts”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Generate income from”, “Design” and” Examine”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Begin creating is where you produce and release e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your subscribers are (and damage them down into sectors), Grow 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Design is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and message template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have an idea you intend to write about, I recommend simply going to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– focus on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and user-friendly user interface for composing.
When you begin creating, you can maximize headings, add links, and style your material how you such as.
beehiiv offers you lots of alternatives for various types of content like video clips, web links, pictures, and more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise constantly launching item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a whole lot a lot more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to create your email template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, font styles, image layouts, and more. I’m not going to go through ever before single thing you can optimize with your email template because it’s a lot. Just check out the platform absolutely free and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a great publishing platform for any newsletter creator.
Here are several of the crucial features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it super simple to compose and send e-mails. I pointed out over a few of the things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll save you some added analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) live on a site. Think about it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, offer you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a personalized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is necessary. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter directly from your beehiiv website or with embed kinds.
If you already have a web site, and want individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll have to utilize an embed form. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various alternatives– a full width, a repaired width, and a slim installed. I directly make use of the slim installed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for attribution tracking if you intend to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– pretty cool.
However, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the team is dealing with updates for these, yet I stated a couple of concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your listing to ahead your emails to friends and associates and if they obtain other individuals to register for your list, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever form you want. I have actually appear numerous e-newsletter companies provide benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you another opportunity for expanding your e-mail listing.
However, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to an extra exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this post.
Premium registrations
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership earnings is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” issues of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be really financially rewarding relying on what your e-newsletter has to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that generates millions in profits a year just by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among things I enjoy about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber matter.
You get access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client matter rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
- Easy to establish and start sending out e-newsletters free of charge
- Clean and modern-day subscriber analytics
- Lots of versatility with email designs.
- Referral program feature
- Web site hosting
- Develop costs choices to monetize
- Surveys
To be truthful, I have not seen another newsletter system that has been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet naturally, I don’t wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I have actually located while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and Beehiiv Welcome Sequence
- Limitations around including personalized fonts
I utilize Webflow as my web site building system of selection (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive information why I like Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to learn more.
Today, there actually is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t like using iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to slow down my website a little bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the page. It’s very visible when you get on a slow net connection. Yet I can get around that.
The major complaint I have is that I can not utilize a normal Webflow type (which I love using). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier but that would certainly simply include extra expenses that I do not need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the cons right here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will at some point produce a much better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict: Beehiiv Welcome Sequence
In general, beehiiv is a wonderful solution for anybody looking to study the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this e-newsletter platform far exceeds numerous that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively cheap wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have a 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 review posts often. I only do when I really make use of the device myself and would recommend it to a buddy.
I wish you discovered some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great system for you.