Developing a newsletter shouldn’t feel like a sideline. You have actually currently obtained enough on your plate juggling material, customers, perhaps even a full time gig. I was reading among my favored e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and instantly started destroying. Can I Use Beehiiv For Free…
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m frequently getting pitched different tools and solutions that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last six months checking out various e-mail and newsletter systems to help construct my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great options for creating e-newsletters. However I could not locate one that made me provide a certain “yes”.
The concern with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me fully personalize my newsletter designs, makes it very simple to compose and send e-mails, and gives me devices that assist me examine metrics and get more customers.
I believe I’ve lastly discovered the best device.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right for you.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter system for quite time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it concerned lastly introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up utilizing beehiiv.
I make certain lots of e-newsletter creators look up to preferred e-newsletters with millions of clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a lot. They have great content, lots of customers, and a brilliant referral program that permits them to get back at a lot more clients.
So, I took place a hunt to identify how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more subscribers? How do they create a newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that built this device truly understand e-newsletter development and development.” I examined who these makers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the very first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I understood this was mosting likely to be a different e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on designer development.
Because, any kind of maker understands, you require development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the appropriate newsletter stack (that ranges) frequently implies making use of several various devices to help attain one objective– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up referrals. It can get expensive.
So when I figured out beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was free to start making use of, 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 simple to layout, write, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous workers at the popular e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to aid designers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to finally choose it as my newsletter system of option.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a great system used by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own internet site and make use of the system as your all-in-one solution for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the benefit of much better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv likewise offers you a website similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your own website currently, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your site subscribers directly to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit people to register for your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to leverage different marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
How to begin using beehiiv e-mail marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content creator that desires a system that allows them to send out customized newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or content developer, you must seriously considering experimenting with beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to get going and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your list.
If you really end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great sign that people like reading your stuff.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you need to start and grow your newsletter (as much as 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 34.40/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom domain, polls, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76.80/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for lots of individuals.
I’m uncertain just how the device business economics work on this, however beehiiv is definitely less expensive (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 “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you access to web site hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, external embed forms, and a lot more. It’s a really charitable offering for those simply starting (or for those trying to find a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll also pick your brand name colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have detailed info on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning writing”, “Posts”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Generate income from”, “Design” and” Assess”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot over), Start writing is where you create and publish newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into sections), Expand is where you have accessibility to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with ads, Design is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start creating, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you want to discuss, I advise simply going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start writing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– focus on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and easy to use interface for creating.
As soon as you begin writing, you can maximize headings, include web links, and design your material just how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for different kinds of content like videos, web links, pictures, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously launching item feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a whole lot a lot more material features relying on when you read this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to create your email template and adjust some setups.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, picture styles, and more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever solitary thing you can optimize with your email template since it’s a whole lot. Just try out the platform free of charge and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of fantastic features that make it a fantastic publishing system for any kind of e-newsletter designer.
Here are several of the crucial features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it super easy to create and send out emails. I discussed over some of things you can do with your settings and e-mail layout so I’ll save you some added reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Website hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you want) reside on a website. Think about it as a website for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, provide you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan places your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom-made domain name to eliminate 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, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv site or through embed kinds.
If you currently have a site, and want people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various alternatives– a complete size, a fixed size, and a slim installed. I directly utilize the slim embed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an alternative for acknowledgment tracking if you want to ahead UTM specifications for tracking functions– rather cool.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the team is dealing with updates for these, but I mentioned a couple of worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing clients on your listing to onward your emails to pals and coworkers and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your list, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever form you want. I’ve seem numerous e-newsletter companies give rewards in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you one more avenue for expanding your email listing.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this post.
Premium registrations
They state all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership revenue is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” issues of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be very rewarding depending upon what your newsletter needs to offer. For example, Trends.co is a popular premium e-newsletter that produces millions in income a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Information analytics
One of the things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is how tidy and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that customer count go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are some of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
- Easy to establish and begin sending e-newsletters totally free
- Tidy and modern client analytics
- Lots of flexibility with email designs.
- Referral program feature
- Internet site hosting
- Develop costs alternatives to monetize
- Polls
To be truthful, I have not seen one more e-newsletter system that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
But certainly, I don’t intend to be biased so I’m going to mention some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are several of the cons I have actually located while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and Can I Use Beehiiv For Free
- Limitations around including customized font styles
I utilize Webflow as my web site structure system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much information why I love Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow testimonial if you would love to find out more.
Today, there actually is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not such as making use of iframe’s since they have a tendency to reduce my website a little bit. Each time a web page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the web page. It’s very noticeable when you get on a sluggish web link. But I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not make use of a normal Webflow form (which I love utilizing). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would simply add added prices that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I thought I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the disadvantages right here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point develop a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict: Can I Use Beehiiv For Free
In general, beehiiv is a fantastic option for anybody aiming to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The performance of this newsletter system much 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 also fairly cheap for what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist 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 don’t write review articles typically. I only do when I really make use of the device myself and would recommend it to a buddy.
I hope you found some clearness on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.