Building a newsletter shouldn’t seem like a second job. You’ve currently got sufficient on your plate managing content, clients, perhaps even a full time job. I was reading one of my favored e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked on it and promptly started tearing up. Can You Use Beehiiv For Free…
I had not been sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a full-time designer is tough. I’m frequently obtaining pitched different devices and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological since I invested the last six months trying different email and e-newsletter systems to aid build my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some great alternatives for composing newsletters. However I couldn’t discover one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The problem with several existing newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me completely customize my e-newsletter styles, makes it very very easy to write and send out e-mails, and offers me tools that assist me evaluate metrics and obtain even more customers.
I assume I’ve lastly located the ideal device.
Yet, I understand beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually watched for a modern e-newsletter system for rather a long time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it concerned finally launching my e-newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few various other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And finally, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous newsletter creators admire prominent e-newsletters with millions of subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have wonderful web content, tons of customers, and a clever referral program that enables them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I took place a quest to figure out exactly how these large e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more customers? How do they produce a newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this device truly understand newsletter creation and development.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were a few of the very first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I knew this was mosting likely to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker development.
Due to the fact that, any kind of creator knows, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the right newsletter stack (that scales) frequently implies making use of multiple different devices to help achieve one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up references. It can get expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was free to start utilizing, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to style, create, send out, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the popular e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv intends to assist creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately choose it as my e-newsletter system of option.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a fantastic platform utilized by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own internet site and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally offers you an internet site similar to Substack. But, if you have your own site already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your web site subscribers directly to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a device like Performance to allow people to sign up for your e-newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to take advantage of different marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
Just how to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content maker that desires a platform that enables them to send personalized newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
The most effective newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, start-up, or material creator, you ought to seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to get started and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your list.
If you really end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good indication that people love reading your stuff.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (totally free) Launch plan provides you whatever you require to start and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 34.40/month) provides you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, surveys, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76.80/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are fairly charitable in my point of view.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a terrific Kit choice for numerous customers.
I’m not sure just how the system business economics deal with this, however beehiiv is definitely less costly (at the moment) than what it can be.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you accessibility to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, development customization, analytics, external embed types, and more. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting (or for those looking for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your first newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll then create a name and link for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding process, you’ll additionally select your brand name design and colors to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described details on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start composing”, “Messages”, “Audience”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Evaluate”. And at the very lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your major control center (screenshot over), Beginning composing is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and break them down right into sectors), Grow 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 e-newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you create your newsletter landing page and post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start creating, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you intend to blog about, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking “Start writing”.
You can tweak your template and designing later– concentrate on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and easy to use interface for composing.
When you begin writing, you can enhance headings, add links, and design your web content how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of alternatives for various kinds of material like videos, web links, photos, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is likewise continuously launching item feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a lot extra material features relying on when you’re reading this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background shades, borders, spacing, font styles, photo formats, and more. I’m not mosting likely to experience ever solitary point you can maximize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Simply experiment with the platform absolutely free and see it on your own!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of incredible features that make it an excellent publishing system for any kind of newsletter creator.
Right here are a few of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it very simple to create and send e-mails. I stated over a few of the things you can do with your settings and e-mail style so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely among the much better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive a website. Think about it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where people can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the free one, give you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a customized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade 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 right from your beehiiv site or through embed forms.
If you already have a site, and desire people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed type. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have 3 different choices– a full size, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s also an alternative for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to ahead UTM criteria for tracking purposes– pretty cool.
However, there are a couple of features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the team is working with updates for these, but I discussed a few concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your list to ahead your emails to good friends and associates and if they get other people to subscribe to your listing, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I have actually appear numerous e-newsletter business offer incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– offering you an additional opportunity for growing your e-mail checklist.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs subscriptions
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership profits is most definitely a beast of its very own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be very financially rewarding relying on what your newsletter has to use. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred costs newsletter that produces millions in income a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I like concerning beehiiv is just how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter increase is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
- Easy to establish and start sending out e-newsletters free of charge
- Clean and modern client analytics
- Great deals of versatility with email layouts.
- Referral program feature
- Website hosting
- Create premium options to generate income from
- Polls
To be honest, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter system that has had the ability to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet obviously, I do not wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to discuss some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the cons I have actually discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and Can You Use Beehiiv For Free
- Limitations around including personalized typefaces
I utilize Webflow as my site structure platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to go in too much information why I enjoy Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow evaluation if you ‘d like to discover more.
Right now, there truly is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as utilizing iframe’s since they tend to decrease my site a bit. Whenever a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s very visible when you get on a sluggish internet link. However I can navigate that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not use a normal Webflow kind (which I like utilizing). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier yet that would certainly simply include extra expenses that I do not need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I believed I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the cons here. I’m also confident that Webflow will eventually create a much better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict: Can You Use Beehiiv For Free
On the whole, beehiiv is a wonderful service for any individual wanting to study the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform much outweighs lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively low-cost of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is uncommon. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I do not create review messages often. I just do when I really use the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a pal.
I hope you discovered some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.