Building a newsletter shouldn’t feel like a sideline. You’ve currently got sufficient on your plate handling content, customers, perhaps even a full-time job. I read one of my favored email e-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. Is Beehiiv Free…
I wasn’t sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a permanent developer is tough. I’m frequently getting pitched different tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional since I invested the last 6 months trying out various email and newsletter systems to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful alternatives for composing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me offer a guaranteed “yes”.
The problem with lots of existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter system that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter layouts, makes it very simple to write and send out e-mails, and provides me devices that help me evaluate metrics and get even more customers.
I believe I’ve finally found the ideal tool.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve watched for a contemporary newsletter platform for fairly time now. I’ve put things off hard when it concerned ultimately introducing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up using beehiiv.
I’m sure many e-newsletter developers admire prominent newsletters with countless clients– I recognize I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have terrific web content, lots of customers, and a creative referral program that permits them to get back at extra clients.
So, I went on a hunt to determine how these huge newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more clients? How do they create an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that constructed this tool really understand newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the 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 various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on developer development.
Due to the fact that, any type of designer knows, you require development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the ideal newsletter pile (that scales) often implies utilizing several various tools to assist accomplish one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish recommendations. It can get expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was totally free to start using, 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, create, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former workers at the famous e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help developers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly select it as my newsletter system of selection.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a terrific system made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own website and use the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. 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 customers to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own site currently, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your website customers directly to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow people to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the adaptability to leverage various marketing channels to obtain your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv an excellent Substack option.
How to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that desires a system that allows them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media business, startup, or material creator, you must seriously considering trying beehiiv. It’s completely complimentary to get started and you only pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you actually end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a good sign that individuals love reviewing your things.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you whatever you need to start and grow your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 34.40/month) offers you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, customized domain, polls, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76.80/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather charitable in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for several customers.
I’m not sure how the system economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is certainly more affordable (right now) than what it can be.
Register for a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you access 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 out (or for those trying to find a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll then create a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally select your brand name colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your main control panel, you’ll see every one 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 choices for “Start composing”, “Articles”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Examine”. And at the extremely lower you’ll see the setups option.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you create and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down right into sectors), Expand is where you have access 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, Style is where you design your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you want to write about, I suggest just going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking “Begin creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and easy to use user interface for creating.
Once you begin composing, you can enhance headings, include links, and style your web content how you like.
beehiiv provides you lots of alternatives for different sorts of web content like video clips, links, pictures, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is also continuously releasing item feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a great deal extra content features depending on when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, include your logo, activate or off a welcome e-mail to very first time clients, and a lot more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history colors, borders, spacing, font styles, image styles, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before single thing you can enhance with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Just experiment with the platform for free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of incredible features that make it a fantastic posting system for any kind of newsletter maker.
Right here are a few 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 super easy to write and send out e-mails. I mentioned over a few of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail layout so I’ll spare you some added analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely one of the better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) reside on an internet site. Think about it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, give you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a customized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can register for your newsletter straight from your beehiiv internet site or with embed kinds.
If you currently have a website, and desire people to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this web site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different alternatives– a full width, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can discover the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise an option for attribution tracking if you intend to forward UTM parameters for tracking objectives– pretty neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the team is dealing with updates for these, but I discussed a couple of problems I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a service for creating a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your checklist to ahead your e-mails to close friends and associates and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your list, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you desire. I have actually appear numerous e-newsletter companies offer rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– offering you another method for growing your e-mail listing.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real fans. Membership earnings is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying subscribers. This can be really profitable depending on what your newsletter has to provide. For example, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
One of the important things I love regarding beehiiv is how clean and simple the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and subscriber count.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that customer count increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pros and cons
Naturally, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are a few of the pros and cons I’ve personally experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of choice:
- Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters totally free
- Tidy and modern customer analytics
- Great deals of versatility with email layouts.
- Referral program feature
- Internet site hosting
- Develop premium alternatives to generate income from
- Surveys
To be honest, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter platform that has had the ability to package all of these features with each other so well.
But obviously, I do not want to be biased so I’m going to mention some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are some of the disadvantages I’ve found while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and Is Beehiiv Free
- Limitations around adding personalized font styles
I utilize Webflow as my website structure system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much information why I love Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow testimonial if you would love to find out more.
Now, there truly is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site other than using an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as utilizing iframe’s because they tend to decrease my website a bit. Each time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s very noticeable when you get on a slow web link. Yet I can get around that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can not utilize a regular Webflow kind (which I like utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier but that would just include extra prices that I do not require. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con however I thought I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros much surpass the cons below. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will eventually produce a far better way to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought: Is Beehiiv Free
Overall, beehiiv is a fantastic option for any person wanting to study the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter platform much 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 fairly economical for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not write review articles commonly. I only do when I actually make use of the tool myself and would suggest it to a close friend.
I wish you found some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.