Building a newsletter should not feel like a sideline. You have actually already got sufficient on your plate juggling web content, customers, maybe even a full time job. I was reading among my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo design for the very first time. I clicked it and immediately started tearing up. Beehiiv Cup of Coffee…
I had not been certain why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time maker is difficult. I’m frequently getting pitched different tools and solutions that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional due to the fact that I spent the last six months trying various e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to help build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great choices for creating newsletters. However I could not find one that made me provide a guaranteed “yes”.
The concern with many existing newsletter systems is that they don’t feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter platform that lets me completely personalize my e-newsletter designs, makes it extremely very easy to compose and send out e-mails, and offers me devices that aid me analyze metrics and get more subscribers.
I think I’ve ultimately found the best device.
Yet, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really ideal for you.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually watched for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for rather a long time now. I’ve hesitated hard when it involved finally releasing my e-newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of newsletter designers look up to popular e-newsletters with numerous clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a whole lot. They have wonderful web content, tons of clients, and a creative referral program that allows them to get even more subscribers.
So, I took place a search to figure out exactly how these large newsletters established their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address all of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool actually comprehend e-newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were a few of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a different newsletter platform. One that’s focused on developer development.
Since, any kind of designer knows, you need development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the ideal newsletter stack (that scales) commonly suggests using numerous different devices to aid achieve one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to establish references. It can obtain expensive.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one system, and it was cost-free to start using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter platform that makes it very easy to layout, compose, send, promote, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former employees at the well-known newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this post, I’m going to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately select it as my newsletter platform of option.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a fantastic system utilized by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own internet site and utilize the system as your all-in-one option for sending out emails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a website comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own site already, you can additionally use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your site customers right to your beehiiv email listing. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit individuals to sign up for your newsletter directly from Twitter.
This provides you the adaptability to take advantage of various marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content designer that desires a system that permits them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right devices 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 maker, you ought to seriously considering checking out beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to start and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you really wind up having to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indication that people enjoy reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you everything you require to begin and expand your newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 34.40/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, 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 support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly generous in my point of view.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 each month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the very same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit choice for lots of customers.
I’m not sure exactly how the unit business economics work on this, but beehiiv is definitely less costly (currently) than what it can be.
Register for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Start trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you access to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, outside embed forms, and a lot more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply starting out (or for those seeking a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and extra.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your internet site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also pick your brand name colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined information on the amount of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Begin writing”, “Articles”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Layout” and” Analyze”. And at the very bottom you’ll see the setups choice.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot over), Begin composing is where you create and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can see who your subscribers are (and damage them down right into sections), Grow is where you have access 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 e-newsletter with ads, Design is where you create your newsletter landing page and post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can manage every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you want to cover, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning creating”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– focus on the content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and user-friendly user interface for composing.
Once you start composing, you can optimize headings, add links, and design your material how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of options for different types of web content like videos, links, photos, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise continuously releasing 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 a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to design your email template and adjust some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, include your logo, activate or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit background shades, boundaries, spacing, fonts, image layouts, and more. I’m not going to experience ever single point you can optimize with your e-mail template because it’s a great deal. Just check out the platform free of charge and see it for yourself!
Necessary beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a wonderful publishing system for any type of e-newsletter designer.
Right here are several of the essential features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it extremely very easy to create and send out e-mails. I mentioned over a few of the important things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly one of the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on a web site. Consider it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, offer you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is very important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or through embed forms.
If you already have a web site, and desire individuals to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed form. This is what I make use of on this internet site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right hand column of this article if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various choices– a complete width, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can locate the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise a choice for attribution monitoring if you intend to forward UTM specifications for tracking objectives– quite neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I’m sure the team is dealing with updates for these, yet I pointed out a few problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a service for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your checklist to forward your emails to buddies and coworkers and if they get other people to subscribe to your list, you can award them. These incentives can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually seem several e-newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– providing you an additional method for growing your email list.
Nevertheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to update to a more exceptional plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs registrations
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription earnings is absolutely a monster of its very own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be really rewarding depending on what your newsletter needs to supply. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among the important things I like regarding beehiiv is how tidy and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter rise is certainly a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
- Easy to establish and start sending e-newsletters free of cost
- Tidy and modern-day customer analytics
- Lots of flexibility with email styles.
- Referral program feature
- Site hosting
- Create premium alternatives to monetize
- Polls
To be sincere, I haven’t seen an additional newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
But certainly, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to mention some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are several of the disadvantages I have actually discovered while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and Beehiiv Cup of Coffee
- Limitations around adding custom-made font styles
I make use of Webflow as my web site building platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much information why I like Webflow so much yet you can read my Webflow testimonial if you ‘d like to discover more.
Today, there really is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not such as using iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to reduce my website a bit. Every single time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s extremely noticeable when you’re on a slow net link. But I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow kind (which I like utilizing). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would certainly simply add additional costs that I do not require. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I thought I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far exceed the disadvantages right here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will eventually produce a far better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion: Beehiiv Cup of Coffee
Overall, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for anybody aiming to dive into the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform far outweighs several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise fairly cheap for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well into the thousands per month.
Anyways, I don’t create review posts frequently. I only do when I in fact use the tool myself and would recommend it to a pal.
I hope you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.