Building a newsletter should not feel like a sideline. You have actually already obtained enough on your plate handling content, customers, perhaps even a full time gig. I read among my favored email 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 instantly started wrecking. Beehiiv GDPR…
I wasn’t certain why I felt so psychological.
Being a full time developer is tough. I’m typically getting pitched various tools and services that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional since I invested the last 6 months trying different e-mail and newsletter platforms to help construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific choices for composing newsletters. However I could not locate one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The problem with many existing e-newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want a newsletter platform that lets me totally tailor my newsletter styles, makes it very simple to compose and send e-mails, and provides me tools that help me analyze metrics and obtain even more subscribers.
I assume I have actually finally located the ideal tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really right for you.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a modern-day e-newsletter system for rather a long time now. I’ve hesitated hard when it involved ultimately introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make sure numerous e-newsletter developers admire popular newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a whole lot. They have fantastic content, tons of customers, and a creative referral program that permits them to get even much more customers.
So, I took place a quest to find out just how these large e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that built this tool truly recognize e-newsletter production and growth.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my brain took off.
I understood this was going to be a various newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on maker development.
Because, any kind of designer knows, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that scales) frequently means utilizing numerous various devices to help achieve one objective– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to establish references. It can obtain costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was cost-free to begin 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 system that makes it simple to style, create, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Developed by previous employees at the popular e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this post, I’m going to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to finally opt for it as my e-newsletter system of choice.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic system utilized by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and use the system as your all-in-one solution for sending emails (while developing an archive of previous concerns).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv permits you do to all the important things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv likewise gives you a website comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own internet site already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your internet site customers right to your beehiiv email listing. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to allow individuals to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to leverage various marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a terrific Substack alternative.
Just how to start using beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that wants a platform that allows them to send out customized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
The most successful e-newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or content developer, you should seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to get going and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your listing.
If you in fact end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely a great indication that individuals enjoy reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (free) Launch plan provides you whatever you need to get started and grow your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 34.40/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and access to premium memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76.80/month) provides you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of concern assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. In contrast to some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 monthly for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for numerous customers.
I’m unsure exactly how the device business economics service this, however beehiiv is absolutely cheaper (currently) 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 site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you access to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, exterior embed types, and a lot more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those just starting (or for those seeking a new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll then develop a name and link for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally select your brand name design and colors to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will have outlined information on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start creating”, “Blog posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Analyze”. And at the very lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Begin writing is where you produce and release newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your clients are (and damage them down into segments), Grow 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 newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you create your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply starting, and have an idea you want to cover, I suggest simply going to the “Create” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can tweak your template and styling later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and straightforward interface for creating.
When you start writing, you can maximize headings, add web links, and style your material just how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for various kinds of content like videos, web links, images, and more.
The team at beehiiv is also regularly releasing item feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a great deal a lot more content features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your setups and templates
When you have an e-newsletter that’s ready to send out, it’s time to make your email template and adjust some setups.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, include your logo, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit background colors, borders, spacing, fonts, image formats, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before single point you can optimize with your email template because it’s a whole lot. Just try the platform totally free and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of amazing features that make it a fantastic posting platform for any type of newsletter maker.
Right here are several of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it incredibly simple to compose and send out emails. I discussed over a few of the important things you can do with your settings and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
The important things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern and minimalistic feel. It’s certainly among the much better email editors I have actually ever before written in.
Site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you desire) survive a web site. Consider it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, offer you a site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a customized domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is important. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter straight from your beehiiv website or with embed kinds.
If you already have an internet site, and desire people to sign up for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed kind. This is what I utilize on this 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 3 various options– a complete size, a taken care of size, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to onward UTM specifications for tracking functions– pretty neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it concerned subscribe features. I make certain the team is dealing with updates for these, yet I stated a few concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is an option for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your listing to ahead your e-mails to close friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to register for your checklist, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you desire. I have actually seem lots of newsletter firms provide rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– giving you another avenue for expanding your email list.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this article.
Premium memberships
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription revenue is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re seeking a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” issues of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be very profitable relying on what your e-newsletter has to use. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only e-newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among the important things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is how clean and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client count.
You get accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye view on how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that subscriber count increase is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Of course, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are a few of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter system of option:
- Easy to establish and start sending out e-newsletters free of cost
- Clean and contemporary subscriber analytics
- Lots of flexibility with email layouts.
- Referral program feature
- Site hosting
- Produce costs alternatives to monetize
- Polls
To be sincere, I have not seen another e-newsletter system that has actually been able to package all of these features together so well.
However naturally, I do not wish to be biased so I’m mosting likely to point out some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Here are a few of the cons I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and Beehiiv GDPR
- Limitations around adding custom font styles
I make use of Webflow as my web site structure system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive detail why I like Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow evaluation if you want to discover more.
Right now, there actually is nothing else way I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow web site other than utilizing an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as making use of iframe’s because they often tend to decrease my website a little bit. Every time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s very visible when you’re on a slow internet connection. But I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can not make use of a normal Webflow type (which I like using). There are methods around this by using a device like Zapier however that would just include additional prices that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage however I assumed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the cons here. I’m additionally enthusiastic that Webflow will at some point develop a better method to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion: Beehiiv GDPR
In general, beehiiv is a fantastic solution for any person aiming to study the globe of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system much exceeds many that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you truly have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also relatively cheap of what they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 subscribers on your list is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t create testimonial blog posts often. I only do when I really make use of the device myself and would suggest it to a good friend.
I wish you discovered some clearness on whether beehiiv is an excellent platform for you.