Constructing an e-newsletter should not seem like a second job. You’ve already obtained sufficient on your plate juggling web content, clients, perhaps even a full time gig. I read among my favorite email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked it and immediately started tearing up. Beehiiv Hivemind…
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time maker is tough. I’m typically obtaining pitched different tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional since I spent the last six months experimenting with different email and newsletter systems to help build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some great options for composing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t discover one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The concern with lots of existing e-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 extremely easy to create and send out e-mails, and gives me tools that help me analyze metrics and get even more customers.
I assume I’ve finally located the ideal tool.
But, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually appropriate for you.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I’ve been on the lookout for a modern e-newsletter platform for quite some time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it involved finally launching my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure several e-newsletter designers appreciate popular newsletters with millions of customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I appreciated a whole lot. They have great material, lots of subscribers, and a clever referral program that allows them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I took place a search to find out how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more subscribers? How do they produce an e-newsletter style that stays on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address every one of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this tool really comprehend e-newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the initial marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I understood this was going to be a various newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer development.
Since, any kind of creator recognizes, you need development to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the right newsletter stack (that scales) frequently suggests making use of numerous different devices to assist accomplish one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to set up referrals. It can get pricey.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was free to start using, 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 newsletter system that makes it very easy to layout, create, send out, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former workers at the well-known e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid developers launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this article, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the important things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to lastly choose it as my newsletter platform of choice.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there already a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, of course there is. Substack is a great system used by hundreds of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while developing an archive of previous issues).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv allows you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, even more style flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get words out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own web site currently, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your web site customers right to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow individuals to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to utilize various marketing channels to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
How to begin using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content designer that wants a platform that allows them to send out custom e-newsletters with or without needing to have a web site.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or content maker, you need to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s completely free to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you actually end up having to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indication that people love reading your things.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you every little thing you require to get going and expand your 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 memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76.80/month) offers you everything in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 per month. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 monthly for the very same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit choice for several users.
I’m not sure exactly how the unit economics deal with this, however beehiiv is most definitely more affordable (right now) than what it can be.
Sign up for a free plan
The initial step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 customers, give you accessibility to internet site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, exterior embed forms, and extra. It’s a really charitable offering for those just starting (or for those trying to find a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also choose your brand design and colors to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have outlined details on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start composing”, “Posts”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Layout” and” Examine”. And at the extremely bottom you’ll see the settings option.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot over), Beginning composing is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Posts is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and damage them down right into segments), 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 newsletter with advertisements, Layout is where you develop your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you wish to discuss, I advise just mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Start creating”.
You can modify your template and designing later– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use user interface for composing.
Once you begin writing, you can enhance headings, add links, and design your content how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of options for various sorts of material like videos, web links, images, and much more.
The team at beehiiv is also constantly releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will certainly be a great deal more material features relying on when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to make your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Here, you can update the name of your newsletter, offer it a description, add your logo design, turn on 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 layout.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, photo styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever single thing you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Simply try out the system free of cost and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of impressive features that make it a fantastic posting system for any kind of e-newsletter maker.
Below are some of the essential features you can find with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely very easy to create and send emails. I pointed out over a few of the important things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll spare you some added reading.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) survive on an internet site. Consider it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and a place where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, including the complimentary one, give you a website. However, the free plan locations your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting clients is necessary. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv website or via embed kinds.
If you currently have a site, and want individuals to sign up for your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed kind. This is what I use on this website (you can see the sign-up installed on the right hand column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three different choices– a full size, a taken care of size, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise a choice for acknowledgment monitoring if you intend to ahead UTM parameters for tracking objectives– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the group is working with updates for these, yet I pointed out a couple of worries I had in the pros and cons area listed below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter system, is a solution for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your list to forward your emails to close friends and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your listing, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever kind you want. I’ve seem numerous newsletter companies give benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another opportunity for growing your email listing.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this article.
Premium registrations
They say all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Registration revenue is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” problems of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying customers. This can be extremely profitable depending upon what your e-newsletter needs to use. As an example, Trends.co is a popular costs e-newsletter that creates millions in income a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Information analytics
Among things I enjoy regarding beehiiv is just how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on exactly how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count.
You get access to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Naturally, with every system, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while making use of beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
- Easy to establish and begin sending newsletters free of charge
- Clean and modern-day subscriber analytics
- Great deals of flexibility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature
- Internet site hosting
- Produce premium alternatives to generate income from
- Polls
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen one more e-newsletter platform that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
But obviously, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m going to mention some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the cons I have actually discovered while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and Beehiiv Hivemind
- Limitations around including custom-made fonts
I make use of Webflow as my site structure system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not going to go in way too much detail why I love Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow testimonial if you want to find out more.
Right now, there really is nothing else means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website apart from making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as making use of iframe’s since they tend to reduce my web site a bit. Whenever a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the web page. It’s extremely recognizable when you’re on a sluggish internet link. However I can navigate that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not make use of a normal Webflow kind (which I like using). There are means around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier but that would certainly just add additional costs that I don’t need. To be straightforward, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I assumed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m also confident that Webflow will at some point create a better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Verdict: Beehiiv Hivemind
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent solution for any individual seeking to study the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform much exceeds several that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly low-cost wherefore they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your checklist 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 each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review blog posts typically. I just do when I in fact utilize the device myself and would certainly recommend it to a good friend.
I wish you found some clearness on whether or not beehiiv is a great system for you.