Building an e-newsletter should not seem like a second job. You have actually already obtained sufficient on your plate juggling content, customers, perhaps even a full time gig. I was reading among my preferred 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 it and promptly began tearing up. Beehiiv NEA…
I had not been sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent designer is difficult. I’m frequently obtaining pitched different devices and services that don’t appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I spent the last six months experimenting with different e-mail and newsletter platforms to help build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful options for composing e-newsletters. But I couldn’t find one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The problem with numerous existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire an e-newsletter platform that lets me fully tailor my newsletter styles, makes it incredibly easy to create and send out e-mails, and offers me devices that assist me analyze metrics and get more subscribers.
I think I’ve finally discovered the right tool.
However, I know beehiiv might not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right for you.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I accidentally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a modern newsletter system for rather a long time now. I have actually hesitated hard when it concerned ultimately releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up making use of beehiiv.
I make certain several newsletter developers respect popular newsletters with millions of customers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have wonderful material, tons of customers, and a clever referral program that permits them to get back at more clients.
So, I went on a hunt to identify how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they create an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to address all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device actually comprehend e-newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the very first marketing and development employees at Morning Brew– my brain blew up.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s focused on maker development.
Because, any kind of maker understands, you need growth to be able to earn a living off of an e-newsletter. And finding the appropriate newsletter stack (that scales) commonly implies utilizing multiple different devices to help attain one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to set up references. It can obtain costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these points 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 simple to style, create, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Developed by former employees at the popular newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist designers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this post, I’m mosting likely to discuss my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to ultimately choose it as my newsletter system of selection.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic platform made use of by countless independent authors. With Substack you get your own website and make use of the platform as your all-in-one solution for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing customers to get the word out.
beehiiv also provides you a web site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own internet site already, you can also make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site subscribers right to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Performance to enable individuals to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This provides you the flexibility to take advantage of different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
How to begin utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content developer that wants a platform that enables them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most successful newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or content maker, you should seriously taking into consideration trying out beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 customers on your listing.
If you really end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a good sign that individuals enjoy reading your stuff.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses four different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan gives you everything you need to get started and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 34.40/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom domain name, polls, and accessibility to costs registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76.80/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my point of view.
For instance, if you have 100,000 customers you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Instead of some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the exact same quantity– making beehiiv an excellent Kit option for several individuals.
I’m not exactly sure just how the system business economics service this, yet beehiiv is absolutely cheaper (presently) 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 on the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, give you accessibility to site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and more. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to migrate to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask points like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what other systems have you made use of?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and a lot more.
You’ll then produce a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your website link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll also pick your brand colors and design to make certain your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your major control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and setups.
You will certainly have detailed details on the amount of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see alternatives for “Start creating”, “Posts”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Evaluate”. And at the very lower you’ll see the settings choice.
Dashboard is your primary nerve center (screenshot above), Start writing is where you develop and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can see who your clients are (and damage them down right into sectors), Expand is where you have accessibility 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 make your newsletter landing page and article template, Examine is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin writing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting out, and have a concept you want to cover, I recommend simply going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and styling later on– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a clean and straightforward user interface for creating.
Once you begin writing, you can optimize headings, include web links, and style your web content how you like.
beehiiv gives you tons of options for different sorts of material like video clips, links, images, and more.
The group at beehiiv is likewise frequently launching product feature and updates so I make sure there will certainly be a great deal a lot more material features relying on when you read this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a description, add your logo design, activate or off a welcome email to first time clients, and much more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture styles, and extra. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever before solitary point you can enhance with your email template because it’s a great deal. Just try the system free of charge and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a terrific publishing platform for any type of e-newsletter developer.
Below are a few of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing system. It makes it extremely very easy to write and send out emails. I discussed above several of things you can do with your setups and e-mail design so I’ll spare you some added reading.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern and minimalistic feel. It’s absolutely one of the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever before written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your newsletters (if you desire) reside on an internet site. Think of it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, offer you a site. However, the free plan places your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting customers is necessary. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv site or through embed types.
If you already have a website, and desire individuals to sign up for your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed type. This is what I make use of on this site (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 alternatives– a complete width, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I directly use the slim embed.
You can discover the code snippet for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s also a choice for attribution monitoring if you wish to onward UTM specifications for tracking purposes– quite neat.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it came to subscribe features. I make sure the group is servicing updates for these, however I pointed out a few worries I had in the pros and cons section below.
Referral program
One of the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can urge existing subscribers on your checklist to onward your e-mails to good friends and associates and if they get other individuals to register for your checklist, you can reward them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I have actually seem lots of e-newsletter companies give rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you one more method for growing your email listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this short article.
Premium memberships
They claim all you require to make 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 e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be extremely lucrative relying on what your e-newsletter has to provide. For instance, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that creates millions in revenue a year merely by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among the important things I love concerning beehiiv is exactly how tidy and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time date on how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter.
You obtain access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that client count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pros and cons
Of course, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Below are several of the pros and cons I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
- Easy to set up and begin sending out e-newsletters free of charge
- Tidy and modern customer analytics
- Great deals of flexibility with e-mail styles.
- Referral program feature
- Web site hosting
- Create costs alternatives to generate income from
- Polls
To be sincere, I have not seen another newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features together so well.
Yet obviously, I don’t wish to be biased so I’m going to discuss some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I’ve found while using beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and Beehiiv NEA
- Limitations around including custom fonts
I use Webflow as my website building system of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter way too much detail why I enjoy Webflow so much however you can review my Webflow review if you ‘d like to discover more.
Now, there actually is nothing else way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally do not like utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my site a little bit. Every single time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to pack on the web page. It’s really visible when you get on a slow web connection. However I can get around that.
The major gripe I have is that I can’t use a regular Webflow type (which I love using). There are methods around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would certainly just add added costs that I don’t require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con but I thought I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the disadvantages here. I’m also confident that Webflow will at some point produce a far better means to integrate with beehiiv.
Final Thought: Beehiiv NEA
On the whole, beehiiv is a fantastic remedy for any person wanting to dive into the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system far exceeds many that are presently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally relatively affordable of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unusual. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k subscribers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not create review articles commonly. I only do when I really use the tool myself and would certainly advise it to a buddy.
I hope you located some quality on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.