Developing a newsletter should not feel like a second job. You’ve currently got enough on your plate handling content, customers, maybe even a full-time job. I read among my preferred e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and promptly started wrecking. Beehiiv RSS To Send…
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a full-time designer is difficult. I’m frequently obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological due to the fact that I spent the last 6 months experimenting with different email and e-newsletter systems to aid construct my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some terrific choices for composing e-newsletters. But I could not discover one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The problem with many existing e-newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me totally tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it very very easy to create and send e-mails, and gives me devices that help me examine metrics and get even more subscribers.
I think I’ve finally found the right 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 tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter platform for quite some time currently. I’ve put things off hard when it pertained to finally releasing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make certain lots of newsletter designers look up to prominent newsletters with millions of subscribers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have fantastic material, lots of customers, and a clever referral program that allows them to get even extra clients.
So, I took place a search to determine how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter design that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it seemed to answer all of my questions. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this tool truly understand newsletter development and growth.” I questioned who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were several of the first marketing and development staff members at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I understood this was going to be a different newsletter system. One that’s focused on maker development.
Due to the fact that, any developer recognizes, you need growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the right newsletter pile (that scales) commonly means utilizing numerous different tools to assist achieve one goal– one platform for your e-newsletter, one system to generate income from, and one system to set up referrals. It can get costly.
So when I figured out beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was totally 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 e-newsletter system that makes it easy to layout, write, send, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Produced by previous workers at the popular newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to help creators launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately opt for it as my newsletter platform of choice.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic system utilized by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your own internet site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while producing an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv allows you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing customers to obtain the word out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a web site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your own internet site already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site clients directly to your beehiiv email checklist. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to enable people to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to utilize different marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the globe, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack option.
How to start using beehiiv e-mail marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content creator that wants a platform that enables them to send custom-made newsletters with or without needing to have an internet site.
The most successful newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media business, start-up, or web content developer, you ought to seriously thinking about trying beehiiv. It’s entirely cost-free to get started and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 customers on your checklist.
If you really end up needing to spend for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indicator that individuals like reading your stuff.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (free) Launch plan gives you every little thing you require to begin and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 customers).
The Scale plan ($ 34.40/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, customized domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76.80/month) gives you everything in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my viewpoint.
For example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 monthly. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the very same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for many customers.
I’m unsure just how the device economics deal with this, but beehiiv is certainly more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
Sign up for a free plan
The primary step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking on the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s website.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 customers, offer you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, breakthrough modification, analytics, external embed types, and extra. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting out (or for those seeking a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying clients?”, and extra.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your web site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally choose your brand name design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your control panel
As soon as you reach your primary control panel, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have described information on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Begin writing”, “Blog posts”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Generate income from”, “Style” and” Evaluate”. And at the very lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot over), Start composing is where you develop and release newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see all of your previous newsletter editions, Audience is where you can watch who your clients are (and damage them down into sectors), Grow is where you have accessibility 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 develop your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Assess is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can manage all of your admin things.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting, and have a concept you want to cover, I suggest simply mosting likely to the “Write” area in the navbar and clicking on “Begin writing”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and straightforward user interface for composing.
When you begin writing, you can enhance headings, add links, and design your web content how you like.
beehiiv offers you tons of choices for various types of web content like video clips, web links, photos, and more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a whole lot more content features relying on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
Once you have an e-newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to design your email template and adjust some settings.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time customers, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can modify background shades, borders, spacing, font styles, picture styles, and much more. I’m not going to experience ever before solitary point you can maximize with your email template because it’s a whole lot. Just check out the system totally free and see it for yourself!
Important beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a great posting platform for any e-newsletter maker.
Right here are a few of the important features you can discover 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 e-mails. I stated over a few of the important things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
Things to note with beehiiv’s newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely among the much better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Website hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive on an internet site. Think of it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s pretty much comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the complimentary one, provide you an internet site. Nonetheless, the free plan areas your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you want to add a custom domain name to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Getting subscribers is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can sign up for your newsletter directly from your beehiiv web site or through embed kinds.
If you already have a site, and desire people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to utilize an embed form. This is what I use on this web site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have three various alternatives– a full width, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can locate the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your settings.
There’s also an option for acknowledgment tracking if you wish to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– rather neat.
Nonetheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it involved subscribe features. I make certain the team is servicing updates for these, but I stated a few problems I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a remedy for creating a referral program.
You can encourage existing clients on your list to forward your emails to close friends and colleagues and if they get other people to sign up for your list, you can compensate them. These benefits can be in whatever type you want. I’ve appear lots of newsletter business give incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– offering you another avenue for expanding your email list.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to an extra premium plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later in this write-up.
Costs registrations
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 true fans. Registration earnings is absolutely a beast of its very own. If you’re searching for a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “premium” concerns of your newsletter that are only sent out to paying clients. This can be extremely profitable depending on what your newsletter needs to use. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent costs e-newsletter that creates millions in profits a year just by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among things I like concerning beehiiv is how tidy and basic the analytics are. You get real-time day on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is really doing. Logging into your dashboard and seeing that customer count increase is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are several of the benefits and drawbacks I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of option:
- Easy to set up and start sending out e-newsletters free of cost
- Clean and modern-day subscriber analytics
- Great deals of flexibility with email designs.
- Referral program feature
- Site hosting
- Produce premium choices to monetize
- Surveys
To be truthful, I have not seen an additional newsletter system that has had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But of course, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to point out some disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are several of the cons I have actually discovered while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and Beehiiv RSS To Send
- Limitations around adding custom font styles
I utilize Webflow as my web site building platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive detail why I like Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow review if you would love to find out more.
Now, there truly is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site aside from making use of an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they often tend to slow down my web site a bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up installed is the last thing to pack on the page. It’s extremely noticeable when you’re on a slow net connection. But I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can’t use a routine Webflow form (which I like using). There are methods around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would just add added expenses that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I thought I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far surpass the cons here. I’m likewise enthusiastic that Webflow will eventually produce a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion: Beehiiv RSS To Send
In general, beehiiv is an excellent remedy for anyone looking to dive into the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The functionality of this e-newsletter platform much outweighs several that are currently on the market. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have absolutely nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally rather economical wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is unheard of. If you were to have an e-newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not write testimonial messages frequently. I just do when I really use the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a pal.
I hope you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is a good platform for you.