Developing an e-newsletter shouldn’t feel like a second job. You’ve already got enough on your plate managing content, clients, maybe even a full-time job. I read one of my favorite e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked on it and promptly began tearing up. Is Beehiiv Worth It…
I had not been sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a permanent designer is tough. I’m commonly obtaining pitched various tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I think I was psychological due to the fact that I invested the last 6 months experimenting with different e-mail and newsletter systems to aid develop my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some excellent choices for writing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t locate one that made me offer a precise “yes”.
The issue with several existing newsletter platforms is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me completely personalize my newsletter designs, makes it super easy to write and send out emails, and offers me devices that aid me analyze metrics and obtain more subscribers.
I believe I’ve finally located the ideal device.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact right for you.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months ago, I unintentionally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter system for quite some time currently. I have actually hesitated hard when it pertained to ultimately launching my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a couple of other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I’m sure lots of newsletter developers admire prominent e-newsletters with countless clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I looked up to a great deal. They have terrific content, lots of clients, and a smart referral program that allows them to get even more clients.
So, I took place a hunt to determine exactly how these huge e-newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more clients? How do they produce a newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to address all of my concerns. I thought to myself, “damn the people that built this tool truly recognize e-newsletter development and development.” 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 staff members at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I understood this was going to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s focused on designer growth.
Because, any developer recognizes, you require development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the ideal e-newsletter stack (that ranges) usually means making use of several different devices to assist achieve one goal– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to establish references. It can get expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did all of these things in one system, 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 platform for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it easy to style, create, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Produced by former staff members at the renowned e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid creators launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking great deals of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this article, I’m going to explain my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I like (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to lastly select it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic system made use of by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own site and make use of the platform as your all-in-one option for sending out emails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to growth. beehiiv allows 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 encourage your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv additionally offers you a website similar to Substack. But, if you have your very own internet site already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up embeds (that’s what I make use of) to send your site clients right to your beehiiv e-mail list. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit people to subscribe to your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to leverage various marketing networks to get your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack choice.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv email marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean web content maker that wants a system that allows them to send custom-made newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv focuses on giving you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, start-up, or web content maker, you ought to seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s totally cost-free to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you actually end up having to pay for beehiiv it’s probably an excellent sign that people enjoy reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv offers 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you require to get started and grow your newsletter (approximately 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 34.40/month) gives you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76.80/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of priority support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 monthly. Instead of some competitors, like Kit (previously ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit alternative for many customers.
I’m uncertain exactly how the system economics work with this, yet beehiiv is certainly cheaper (at the moment) than what it can be.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to enroll in a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will certainly allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement customization, analytics, exterior embed types, and a lot more. It’s a very charitable offering for those just starting out (or for those seeking a brand-new system to move to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you used?”, “do you have any type of paying customers?”, and more.
You’ll then create a name and URL for your newsletter’s website. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll also choose your brand design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will have described information on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start creating”, “Blog posts”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Generate income from”, “Style” and” Analyze”. And at the really lower you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your primary nerve center (screenshot over), Beginning writing is where you produce and release newsletters, Articles 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 right into sections), Grow 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, Style is where you make your e-newsletter landing page and article template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle all of your admin things.
Writing your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re simply beginning, and have a concept you wish to cover, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Create” section in the navbar and clicking on “Start composing”.
You can fine-tune your template and designing later on– focus on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a clean and easy to use user interface for writing.
When you start composing, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your web content exactly how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of options for different types of content like video clips, web links, images, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally continuously launching item feature and updates so I make certain there will be a whole lot much more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to develop your email template and adjust some settings.
Right here, you can update the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo design, turn on or off a welcome email to first time customers, and more.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your design.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, image layouts, and much more. I’m not mosting likely to undergo ever single thing you can maximize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a whole lot. Just try out the platform free of cost and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a terrific posting system for any kind of newsletter creator.
Right here are several of the necessary features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting platform. It makes it super very easy to create and send out emails. I stated above a few of the important things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s certainly among the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Internet site hosting
When you produce a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) live on an internet site. Think of it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your e-newsletter, and a place where people can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s virtually comparable to that.
All plans, including the free one, give you a site. Nonetheless, the free plan places your internet site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to include a personalized domain to remove all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is very important. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can register for your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or through embed kinds.
If you already have an internet site, and desire individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll need to make use of an embed type. This is what I use on this 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 3 various alternatives– a complete width, a taken care of width, and a slim installed. I personally utilize the slim installed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Types” tab in your setups.
There’s also an option for attribution monitoring if you wish to onward UTM specifications for tracking functions– quite neat.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is working on updates for these, but I discussed a couple of issues I had in the pros and cons section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things about beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter platform, is a solution for producing a referral program.
You can motivate existing clients on your checklist to onward your emails to close friends and coworkers and if they get other people to sign up for your list, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever kind you want. I have actually appear numerous e-newsletter firms offer incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional method for expanding your e-mail checklist.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a more superior plan. I’ll discuss all the plans later on in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They say all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Membership income is absolutely a monster of its own. If you’re seeking a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can develop “costs” problems of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying clients. This can be extremely rewarding depending on what your e-newsletter needs to offer. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that produces millions in profits a year merely by having pay-only newsletter material.
Information analytics
Among the important things I love concerning beehiiv is how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and client matter.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye view on how your newsletter is really doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Certainly, with every platform, it has its advantages and disadvantages. Right here are several of the pros and cons I have actually personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Here are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
- Easy to establish and start sending out newsletters totally free
- Tidy and contemporary client analytics
- Great deals of flexibility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature
- Web site hosting
- Develop costs options to generate income from
- Surveys
To be straightforward, I haven’t seen another e-newsletter system that has actually had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet obviously, I don’t want to be biased so I’m going to state some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Right here are several of the cons I have actually found while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and Is Beehiiv Worth It
- Limitations around adding custom-made font styles
I use Webflow as my web site structure system of selection (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not going to enter excessive information why I like Webflow a lot but you can review my Webflow review if you want to learn more.
Right now, there truly is no other way I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site apart from making use of an iframe embed. I directly don’t such as utilizing iframe’s because they have a tendency to reduce my site a bit. Each time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the page. It’s very visible when you’re on a slow net link. But I can get around that.
The primary complaint I have is that I can not utilize a regular Webflow kind (which I enjoy using). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier however that would certainly just add extra prices that I do not require. To be straightforward, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con however I believed I would state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m also hopeful that Webflow will eventually create a far better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict: Is Beehiiv Worth It
Generally, beehiiv is a wonderful service for any person looking to study the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system much outweighs lots of that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly cheap for what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is uncommon. 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 compose testimonial messages typically. I only do when I actually utilize the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a pal.
I wish you discovered some clearness on whether beehiiv is a great platform for you.