Constructing an e-newsletter should not feel like a sideline. You’ve already obtained enough on your plate handling material, customers, perhaps even a full-time gig. I was reading among my preferred e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and instantly started tearing up. Jake Hurd Beehiiv…
I wasn’t sure why I felt so emotional.
Being a full time creator is tough. I’m typically getting pitched various tools and solutions that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological because I invested the last six months trying out various email and newsletter platforms to help construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some wonderful options for composing e-newsletters. But I could not locate one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The concern with several existing e-newsletter platforms is that they do not feel creator-centered. I want an e-newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my newsletter designs, makes it incredibly easy to create and send out emails, and gives me tools that assist me evaluate metrics and get even more clients.
I assume I’ve finally found the right tool.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv might not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact best for you.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A couple of months earlier, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter system for fairly time currently. I have actually postponed hard when it came to ultimately introducing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. Then, Substack. And lastly, I wound up utilizing beehiiv.
I make sure several newsletter developers respect popular newsletters with countless subscribers– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a whole lot. They have excellent content, lots of clients, and a smart referral program that allows them to get even more customers.
So, I went on a search to find out just how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain even more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to answer all of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device truly recognize newsletter creation and growth.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I went to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I recognized this was mosting likely to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer development.
Due to the fact that, any developer understands, you require growth to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And finding the appropriate e-newsletter stack (that ranges) often means using multiple different tools to aid attain one goal– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up recommendations. It can get pricey.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these points in one system, and it was cost-free to begin utilizing, 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 newsletter platform that makes it easy to design, write, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by former workers at the renowned newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to aid makers launch and monetize their very own e-newsletter– taking lots of growth principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this write-up, I’m going to describe my individual experience with beehiiv, the things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I determined to finally select it as my newsletter system of choice.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a fantastic system utilized by countless independent writers. With Substack you obtain your very own site and make use of the system as your all-in-one service for sending out e-mails (while producing an archive of previous problems).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the benefit of far better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to get the word out.
beehiiv also offers you an internet site comparable to Substack. Yet, if you have your own site already, you can likewise use beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your site customers right to your beehiiv email checklist. 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 provides you the adaptability to leverage various marketing networks to obtain your newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a fantastic Substack alternative.
Just how to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software application.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material developer that desires a system that allows them to send custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have an internet site.
The most successful newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their newsletters. beehiiv targets at giving you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or content creator, you must seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely cost-free to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your checklist.
If you actually wind up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s probably a great indication that people like reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you everything you require to start and grow your e-newsletter (up to 2,500 clients).
The Scale plan ($ 34.40/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the enhancement the advertisement network, referral program, personalized domain, surveys, and accessibility to costs subscriptions. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 76.80/month) gives you every little thing in the Grow plan with addition of concern support and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite charitable in my viewpoint.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will certainly pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly charge $679 per month for the same quantity– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit option for several customers.
I’m not sure exactly how the system economics deal with this, yet beehiiv is most definitely more affordable (presently) than what it can be.
Enroll in a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Beginning trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will allow you to have up to 2,500 clients, offer you accessibility to website hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, advance customization, analytics, exterior embed types, and a lot more. It’s a very generous offering for those just starting (or for those looking for a brand-new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After developing an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and more.
You’ll after that develop a name and URL for your e-newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your web site URL may be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding process, you’ll additionally select your brand name design and colors to make sure your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your main dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have outlined details on the number of sign-ups you’re getting and from where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start creating”, “Messages”, “Target market”, “Grow”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Assess”. And at the very lower you’ll see the setups choice.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot over), Start creating is where you develop and release e-newsletters, Blog posts is where you can see every one of your previous e-newsletter editions, Target market is where you can see who your customers are (and damage them down into sections), 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, Layout is where you create your newsletter landing page and message template, Analyze is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can take care of all of your admin things.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start writing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you intend to discuss, I advise simply mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking on “Begin composing”.
You can tweak your template and styling later on– concentrate on the content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and straightforward user interface for composing.
When you begin creating, you can maximize headings, include links, and design your content exactly how you such as.
beehiiv provides you tons of options for various types of web content like video clips, links, pictures, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is additionally regularly launching item feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a great deal extra content features depending on when you read this.
Maximizing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send out, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and readjust some settings.
Below, you can update the name of your newsletter, provide it a summary, add your logo, turn on or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can edit history colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, picture styles, and a lot more. I’m not mosting likely to go through ever single thing you can enhance with your e-mail template because it’s a lot. Just check out the system completely free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of remarkable features that make it a wonderful posting system for any type of newsletter designer.
Below are some of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
Newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter publishing platform. It makes it very simple to create and send emails. I discussed over several of the things you can do with your setups and email style so I’ll spare you some additional analysis.
The important things to note with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has an actually modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the better e-mail editors I’ve ever before written in.
Website hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive a 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 an area where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you recognize with Substack, it’s virtually similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, offer you a website. However, the free plan places your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to include a custom-made domain to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is essential. Besides, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can sign up for your newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or via embed kinds.
If you already have a website, and desire people to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed type. This is what I make use of on this site (you can see the sign-up installed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed types, you have three different options– a full width, a fixed width, and a slim embed. I directly make use of the slim embed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise a choice for attribution monitoring if you want to onward UTM criteria for tracking objectives– pretty cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the group is dealing with updates for these, however I discussed a couple of problems I had in the pros and cons area 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 encourage existing customers on your list to forward your e-mails to good friends and associates and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your listing, you can compensate them. These rewards can be in whatever type you want. I’ve appear lots of e-newsletter business provide incentives in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously turn your clients right into a word of mouth development engine for your e-newsletter– giving you another opportunity for growing your e-mail list.
Nonetheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to an extra premium plan. I’ll review all the plans later in this post.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription income is definitely a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a system to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “costs” problems of your e-newsletter that are just sent to paying customers. This can be extremely rewarding depending on what your newsletter has to use. For example, Trends.co is a popular premium newsletter that generates millions in revenue a year just by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
One of the important things I like concerning beehiiv is just how clean and basic the analytics are. You get real-time day on exactly how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click rates and customer matter.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to obtain a bird-eye view on exactly how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that client matter go up is most definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pros and cons
Obviously, with every system, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve personally experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
- Easy to establish and begin sending e-newsletters completely free
- Clean and modern client analytics
- Great deals of flexibility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature
- Website hosting
- Develop premium alternatives to generate income from
- Polls
To be truthful, I haven’t seen another e-newsletter platform that has been able to package all of these features together so well.
Yet naturally, I do not want to be prejudiced so I’m mosting likely to state some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the disadvantages I have actually located while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and Jake Hurd Beehiiv
- Limitations around including custom-made fonts
I use Webflow as my internet site building system of choice (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much detail why I love Webflow a lot yet you can review my Webflow evaluation if you wish to learn more.
Now, there really is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow website other than making use of an iframe embed. I personally do not like utilizing iframe’s since they tend to decrease my website a bit. Every single time a web page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the page. It’s really obvious when you get on a sluggish net link. But I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow type (which I love utilizing). There are ways around this by utilizing a tool like Zapier however that would certainly simply add added costs that I don’t require. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv disadvantage but I believed I would discuss it.
Besides that, I still think the pros much exceed the cons here. I’m additionally confident that Webflow will ultimately produce a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Conclusion: Jake Hurd Beehiiv
Generally, beehiiv is a great option for anyone looking to study the globe of email marketing and newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system much outweighs lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a charitable free plan, you actually have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly economical wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your listing is uncommon. 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 monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create review articles commonly. I just do when I actually use the device myself and would certainly advise it to a close friend.
I wish you found some quality on whether or not beehiiv is an excellent system for you.