Developing a newsletter should not seem like a second job. You’ve already obtained enough on your plate handling web content, clients, maybe even a full-time job. I read one of my preferred e-mail newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the very first time. I clicked on it and quickly started tearing up. Lucrative Unicorns Beehiiv…
I wasn’t certain why I really felt so psychological.
Being a permanent designer is tough. I’m commonly getting pitched various tools and solutions that do not seem to be worth my time.
I guess I was psychological since I invested the last 6 months trying out various e-mail and e-newsletter systems to help construct my newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific choices for writing e-newsletters. However I couldn’t discover one that made me give a precise “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter systems is that they do not feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me totally personalize my e-newsletter designs, makes it extremely simple to create and send emails, and offers me devices that assist me evaluate metrics and get even more customers.
I believe I’ve lastly located the ideal tool.
Yet, I recognize beehiiv may not be for everyone. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s in fact appropriate for you.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I unintentionally came across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a modern-day e-newsletter platform for quite a long time now. I have actually put things off hard when it came to finally introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie platforms. After that, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up making use of beehiiv.
I’m sure numerous newsletter makers look up to prominent newsletters with numerous clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I admired a great deal. They have fantastic material, tons of clients, and a creative referral program that permits them to get even much more clients.
So, I went on a search to figure out just how these huge newsletters set up their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they obtain more customers? How do they develop a newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I discovered beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to respond to every one of my questions. I believed to myself, “damn the people that developed this device truly understand e-newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the initial marketing and growth workers at Morning Brew– my mind exploded.
I knew this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on designer growth.
Because, any type of developer understands, you need development to be able to earn a living off of a newsletter. And locating the best e-newsletter pile (that scales) typically suggests making use of several different tools to aid accomplish one objective– one system for your e-newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish referrals. It can get costly.
So when I learnt beehiiv did all of these things in one platform, and it was free to begin making use of, 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 platform that makes it simple to layout, write, send out, promote, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the well-known e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist makers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development principles from taking Morning Brew to over 4M subscribers.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to explain my personal experience with beehiiv, things I enjoy (and hate) regarding it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately opt for it as my newsletter platform of choice.
beehiiv vs Substack
You might be asking, “isn’t there currently a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a terrific platform used by hundreds of independent authors. With Substack you get your own site and use the platform as your all-in-one service for sending e-mails (while creating an archive of previous issues).
What sets beehiiv apart is it’s devotion to development. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of much better analytics, even more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv additionally provides you a website comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own web site already, you can also utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your internet site subscribers straight to your beehiiv email list. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to permit people to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the versatility to leverage different marketing networks to get your newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack option.
Exactly how to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that wants a platform that allows them to send personalized e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a website.
One of the most successful e-newsletters have the right tools to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv targets at offering you those tools.
If you’re an independent writer, media company, startup, or content developer, you should seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s completely cost-free to get going and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you in fact end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indicator that people love reviewing your things.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you everything you require to begin and grow your e-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 domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium subscriptions. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76.80/month) offers you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority assistance and removing the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are quite generous in my opinion.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will certainly pay around $329 each month. Rather than some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would charge $679 monthly for the very same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for lots of individuals.
I’m not exactly sure exactly how the unit economics work on this, but beehiiv is certainly less expensive (currently) than what it can be.
Sign up for a free plan
The very first step is to register for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” button on beehiiv’s internet site.
The free plan will enable you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you access to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, exterior embed types, and a lot more. It’s an extremely charitable offering for those simply beginning (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll experience an onboarding process that will ask points like, “is this your initial e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying clients?”, and more.
You’ll then produce a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will survive 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 process, you’ll also pick your brand colors and design to see to it your newsletter template looks right.
Navigating your dashboard
As soon as you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and setups.
You will have described info on how many sign-ups you’re getting and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Beginning creating”, “Posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Monetize”, “Style” and” Analyze”. And at the very lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Dashboard is your major control center (screenshot above), Beginning composing is where you produce and release newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down right into sectors), Grow is where you have access to a referral program (and development tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your e-newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you design your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to begin writing, with little to no friction. If you’re just starting, and have an idea you wish to discuss, I advise simply going to the “Write” section in the navbar and clicking on “Beginning creating”.
You can tweak your template and designing later on– focus on the web content first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor uses a tidy and user-friendly user interface for writing.
When you start creating, you can optimize headings, add links, and style your material how you such as.
beehiiv gives you lots of options for various sorts of material like video clips, web links, images, and extra.
The team at beehiiv is additionally constantly releasing product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a lot much more content features depending on when you read this.
Enhancing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to design your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Below, you can update the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a description, include your logo, switch on or off a welcome email to very first time subscribers, and a lot more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit background shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture layouts, and more. I’m not going to experience ever before solitary point you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Simply try out the platform totally free and see it for yourself!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of outstanding features that make it a terrific publishing system for any e-newsletter maker.
Below are several of the vital features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter publishing system. It makes it very easy to compose and send e-mails. I discussed over a few of things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll save you some extra analysis.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly modern-day and minimalistic feel. It’s definitely among the far better email editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, all of your newsletters (if you desire) live on a web site. Think of it as a web site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous problems of your newsletter, and a location where individuals can register for your e-newsletter.
If you’re familiar with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, consisting of the free one, provide you a website. Nonetheless, the free plan locations your site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a personalized domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. Nevertheless, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv web site or via embed kinds.
If you already have an internet site, and want people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed form. 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 various alternatives– a full size, a fixed size, and a slim installed. I directly utilize the slim installed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Forms” tab in your setups.
There’s likewise an option for acknowledgment monitoring if you wish to onward UTM criteria for tracking functions– pretty neat.
However, there are a couple of features I want beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make certain the team is dealing with updates for these, however I mentioned a couple of concerns I had in the benefits and drawbacks area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other newsletter platform, is a remedy for producing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your checklist to forward your e-mails to pals and coworkers and if they get other people to subscribe to your listing, you can compensate them. These incentives can be in whatever form you desire. I have actually seem numerous newsletter business provide benefits in the form of merch and sticker labels.
This can seriously transform your subscribers into a word of mouth growth engine for your newsletter– giving you an additional opportunity for growing your email checklist.
Nonetheless, to get access to the referral program feature, you’ll need to upgrade to a much more exceptional plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this post.
Costs memberships
They claim all you require to earn a living online is 1,000 real followers. Membership earnings is most definitely a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” issues of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying customers. This can be really lucrative depending on what your e-newsletter has to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that produces millions in profits a year simply by having pay-only newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among things I like regarding beehiiv is how clean and basic the analytics are. You get real-time date on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer matter.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on how your newsletter is in fact doing. Logging right into your dashboard and seeing that client count rise is absolutely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Of course, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Right here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter platform of selection:
- Easy to establish and begin sending out e-newsletters free of cost
- Tidy and contemporary customer analytics
- Great deals of versatility with e-mail designs.
- Referral program feature
- Website hosting
- Create premium alternatives to monetize
- Surveys
To be truthful, I have not seen an additional e-newsletter system that has had the ability to package every one of these features with each other so well.
Yet naturally, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to mention some cons.
Disadvantages of using beehiiv
Here are some of the disadvantages I have actually located while making use of beehiiv:.
- Limitations around integrating Webflow and Lucrative Unicorns Beehiiv
- Limitations around adding personalized font styles
I make use of Webflow as my website building system of option (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a very long time ago). I’m not going to enter too much information why I like Webflow so much but you can review my Webflow evaluation if you would love to discover more.
Today, there really is no other means I can incorporate beehiiv with my Webflow site besides using an iframe embed. I directly do not such as utilizing iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to decrease my web site a little bit. Every time a page on my site (with a beehiiv installed) loads, the sign-up embed is the last point to load on the web page. It’s very noticeable when you get on a slow net connection. But I can navigate that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a routine Webflow type (which I enjoy using). There are ways around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would simply include extra prices that I don’t need. To be honest, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I thought I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the disadvantages right here. I’m likewise hopeful that Webflow will eventually produce a far better means to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict: Lucrative Unicorns Beehiiv
Overall, beehiiv is a great solution for any individual aiming to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system far surpasses many that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have absolutely nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are also fairly low-cost of what they are. Paying only $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your list is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it could cost you well into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation blog posts often. I just do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would certainly suggest it to a friend.
I wish you found some clarity on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.