Developing an e-newsletter shouldn’t seem like a second job. You have actually currently got sufficient on your plate handling material, customers, perhaps even a full time gig. I read one of my preferred email e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the email and saw the beehiiv logo design for the first time. I clicked it and immediately began destroying. Prompt Warrior Beehiiv…
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so emotional.
Being a permanent developer is tough. I’m usually getting pitched different tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was psychological since I spent the last 6 months checking out different e-mail and e-newsletter platforms to help build my e-newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful alternatives for writing e-newsletters. Yet I could not discover one that made me offer a certain “yes”.
The issue with many existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me completely tailor my e-newsletter styles, makes it incredibly easy to create and send emails, and offers me tools that help me analyze metrics and get more customers.
I assume I’ve lastly discovered the right device.
But, I know beehiiv might not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s really best for you.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A couple of months back, I accidentally stumbled across beehiiv. The funny tale is that I’ve been on the lookout for a contemporary newsletter system for quite time currently. I’ve postponed hard when it involved lastly introducing my e-newsletter.
First, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a few other indie systems. After that, Substack. And lastly, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure many e-newsletter creators look up to popular e-newsletters with millions of clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have fantastic content, lots of subscribers, and a smart referral program that enables them to get even a lot more clients.
So, I took place a quest to find out exactly how these big e-newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they use? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they obtain more subscribers? How do they develop an e-newsletter layout that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it appeared to answer all of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn individuals that developed this device truly understand e-newsletter development and development.” I examined who these creators of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were some of the very first marketing and growth employees at Morning Brew– my mind took off.
I understood this was going to be a different e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on designer development.
Due to the fact that, any creator recognizes, you require growth to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And discovering the best e-newsletter stack (that scales) frequently implies using several different tools to assist attain one goal– one system for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one platform to set up referrals. It can get pricey.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these points in one platform, and it was complimentary to begin using, it was a piece of cake to give it a try.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for e-newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter system that makes it simple to layout, compose, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former employees at the popular e-newsletter firm Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist designers launch and monetize their own e-newsletter– taking lots of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this article, I’m mosting likely to discuss my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I chose to lastly opt for it as my e-newsletter platform of option.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for authors called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic platform used by countless independent authors. With Substack you obtain your very own website and utilize the system as your all-in-one option for sending e-mails (while developing an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to development. beehiiv enables you do to all the things Substack can do, with the advantage of better analytics, even more design flexibilty, and a referral program to motivate your existing subscribers to obtain words out.
beehiiv also gives you a site similar to Substack. Yet, if you have your very own site already, you can additionally make use of beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I utilize) to send your web site customers directly to your beehiiv e-mail checklist. On the same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a device like Revue to allow individuals to subscribe to your e-newsletter directly from Twitter.
This gives you the flexibility to utilize various marketing networks to get your e-newsletter out into the globe, making beehiiv a great Substack alternative.
Just how to start utilizing beehiiv e-mail marketing software program.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material designer that desires a system that permits them to send customized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
The most successful newsletters have the right devices to build and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent writer, media firm, start-up, or web content developer, you need to seriously taking into consideration experimenting with beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to begin and you just pay when you get to over 2,500 clients on your checklist.
If you in fact end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s possibly a great sign that individuals enjoy reading your things.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv uses 4 different pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan provides you every little thing you require to start and expand your e-newsletter (as much as 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 34.40/month) provides you whatever in the Launch plan with the addition the advertisement network, referral program, custom-made domain name, polls, and accessibility to premium registrations. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76.80/month) provides you every little thing in the Grow plan with enhancement of top priority support and removing the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are rather generous in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 customers you will pay around $329 per month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 per month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a wonderful Kit choice for many individuals.
I’m uncertain how the unit economics service this, however beehiiv is certainly more affordable (at the moment) than what it can be.
Sign up for a free plan
The first step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Begin trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly enable you to have up to 2,500 subscribers, provide you accessibility to site hosting, an e-newsletter CMS, breakthrough customization, analytics, exterior embed kinds, and a lot more. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply starting (or for those looking for a new system to migrate to).
Onboarding
After producing an account, you’ll experience an onboarding procedure that will ask things like, “is this your initial newsletter?”, “what various other platforms have you used?”, “do you have any kind of paying customers?”, and much more.
You’ll after that produce a name and URL for your newsletter’s site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will live on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Baking Cakes,” your site link could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally pick your brand name colors and design to ensure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
As soon as you reach your major dashboard, you’ll see all of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have detailed info on how many sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Beginning writing”, “Messages”, “Audience”, “Grow”, “Generate income from”, “Design” and” Evaluate”. And at the really lower you’ll see the setups alternative.
Control panel is your primary control center (screenshot above), Begin writing is where you produce and release newsletters, Messages is where you can see all of your previous e-newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your clients are (and break them down into sectors), Grow is where you have access 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 newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you design your newsletter landing page and message template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can take care of all of your admin stuff.
Writing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it simple to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have an idea you wish to write about, I recommend simply going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can modify your template and styling later on– concentrate on the material initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a clean and user-friendly interface for composing.
As soon as you start writing, you can optimize headings, add links, and design your material exactly how you such as.
beehiiv offers you tons of options for various sorts of content like video clips, web links, images, and extra.
The group at beehiiv is likewise frequently launching product feature and updates so I’m sure there will be a whole lot more content features depending upon when you read this.
Enhancing your setups and templates
When you have a newsletter that’s ready to send, it’s time to create your e-mail template and adjust some setups.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, give it a description, include your logo design, switch on or off a welcome e-mail to very first time customers, and more.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your style.
You can modify background colors, boundaries, spacing, fonts, picture layouts, and a lot more. I’m not going to go through ever single point you can enhance with your e-mail template since it’s a great deal. Just try the system free of charge and see it on your own!
Crucial beehiiv features
beehiiv has lots of outstanding features that make it a terrific posting platform for any type of newsletter designer.
Right here are a few of the vital features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is a newsletter posting platform. It makes it super simple to create and send out emails. I stated over some of the things you can do with your settings and email layout so I’ll save you some extra reading.
The thing to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really contemporary and minimalistic feel. It’s most definitely among the far better e-mail editors I have actually ever written in.
Site hosting
When you create a beehiiv newsletter, every one of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive a website. Consider it as a website for your e-newsletter that’s a home to every one of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and an area where individuals can register for your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically comparable to that.
All plans, consisting of the totally free one, provide you a site. However, the free plan areas your website on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a custom domain to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is very important. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, individuals can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv internet site or with embed forms.
If you currently have an internet site, and want people to subscribe to your newsletter from your existing site, you’ll need to use an embed form. This is what I use on this site (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this post if you scroll up).
With embed kinds, you have three different alternatives– a complete size, a fixed size, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim embed.
You can discover the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your setups.
There’s additionally an option for acknowledgment tracking if you intend to onward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– quite cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is working with updates for these, however I stated a few worries I had in the advantages and disadvantages section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is an option for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your list to forward your e-mails to buddies and coworkers and if they obtain other individuals to sign up for your list, you can award them. These benefits can be in whatever form you want. I have actually appear several newsletter firms give rewards in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously transform your customers right into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– giving you another opportunity for expanding your email list.
Nonetheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to update to a more superior plan. I’ll go over all the plans later in this write-up.
Premium subscriptions
They claim all you need to earn a living online is 1,000 real fans. Subscription revenue is absolutely a beast of its very own. If you’re trying to find a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” problems of your newsletter that are just sent out to paying clients. This can be really profitable relying on what your newsletter needs to supply. As an example, Trends.co is a preferred premium newsletter that produces millions in revenue a year simply by having pay-only e-newsletter content.
Data analytics
Among things I like about beehiiv is how clean and straightforward the analytics are. You get real-time date on just how your e-newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and customer count.
You obtain access to all the metrics you require to get a bird-eye view on just how your newsletter is actually doing. Logging into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Obviously, with every platform, it has its benefits and drawbacks. Here are some of the benefits and drawbacks I’ve directly experienced while using beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are several of the pros of using beehiiv as your newsletter system of option:
- Easy to establish and begin sending newsletters for free
- Clean and contemporary customer analytics
- Lots of flexibility with e-mail styles.
- Referral program feature
- Web site hosting
- Produce premium options to generate income from
- Surveys
To be honest, I haven’t seen an additional e-newsletter system that has had the ability to package all of these features together so well.
But obviously, I don’t intend to be prejudiced so I’m going to state some disadvantages.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the disadvantages I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and Prompt Warrior Beehiiv
- Limitations around including customized typefaces
I utilize Webflow as my web site building platform of option (I finished from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in excessive information why I like Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow review if you wish to find out more.
Now, there actually is nothing else method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow site other than using an iframe embed. I directly do not like using iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my web site a bit. Whenever a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) loads, the sign-up installed is the last point to load on the page. It’s extremely visible when you’re on a slow internet link. However I can get around that.
The main gripe I have is that I can’t make use of a normal Webflow kind (which I love utilizing). There are methods around this by utilizing a device like Zapier yet that would just add added costs that I do not need. To be truthful, this is more of a Webflow con over a beehiiv con but I believed I would state it.
Besides that, I still believe the pros far outweigh the disadvantages below. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will eventually produce a far better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Verdict: Prompt Warrior Beehiiv
In general, beehiiv is a wonderful option for any person looking to study the globe of email marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this newsletter system much exceeds lots of that are presently on the marketplace. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are additionally fairly affordable wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is unheard of. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k clients, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I don’t compose review messages commonly. I only do when I in fact utilize the tool myself and would certainly recommend it to a friend.
I hope you located some clarity on whether beehiiv is a good platform for you.