Developing a newsletter shouldn’t seem like a second job. You have actually already obtained enough on your plate juggling content, customers, maybe even a full-time job. I read one of my favorite 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 it and quickly began tearing up. The J-Curve Beehiiv…
I wasn’t sure why I felt so psychological.
Being a permanent creator is difficult. I’m usually getting pitched different tools and services that don’t seem to be worth my time.
I presume I was emotional because I invested the last six months trying various email and e-newsletter platforms to assist build my e-newsletter. And to be reasonable, there are some terrific alternatives for writing newsletters. However I couldn’t find one that made me provide a precise “yes”.
The problem with many existing newsletter systems is that they don’t really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me completely customize my e-newsletter designs, makes it incredibly simple to compose and send emails, and provides me devices that assist me evaluate metrics and get even more customers.
I assume I have actually finally discovered the ideal device.
However, I understand beehiiv may not be for everybody. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually appropriate for you.
My individual experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I inadvertently stumbled across beehiiv. The amusing story is that I’ve watched for a contemporary newsletter system for quite time now. I have actually put things off hard when it involved lastly releasing my newsletter.
First, I attempted Mailchimp. After that, a few other indie platforms. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I ended up using beehiiv.
I make certain numerous newsletter creators respect preferred newsletters with millions of clients– I know I do. The Morning Brew e-newsletter is one I respected a great deal. They have wonderful content, tons of clients, and a clever referral program that allows them to get even much more subscribers.
So, I went on a quest to identify just how these big newsletters established their logistics. What platform do they make use of? How do they track the ROI of their e-newsletters? How do they get more clients? How do they produce an e-newsletter design that stays on-brand?
When I uncovered beehiiv for the first time, it appeared to answer every one of my inquiries. I thought to myself, “damn the people that developed this device really recognize newsletter development and development.” I questioned who these developers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the founders were several of the very first marketing and development workers at Morning Brew– my brain exploded.
I recognized this was going to be a various e-newsletter system. One that’s concentrated on creator growth.
Because, any type of creator recognizes, you require development to be able to make a living off of an e-newsletter. And locating the best e-newsletter stack (that ranges) frequently implies using multiple different tools to help achieve one goal– one platform for your newsletter, one system to monetize, and one system to set up references. It can get costly.
So when I found out beehiiv did every one of these things in one platform, and it was totally free to start using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one system for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly e-newsletter platform that makes it very easy to design, create, send out, advertise, generate income from, and track the ROI of your e-newsletter.
Created by former staff members at the famous e-newsletter business Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist creators launch and monetize their very own newsletter– taking great deals of development concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M customers.
In this write-up, I’m going to clarify my personal experience with beehiiv, things I love (and hate) about it, all of it’s features, and why I decided to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter platform of choice.
beehiiv vs Substack
You may be asking, “isn’t there already a platform for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, yes there is. Substack is a fantastic platform utilized by thousands of independent authors. With Substack you get your own site and utilize the platform as your all-in-one option for sending emails (while creating an archive of previous concerns).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s dedication to growth. beehiiv enables you do to all things Substack can do, with the advantage of far better analytics, more design flexibilty, and a referral program to urge your existing subscribers to get words out.
beehiiv additionally gives you an internet site comparable to Substack. However, if you have your own internet site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I make use of) to send your website clients right to your beehiiv email list. On the exact same token, you can integrate beehiiv with a tool like Performance to permit people to sign up for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This gives you the adaptability to take advantage of different marketing networks to obtain your e-newsletter out into the world, making beehiiv a wonderful Substack alternative.
Just how to begin making use of beehiiv email marketing software.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean content designer that desires a system that permits them to send out personalized e-newsletters with or without needing to have a website.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right devices to construct and scale their e-newsletters. beehiiv focuses on providing you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, start-up, or material designer, you ought to seriously considering trying out beehiiv. It’s absolutely complimentary to begin and you just pay when you reach over 2,500 subscribers on your listing.
If you in fact end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely a great sign that individuals like reading your things.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv provides four various pricing plans. You can check them out below.
The (complimentary) Launch plan offers you every little thing you require to start and expand your e-newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 34.40/month) gives you every little thing in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, customized domain name, surveys, and accessibility to premium memberships. This is the plan I am on.
The Max plan ($ 76.80/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with enhancement of concern support and eliminating the beehiiv branding.
All of these plans are fairly charitable in my opinion.
For instance, if you have 100,000 subscribers you will pay around $329 per month. As opposed to some rivals, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would bill $679 monthly for the same amount– making beehiiv a fantastic Kit alternative for many users.
I’m not sure how the system economics work with this, yet beehiiv is absolutely less expensive (at the moment) than what it can be.
Sign up for 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 web site.
The free plan will permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, provide you accessibility to website hosting, a newsletter CMS, development personalization, analytics, external embed kinds, and extra. It’s an extremely generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those searching for a brand-new platform to move to).
Onboarding
After creating an account, you’ll undergo an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first e-newsletter?”, “what other systems have you utilized?”, “do you have any type of paying subscribers?”, and a lot more.
You’ll after that develop a name and link for your e-newsletter’s internet site. On the free plan, your newsletter will certainly survive a beehiiv subdomain. So if your e-newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your website link might be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
During the onboarding procedure, you’ll likewise select your brand name design and colors to make sure your e-newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your dashboard
When you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will have outlined information on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see choices for “Start creating”, “Posts”, “Target market”, “Expand”, “Generate income from”, “Layout” and” Evaluate”. And at the very lower you’ll see the settings option.
Control panel is your main nerve center (screenshot above), Start composing is where you produce and publish newsletters, Articles is where you can see every one of your previous newsletter versions, Target market is where you can view who your customers are (and break them down into segments), Expand 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 newsletter with ads, Layout is where you develop your e-newsletter landing page and blog post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Setups is where you can handle every one of your admin stuff.
Creating your e-newsletter
beehiiv makes it very easy to begin composing, with little to no rubbing. If you’re just starting, and have a concept you want to discuss, I advise just going to the “Compose” area in the navbar and clicking on “Start creating”.
You can modify your template and designing later– concentrate on the material first.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor offers a tidy and straightforward interface for creating.
When you begin creating, you can enhance headings, include web links, and style your web content how you like.
beehiiv offers you lots of choices for various kinds of content like video clips, web links, images, and a lot more.
The group at beehiiv is additionally regularly releasing product feature and updates so I make sure there will be a lot more content features depending on when you’re reading this.
Optimizing your settings and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and adjust some settings.
Below, you can upgrade the name of your newsletter, give it a summary, add your logo, activate or off a welcome email to first time subscribers, and extra.
Next off, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can edit history shades, borders, spacing, fonts, image styles, and a lot more. I’m not going to undergo ever solitary point you can optimize with your e-mail template due to the fact that it’s a great deal. Just experiment with the system for free and see it on your own!
Essential beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of fantastic features that make it a terrific posting system for any kind of e-newsletter developer.
Below are some of the important features you can discover with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it extremely very easy to compose and send emails. I discussed over some of the things you can do with your setups and email layout so I’ll save you some extra reading.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a truly contemporary and minimalistic feeling. It’s absolutely one of the far better e-mail editors I’ve ever written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you desire) live on a website. Think of it as an internet site for your newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous concerns of your e-newsletter, and a location where individuals can sign up for your e-newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s practically comparable to that.
All plans, including the cost-free one, give you a website. However, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you wish to add a custom domain name to get rid of all the beehiiv branding you’ll need to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining clients is essential. After all, that’s why you have a newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your newsletter right from your beehiiv site or through embed forms.
If you currently have a web site, and want people to register for your newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to utilize an embed form. This is what I use 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 kinds, you have 3 various options– a full width, a taken care of width, and a slim embed. I personally use the slim installed.
You can find the code bit for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s additionally an option for attribution tracking if you want to onward UTM parameters for tracking purposes– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a couple of features I desire beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I make sure the team is working on updates for these, yet I pointed out a few problems I had in the advantages and disadvantages area below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things regarding beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a remedy for developing a referral program.
You can urge existing customers on your checklist to onward your e-mails to good friends and coworkers and if they get other individuals to subscribe to your list, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever form you desire. I’ve seem numerous e-newsletter companies give incentives in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your clients into a word of mouth growth engine for your e-newsletter– providing you another opportunity for expanding your email listing.
Nevertheless, to obtain access to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to an extra superior plan. I’ll look at all the plans later on in this short article.
Costs subscriptions
They claim all you require to make a living online is 1,000 real followers. Subscription profits is definitely a monster of its own. If you’re trying to find a system to monetize your e-newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can create “premium” concerns of your e-newsletter that are just sent out to paying subscribers. This can be extremely profitable depending upon what your e-newsletter has to provide. As an example, Trends.co is a prominent premium newsletter that produces millions in income a year just by having pay-only e-newsletter web content.
Data analytics
Among things I like regarding beehiiv is how tidy and straightforward the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on just how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and client matter.
You get access to all the metrics you need to get a bird-eye sight on just how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber matter rise is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv advantages and disadvantages
Naturally, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Below are several of the pros and cons I have actually directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Below are a few of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of choice:
- Easy to set up and begin sending newsletters absolutely free
- Tidy and contemporary client analytics
- Lots of flexibility with e-mail styles.
- Referral program feature
- Internet site hosting
- Develop costs choices to monetize
- Surveys
To be truthful, I haven’t seen another newsletter platform that has actually had the ability to package all 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 a few of the cons I’ve located while utilizing beehiiv:.
- Limitations around incorporating Webflow and The J-Curve Beehiiv
- Limitations around adding custom-made fonts
I make use of Webflow as my internet site building platform of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in way too much information why I like Webflow a lot but you can read my Webflow testimonial if you would love to learn more.
Right now, there actually is nothing else means I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow internet site besides utilizing an iframe embed. I directly do not such as using iframe’s due to the fact that they tend to slow down my internet site a little bit. Every single time a page on my website (with a beehiiv embed) lots, the sign-up embed is the last point to fill on the page. It’s really visible when you’re on a sluggish net link. Yet I can get around that.
The main complaint I have is that I can not use a regular Webflow type (which I like making use of). There are methods around this by using a device like Zapier yet that would certainly just add extra expenses that I do not require. To be truthful, this is even more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I thought I would certainly state it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far surpass the cons here. I’m additionally hopeful that Webflow will at some point produce a better method to integrate with beehiiv.
Conclusion: The J-Curve Beehiiv
On the whole, beehiiv is an excellent option for any individual wanting to dive into the world of e-mail marketing and newsletters.
The functionality of this newsletter system much surpasses several that are currently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you really have nothing to shed for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively affordable wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 clients on your checklist is uncommon. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it might cost you well right into the thousands each month.
Anyways, I do not write evaluation posts typically. I just do when I really make use of the tool myself and would advise it to a close friend.
I hope you found some clarity on whether or not beehiiv is a great platform for you.