Beehiiv Review 2023 – The Best Email Newsletter Tool?

BeeHiiv Overview

Beehiiv aims to be an all-in-one newsletter solution for creators. It was launched back in 2021 by Benjamin Hargett, Jacob Hurd, and Tyler Denk. Tyler previously worked at Morning Brew which is one of the world’s largest business newsletters while Benjamin was a product lead at Google.

The tool aims to be an all-in-one solution for email newsletters providing 4 main features:

• Ability to send customized newsletters
• Scale fast with a suite of Growth tools
• Advanced segmentation and Analytics
• Easy Monetization – Ability to add recurring subscriptions and sell advertising for your newsletter.

With all of these pieces of a newsletter business in place, you don’t need to use multiple different tools and pay multiple subscriptions. Everything you need is in one single place.

While Beehiiv is mostly an email newsletter tool, it also acts as a blog/website to host your content. You have the option to post your emails as blog posts and have the displayed on your Beehiiv site. This is all included in the free plan.

Let’s dive a little deeper and see what Beehiiv looks like on the inside.

Screenshots

 

How Beehiiv Works

I have just completed setting up my Newsletter on Beehiiv so let me take you through what that process looks like from signing up to sending your first email.

Everything I mention in this section is available on the Free Beehive plan, we’ll discuss paid features later.

#1 – The Sign-Up Process

The signup process is simple but there is one roadblock. When you sign up you must be verified by Beehiiv before they will let you start sending emails. For me, this took about 24 hours.

They ask a few questions such as, what your newsletter is about and to link to any social media you have. I assume they have this filter in place, to stop email spammers from signing up for the platform.

I linked to my Twitter and Youtube, got a follow from one of the founders, and my account was verified within 24 hours.

#2 – Setting Up A Landing Page

On the free plan, you are able to set up a simple email capture form. This includes a logo, name, description, and email capture form. It took me two mins to set this up and it works right away. It will look like the image above until you send your first email.

Your Beehiiv blog will be on a .beehiiv.com subdomain however there is the option to add your own custom domain if you have one.

Mine is currently hosted on contentprofits.beehiiv.com however I will probably update the sub-domain when the newsletter starts to grow.

Once you publish your first post to your email list and also select it to be shared on web, your landing page will update to showcase your latest posts as well as the email opt-in.

I really like this feature as it keeps everything about the newsletter contained in the Beehiiv software, rather than having to set up an email software, as well as a website.

#3 – Getting Your First Subscribers

Once I had my landing page set up it was time to get my first email subscribers. I decided to include a link to my newsletter in a Youtube video as well as attach it to a tweet thread.

This allowed me to pull in my first 60 subscribers in the first day or so of having my newsletter live.

The easiest way to start growing your newsletter is by sharing the link to your sign-up page with any existing audience you might have.

You can also embed a Beehiiv email opt-in directly on any existing websites you might have.

Can You Import Existing Emails Into Beehiiv

Yes, Beehiiv allows you to easily import existing email addresses to their platform. Once you have created an account, navigate to the setting menu and go to “Publication” –> “Import Subscribers”.

Here you can upload an exported CSV file of your existing subscribers. For a full guide check out their own import tutorial.

Can You Import Posts To Beehiiv?

Beehiiv gives you the ability to import existing posts from these platforms; Substack, Revue, WordPress and Mailchimp. If you have already been running an email newsletter on any of these platforms, you will have no problems importing your existing content over.

This means all of your previous hard work won’t go to waste.

#4 – Styling Your Email

One of the best parts about Beehiiv is the ability to style your emails easily. Many other email marketing tools out there simply send plain text emails. Your emails with Beehiiv will be delightful to look at.

Personally, I like to keep my email template very simple, just styling it with headers, bolded text, and a few images. But other newsletters get really creative with their design. Check out these two popular newsletters to see how they design their emails.

Editing your email templates is very easy. Navigate to the settings menu and then select Design Lab. Here you will be presented with a vast range of options to customize your newsletter.

You have the option to customize everything from fonts, colors, buttons, and much more. If you want to get creative with the look of your newsletter, there are more than enough options to do that.

Once you have decided on a nice-looking font and colors to match your brand, you’re ready to send your first email.

#5 – Sending Emails With BeeHiiv

Now that I has set up my landing page and got my first few subscribers, it was time to send my first email.

The process was seamless. I have used quite a few different email marketing software’s in the past and this one was actually enjoyable to sit down and write with.

As I’m writing this blog post in WordPress, the editor is lagging every couple of minutes. However, when writing in BeeHiivs own editor, the process was as smooth as butter.

Here’s a look at what the interface looks like when you’re typing up your email:

As you can see you have your email on the left and your email setting such as Title, sender, etc on the right.

The editor feels very like Notion if you have used it. It’s pretty self-explanatory to use. Use the + icon to add certain elements to the email such as headings, images, and more.

You can then use the “Tune” button to get more settings for the specific element you are editing.

Once you have finished typing up your email and adding any images or videos you wanted to the email you can start deciding on your email and post settings.

Once you have previewed and proofread your email it’s time to send. You can schedule to send your post out at a date/time in the future or “Publish Now”. I opted to publish now and send the email out to my 66 new subscribers.

Once I hit confirm the email was on its way to my subscribers and pretty much instantly landed in my inbox.

You also have the ability to set up a welcome email for new subscribers. I would highly recommend settings this up. Give your readers an introduction to you/your newsletter and what they can expect from it. Let them know when they can expect each issue and point them to some of your best posts on your blog.

#6 – Analysing Your Email Stats

Once you send your first email you will probably be excited to see the stats, I know I was. On the free plan, there are two places you can get analytics.

Home Dashboard – On the home dashboard you can see your overall open rate and click-through rate. This really is the pulse of an email marketing business. Are people opening your emails?

As well as the Open Rate and CTR you can also see your total active subscribers and sign-ups in the past week so you can see the growth of your list.

Post-Specific Analytics – Obviously you will also want to see how specific emails and subject lines are performing so you can base your next content on stuff that actually works.

If you navigate to the Write section –> Posts, you will be able to view the analytics for that specific email. You can also see here how many views and clicks your post got on the web.

After just a couple of hours, my first email had over a 50% open rate which is pretty damn good. Obviously, as the list grows and as people are subscribed for longer this will drop quite a bit I would imagine.

So, that’s the barebones free version of Beehiiv in a nutshell. You can continue to send out daily or weekly emails on the free plan until you reach 2500 subscribers. You will then have to upgrade to one of their paid plans.

We will get to some of the amazing paid features in a minute.

Beehiiv Blog

I touched on it above but Beehiiv also acts as a blog as well as an email marketing software. Every email you write can be turned into a blog post and vice versa. It also gives you the option to only post on the blog or only send an email.

I love this feature. For most creators getting started with a newsletter they don’t want to go through the trouble of setting up a separate blog, email marketing software, or email capture plugins.

Beehiiv puts all of this in one place. Take a look at how the blog section on Beehiiv sites looks once you fill it out with a few posts.

By having a blog roll on your site, your previous emails aren’t going to waste. As your list grows new subscribers can go back and read older emails. With most other email software, you send your email and it’s gone. Anyone who signs up after will never get to read that email.

For me, I’m documenting building this site and a few others. It’s cool for others to be able to look back on the journey it took to get to this point.

You also have the potential to get SEO benefits from your posts. As they are posted on your Beehiiv site and they are indexable people can find your content organically on google. This can help you grow your list with organic traffic.

Sign Up To BeeHiiv …

Premium BeeHiiv Features

Believe it or not, everything we talked about above is included in the free plan, up to 2500 subscribers.

There are paid plans available and each comes with extra features.

As you can see there are a LOT more features available on the paid plans. Let’s take a look at some of the most useful features.

Premium Subscriptions

While many newsletters go the free-to-read route and monetize elsewhere, Beehiiv allows you to charge for your newsletter. This means that readers can pay a monthly fee to access premium content. Some newsletters make millions of dollars in subscription revenue. If you already have an audience, this can be a great way to monetize it further.

Beehiiv integrates with Stripe allowing you to take payments with ease.

Multiple Team Members On Beehiiv

Beehive allows you to add multiple team members to your publication. This is great if you want to make your newsletter into a business bigger than you. Many large newsletters have multiple writers who produce content for the publication.

When an email gets sent out, it gets sent out under the writer’s name. This means you can scale up your team and utilize multiple writers to produce more great content.

A/B testing

A/B Testing allows you to test different subject lines, calls to action, copy, and more in the same emails. A certain portion of your list will get one variation and the second will get another. You can then compare the stats and use this data to determine what should be added to future emails.

Audience Segmentation

Once your email newsletter gets bigger you may want to segment your audience. Specific people on your list may be more likely to open a certain type of email. By using segmentation you can ensure you only send certain emails to people who want to see them.

For example, you may want to segment out people who became subscribers specifically from Tik Tok paid ads. You can then email this segment or analyze the specific open rates and CTRs from that segment.

This type of segmentation can be really useful when determining whether or not it is worthwhile running paid advertising on a specific platform.

Audience Polls

One of the biggest benefits of having an audience is getting feedback from them. Thinking about launching a product? Ask your audience, if they are interested before you build it. Want to know if people enjoy your newsletter? Ask them.

Using polls allows you to, well, poll your audience. This can give you valuable insight on where to take your content as well as give your great data for original case studies.

Analytics

Beehiiv has an amazing 3D analytics dashboard available in their premium plans. If you want to look for specific trends and see exactly what your audience is interested in, this is the place to get those insights.

Just take a look at this insane dashboard… It’s a data nerds dream.

They also have a subscribers report so you can see exactly where your subscribers are coming from:

This can be extremely valuable when it comes to understanding where your marketing budget should be spent.

Beehiiv Monetization

When it comes to monetizing an email newsletter there are multiple ways to do it. You can:

• Charge Subscribers to read the newsletter
• Sell ads in your newsletter
• Promote affiliate links in your emails

As we mentioned earlier Beehiiv allows you to charge subscribers to read your emails. This is the first method of monetization built into their software, however, a lot of other email newsletters make money through ads.

The main problem is, you have to go out there and find people who want to advertise in your newsletter. That can be a pain in the ass. Luckily, Beehiiv has you covered. They have set up their own ad network for newsletters on their platform.

This means you can get a piece of deals they sell to large clients. Obviously, with the combined audience of all subscribers on Beehiiv, they can get much bigger deals than you would be able to on your own.

You can use this calculator on their site to see how much you can expect to make.

The example above is based on emailing 3x a week to a business audience and having 25,000 subscribers. Not a bad chunk of change for sending a couple of emails every week.

While I personally haven’t used this feature yet I think it is a genius addition to newsletter software for both users and Beehiiv themselves.

They do require you to have a minimum of 1000 followers in order to apply for the program.

Beehiiv Pricing

Beehiiv works on a freemium model. This means that you can use the platform for free for up to 2,500 subscribers. If you want the premium features mentioned above, you will also have to sign up for a paid plan.

Plan	Price	Subscribers
Free	$0	2,500
Grow	$49/Month	10,000
Scale	$99/Month	100,000

The plans are very affordable compared to some of the other email marketing software out there. I used to pay $300/month for 40,000 subscribers on Infusionsoft. This is definitely a lot more affordable. Especially at $99/month for 100,000 subscribers.

One thing to note is that Substack, which is the biggest competitor to Beehiiv doesn’t charge any monthly fee. However, they take a 10% cut on subscription revenue. So if you have 50 subscribers paying $10/month you would b paying $50/month on Substack. If you have 1000 Subscribers you’re going to be paying $1000/month.

While substack may seem cheaper initially it will start to get expensive once your newsletter becomes successful.

Beehiiv doesn’t take any commission on paid subscribers as their platform directly integrates with Stripe. If you ever plan on monetizing your list, I would recommend using Beehiiv.

Beehiiv Newsletter Examples

Some great newsletters are already hosted on Beehiiv. You will be in good company. Here is some of my favorite publications:

Milk Road

The Milk Road is the biggest Crypto Newsletter out there right now and was recently acquired for 8 figures. If you’re into crypto and aren’t already on the list, this will be right up your street. Not to mention the Milk Man is pretty damn cute.

The Dink

This is a Pickleball newsletter that keeps subscribers up to date with everything going on in the world of Pickleball. Not a niche I thought would make a profitable business but apparently, they’re now a seven-figure business. If that doesn’t inspire you to get started on Beehiiv, I don’t know what will.

Do We Recommend Beehiiv?

This is the most impressive newsletter software we have tested. For someone starting an email newsletter, I really believe this should be your go-to platform.

It has everything you need to start, grow and scale your newsletter. You can start on the free plan to get your feet wet and only need to pay money when you have reached your first 2,500 subscribers.

If you are expecting to use this software to send automated follow-up sequences for selling products etc, there are better solutions out there but for someone looking to get into the newsletter business, this is perfect.

So, yes, I highly recommend signing up to Beehiiv and getting started with your newsletter right away.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Beehiiv Legit?

Yes, Beehiiv is 100% legit. The company was founded by an ex-employee at Morning Brew, so it’s safe to say he knows a thing or two about the newsletter business. Many large publications such as the Milk Road have been built on Beehiiv and ultimately went on to get acquired for 8 Figures.

Is Beehiiv Free To Use?

Yes, Beehiiv has a free plan. They use a freemium pricing model to acquire new users. While they do gatekeep some features behind a paywall, what they offer for free is more than enough to get your newsletter up and running.

You can use Beehiiv for up to 2,500 subscribers for free. Once you’re at 2,500 subscribers, you should be making more than enough from your emails to cover their small monthly fee on the growth plan.

Does Beehiiv Require Double Opt-in?

No, when using Beehiiv for your email newsletter, you are not required to have double opt-in enabled. When a user fills in your opt-in form, they will be instantly added to your list and sent your welcome email, if you have one enabled. If you want to enable double opt-in to get a higher quality list then you can enable it in your account settings.