I have utilized a great deal of different e-mail list systems for many years. In the last couple of years, I have actually been a huge supporter of digital sovereignty and possessing your own system. Because of that (and the remarkable features), I have actually been utilizing Beehiiv AI Newsletter.
So, it is certainly an odd move for me to make a decision to utilize BeeHiiv. After all, it is a held application and I am paying regular monthly for it.
Why did I do this?
In this BeeHiiv testimonial, I want to look at why I made the switch to BeeHiiv for my newsletters. I want to address the issue of digital sovereignty while making use of the system and I would certainly additionally like to deal with why I picked to use it over Substack.
Let’s dive in …
BeeHiiv: Constructed For E-newsletters
In Issue # 435 of my newsletter called My Leisure activity + A Large Shift In Technique, I talked about how and why I determined to turn my RV blog into mainly a newsletter. I determined that was the business model I wanted to seek with that property.
However, to deliberately seek it as an e-newsletter, I wanted a system that was purpose-built for that. I was making use of FluentCRM for the email list for Happily RV, however FluentCRM is not an e-newsletter platform. It is built to be a CRM and marketing automation device and, frankly, using it for newsletters is a little a waste. Extra on that in a bit.
As I said because concern of the newsletter …
Simply put, BeeHiiv is a platform with devices developed into it particular to my objective. Things such as:
- Capacity to release (to the blog) and send the e-mail simultaneously without having it be 2 different activities.
- Integrated in newsletter referral program. FluentCRM doesn’t have that and I would certainly have needed a third-party tool like Sparkloop.
- Integrated capability to do cross-promotions with various other e-newsletters on the BeeHiiv system.
- ” Magic Links”, which are primarily one-click registration links. Great for promotion in various other e-newsletters. FluentCRM has Smart Links, however, so there are means to do that.
- Capability to do paid “boosts” on the BeeHiiv network to advertise your e-newsletter.
- Built-in advertisement network, if I select to monetize with advertisements in the newsletter. And I may.
- Built-in ability to run a paid newsletter upgrade and generally run a premium e-newsletter. And BeeHiiv does not take a cut.
Basically, BeeHiiv is purpose-built for e-newsletter authors with features focused on growth. The system was actually built by the individuals who developed the technology for Morning Mixture. They know what they’re doing.
That is the factor right here. BeeHiiv is developed from scratch for the objective of running an e-newsletter. FluentCRM has a different objective.
And I ended off with this:.
I might indeed be moving The Side over to BeeHiiv as well. At least, I’m strongly considering it.
Well, I didn’t consider it for long. As a matter of fact, I just went for it. And actually, The EDGE was re-branded over to The Morning WP, triggered as it’s own residential or commercial property so that I can grow it extra purposefully as well.
The goal is that each newsletter has the capacity to be branded as it’s own media entity and expanded individually. Gladly RV was young, so easy to shift. But, The Morning WP (previously The Side) was hidden in a sea of things here at the Blog Site Marketing Academy. By dividing it off, I can do what I can to grow it on it’s own. It will clearly constantly be very closely tied with the Blog Marketing Academy, yet doesn’t need to be a part of it.
I changed to BeeHiiv due to the fact that it was constructed for this purpose. FluentCRM was not.
E-newsletters Versus Simply A Typical Email Listing
There’s a distinction between a newsletter platform and just an email list.
You can hold your email list anyplace you want and there are a variety of them available, from Aweber, ActiveCampaign, Drip, ConvertKit … over to self-hosted choices like GroundHogg and FluentCRM.
What’s the difference?
The primary distinction is that, with a newsletter system, the act of posting suggests that it is going to your website and to your e-mail clients all at once.
With both BeeHiiv and Substack, you have an internet site. You are publishing to that website. Yet, you are additionally sending off to all customers at the same time. The web site and it’s subscribers are done in one. This makes monitoring of the system much easier.
With most e-mail systems, any type of e-newsletter you established is done as an e-mail campaign. It is developed entirely independently from your internet site. So, as an example, you could publish a write-up to WordPress however after that you would certainly need to individually develop and send an e-mail to your checklist to send it to subscribers. These are after that 2 different sets of archives and 2 separate actions since post and your emails are not naturally connected.
The closest point that turns WordPress into a true e-newsletter system is E-newsletter Glue.
It is a fitting name since it practically “glues” your e-newsletter to your WordPress articles and enables them to be the exact same thing. Certainly, something like Newsletter Glue would be a strong choice if I intended to remain to self-host whatever. Nevertheless, you would certainly shed the growth tools that come with a system like BeeHiiv.
Publishing an e-newsletter naturally includes a different collection of needs than a common email checklist.
You don’t usually require much marketing automation. You don’t normally need autoresponder series, occasion tracking, and all the bells and whistles of a marketing automation system.
What you DO requirement, though, is one smooth publishing experience and growth devices to aid you build your client base that are specific to e-newsletters.
BeeHiiv vs Substack
When I introduced to my subscribers that I was going to switch over the newsletter over to BeeHiiv, I had many individuals ask me why I was picking it over Substack.
To be clear, even besides the reality that I picked to select BeeHiiv, that does not mean I assume Substack sucks. In fact, since Substack has been around longer, it is elder and has more features.
Even though BeeHiiv is younger, there are a pair points that initially obtained my interest:.
- BeeHiiv is especially customized to e-newsletter publishers. Actually, it is actually constructed by the exact same folks who built the technology behind Morning Mixture. On the other hand, SubStack targets writers. In the real life, does not matter. However, the noticeable positioning of BeeHiiv toward e-newsletter growth called me out over the even more generic positioning of being a “developer”. Development is what I want right here.
- That branding and differentiation likewise implies that BeeHiiv has some fairly big brand names and large magazines utilizing it. Whereas SubStack is intended more at solo developers. Once more, it just tells me the customer avatar difference in between both companies.
Sending our my e-newsletter through FluentCRM really did not precisely draw. The only factor I would certainly consider shaking things up is if I thought I could GROW the checklist much faster. And BeeHiiv spoke precisely to that objective.
Because of the targeting, I actually do not see BeeHiiv and Substack as straight rivals. I think BeeHiiv is targeting a different kind of consumer. As a matter of fact, if anything, I see BeeHiiv and ConvertKit being extra straight competitors.
Yet, allow’s dive much deeper than simply the placing right here.
Points That Make BeeHiiv Better Than Substack
On the whole, BeeHiiv seems like it was built by individuals who recognizing e-mail marketing. On the other hand, SubStack appears a lot more tailored towards makers.
For instance, BeeHiiv uses custom areas on customers. Now, it isn’t as developed as something like FluentCRM. But, it has it. Substack does not.
BeeHiiv offers Automations. In fact, it is a visual automation builder that works a great deal like what we have inside of FluentCRM.
To be clear, the automation capability is still early-phase. It is still fairly restricted in triggers and the only activity is the capacity to send out an email. However, improvements are coming. Soon enough, automations will have brand-new triggers along with new actions, such as changing customized fields, sending out webhooks, and so on. I’ve already seen enhancements to their automations just given that I began utilizing the platform. For example:
- Capability to trigger automations based upon which particular embed kind they was available in on.
- Ability to instantly do re-engagement (and take care of individuals based upon opens and non-opens).
- Capacity to do basic conditional logic branches.
Substack does not have automations similar to this. Likely, it never will. Substack simply can’t do this because the target market of Substack simply would not think to approach this like an email online marketer.
When it pertains to composing your e-newsletters, the writing interface of BeeHiiv is simply extra geared towards e-newsletters. In fact, it really has resemblances to the WordPress block builder in just how it works. I locate it to be extra user-friendly, personally.
Substack’s writing interface is nice and clean, but it would be a lot more equal to the timeless editor for WordPress. Toolbar at the top.
This difference is more than just form. For instance, with BeeHiiv you can insert a “Section” and afterwards put anything you desire in it. After that, you can place Exposure options on that particular area to reveal it just to paid clients, hide it from e-mail, conceal from clients, reveal only to customers, etc. Substack provides absolutely nothing like this.
And when/if the moment comes that I start a premium registration version, BeeHiiv does not take any type of earnings. In fact, you essentially connect as much as your own Stripe account and it charges straight to it. With Substack, they will take 10% of your earnings. Depending upon the amount of clients you obtain, that 10% can be a fair bit even more cash than the month-to-month expense of BeeHiiv.
Lastly, BeeHiiv has an API. This might appear unpopular, however what it suggests is that there are integrations with BeeHiiv. You can in fact make BeeHiiv deal with the outdoors utilizing tools like Zapier or Make.com. This is HUGE. Substack essentially has … nothing. No integrations in any way.
Overall, I simply felt like BeeHiiv was much more built towards genuine email marketing. It was developed by individuals that “get it”. Also the opt-in kinds and the landing page develops seem much better built for conversions. Development is nitty-gritty with BeeHiiv.
Even though there are still features I would love to see BeeHiiv include, I like the direction it is going greater than Substack.
Points That Make Substack Better Than BeeHiiv
As I have said, Substack placements itself towards “developers” greater than email online marketers and newsletter owners. For that reason, you see some things geared much more towards individuals that simply believe in regards to material development.
As an example, Substack supports podcasts. BeeHiiv does not.
Likewise, while BeeHiiv does support several magazines, they are dealt with rather separately. Whereas Substack does have the ability to cross-post to numerous publications at the same time. This isn’t something I call for, yet … cool for people who may need it.
Substack likewise has even more social capability built-in. For instance, it has a chat feature to host talks with customers. It also has a “Notes” feature which works kind of like a social media newsfeed where you can share points from other “Stacks” you’re reading. Fascinating. On the whole, Substack is set up to be extra like a social media network which sustains long-form content.
On the whole, Substack is likewise extra … minimalist. You either take care of that or don’t. Personally, I don’t. Nevertheless, if the goal is simplicity of user interface and, truthfully, features … Substack functions rather well.
Yet, I’ll be clear here …
When it involves real marketing, I don’t believe there’s much question that BeeHiiv is much better suited. I tried to find more factors that make Substack much better than BeeHiiv, however frankly … I have a difficult time discovering them.
BeeHiiv Vs ConvertKit
While BeeHiiv and Substack are commonly with to be the closest rivals, I actually see BeeHiiv and ConvertKit being the closer competitors. Both are pursuing the very same target audience and have comparable abilities.
ConvertKit is also positioned at designers (like Substack), however it is a lot more highly satisfying individuals who do it for company. ConvertKit has wonderful aesthetic automation building, it’s own business system, and extra. ConvertKit is an actually good platform.
I’m not going to bore you with a complete feature-by-feature malfunction here. ConvertKit is popular currently. However, here’s how I really feel BeeHiiv and ConvertKit compare …
Things ConvertKit Is Much Better At …
As of now, ConvertKit has much more versatility when it comes to it’s automations. I will certainly also claim that I locate ConvertKit’s automation builder to be a little bit much more intuitive than that of BeeHiiv.
ConvertKit supports marking. This is just a standard function of e-mail listings that enables division in a much more flexible means than BeeHiiv presently does. I anticipate BeeHiiv to sustain labeling at some time soon, truthfully. It seems like an oversight that it is missing Beehiiv AI Newsletter.
ConvertKit does currently give the ability to offer things through their own system. BeeHiiv does not. If that is very important to you, it may be a big deal for you. For me, nevertheless, I would certainly constantly select a much more direct alternative anyhow. For me, I favor to use my very own platform powered by WooCommerce.
ConvertKit has been around a lot longer and for that reason has way extra integration choices. Tons of online devices and WordPress plugins incorporate with ConvertKit. ConvertKit also has their own WordPress plugin that is rather powerful. For example, their plugin currently even supports member-gated material as well as auto-embed of your newsletter archives right into your website. Basically, this more closely places ConvertKit right into straight competitors by having you have the ability to publish to your website and your email list at the same time.
BeeHiiv is seriously doing not have in these type of third-party integrations right now. It’ll arrive. However, we’re not there yet with it.
ConvertKit is even active taking on the growth devices of BeeHiiv. For example, BeeHiiv has the referral program and the Referral Engine where you can not just incentivize people to share your e-newsletter with benefits, but you can likewise pay per lead within the inner ad network of BeeHiiv to expand your listing. These are actually amazing features of BeeHiiv. Yet …
Did you understand ConvertKit obtained Sparkloop? Sparkloop is just one of one of the most well known viral promotion platforms for newsletters … and ConvertKit bought it. You can see the creating on the wall of what this implies for the system moving forward.
Points BeeHiiv Is Better At … Beehiiv AI Newsletter
BeeHiiv is much previously in it’s item cycle than ConvertKit. Part of that indicates less features and much less integrations, which is all-natural for this stage of the cycle. Nonetheless, it likewise implies that they are rapidly creating.
In the short time that I have actually been a customer of BeeHiiv, I have actually observed nearly regular release of brand-new features into the platform. And these aren’t undersized little features … but big features that are quite important. Their speed of advancement at this moment has gone over.
I also significantly appreciate just how receptive they are. Actually, among their product news about some design enhancements to the website design features really had a tiny problem with the web content width. I just replied to that e-mail to tell them. I quickly obtained a reply directly from the CEO:.
That exact same day, the issue was taken care of.
Few days later, I provided another recommendation …
Certainly, in a bit over a week of that exchange, the ability to activate automations based on the embed kind used was contributed to the system.
That kind of responsiveness and straight participation of the group is something I really value.
Another significant point of differentiation below is the cost. Both platforms provide totally free plans, nevertheless the BeeHiiv free plan supplies more ability and more subscribers (2,500 vs 1,000) than ConvertKit.
Once you most likely to paid plans, the pricing of BeeHiiv is additionally FAR more favorable. ConvertKit seems cheaper at first glance due to the fact that their pricing web page shows lower numbers, nonetheless the client restrictions are much lower and your price swiftly increases as your list expands.
With BeeHiiv, your initial level paid plan starts at $42/mo (paid yearly), nevertheless you can have up to 10,000 customers. That exact same dimension listing is going to run you $100/month with ConvertKit.
If you update to the “Range” plan with BeeHiiv (their finest plan and the one I directly make use of), you can grow your list approximately 100,000. A list of that dimension would certainly run you $566/month with ConvertKit. If you want their referral network, too, that places you at the $733/month plan. That’s if you pay each year, also. With BeeHiiv, you can get all that for simply $84/month if you pay every year.
BeeHiiv is in an entirely different league when it pertains to pricing (in a great way).
Will BeeHiiv at some point increase costs? They might as time takes place. Yet, I’m thinking individuals like myself that are currently in will certainly be locked-in. We’ll see just how things continue.
Points I Would Certainly Like BeeHiiv To Add
Among the important things you most definitely require to keep in mind is that BeeHiiv is fairly young. They do appear to progress instead quickly and make new item news somewhat frequently, yet there are some fundamental features I really want they had that I require to just wait for.
One is that they need to have a setup on registration forms where I might select an automation to run right at the type degree. That would certainly be outstanding for numerous factors. Currently, subscription kinds look OK, but there’s really little settings for them to assist in segmentation.
It would certainly be nice to have labeling at the customer level. This would certainly be effective.
I assume webhooks ought to become part of automations to make built-in automations simpler and reduce reliance on outside tools like Zapier.
There are also some small administrative interface changes that would be handy. As an example:
- Ability to mass edit/remove customers.
- Capacity to bulk edit blog posts (as an example, to identify a number of them at the same time).
- Having a couple of basic fields as basic on customers (like the name).
- Some more personalization alternatives for the site (such as even more versatile color choices, headline control, and so on).
So, yeah … there are some drawbacks. Points I hope they do with it in the near future. BeeHiiv is respectable, but it isn’t excellent and absolutely not nearly as established as something like FluentCRM or any other genuine CRM product.
It probably never will be, either. As I said, the purpose is different so it wouldn’t much a lot of sense for BeeHiiv to come to be a complete marketing automation system. I guess you never ever know, however.
Final Ideas On This BeeHiiv Review
I like BeeHiiv rather a great deal. Enough where I made a decision to change my very own e-newsletters over to the platform in spite of my personal preference for digital sovereignty and possessing my own platform.
Simply put, for the newsletter publishing model particularly, I saw enough value in their system to warrant the change.
Keep in mind, I do not utilize BeeHiiv as my special email listing. I utilize BeeHiiv for what it is proficient at, yet I deliberately have points set up to make sure that I additionally keep my checklist “in house” inside of FluentCRM.
If you utilize BeeHiiv, I recommend you do the same. It is simply an excellent insurance policy, for one. Yet, having a full-featured marketing automation platform for your checklist will certainly be of high usage (FluentCRM is a complete marketing automation system and BeeHiiv is not and likely never ever will certainly be).
So, the question is … should YOU utilize BeeHiiv?
In my opinion, if you are utilizing Substack today, I ‘d definitely think about switching to BeeHiiv. It will just be more business-friendly. It is targeting various abilities and various demands. Plus, BeeHiiv also has import tools for Substack, so the button ought to be quite uncomplicated.
If you are on ConvertKit currently, I ‘d most likely stay put unless you have a large email list and are as a result being wooled with their high monthly bill. You will certainly not (yet) have every feature of ConvertKit with BeeHiiv, yet they are repeating quickly. There’s likewise a pretty good chance you’re not even using several of those fancier functions of ConvertKit and you don’t also need them. Because of that, BeeHiiv can conveniently be a far better and much more inexpensive fit.
Finally, if you plan to be very deliberate concerning growing an e-newsletter, I assume BeeHiiv is THE system to consider and maintain and eye on for you.
If you make use of BeeHiiv with eyes wide open concerning what it is developed to be, it is among the best games around today. This is the system to watch.
BeeHiiv supplies a 14-day trial on their paid plans. It is worth having a look at on your own. And if you end up not sticking with the paid plan, you’ll find the free account to be quite feature abundant.