I have utilized a lot of various e-mail list systems throughout the years. In the last number of years, I’ve been a substantial supporter of digital sovereignty and possessing your very own platform. Because of that (and the awesome features), I have actually been making use of How Much Money Can I Make with Beehiiv.
So, it is undoubtedly a strange move for me to determine to make use of BeeHiiv. After all, it is an organized application and I am paying monthly for it.
Why did I do this?
In this BeeHiiv review, I intend to discuss why I made the button to BeeHiiv for my e-newsletters. I intend to attend to the problem of digital sovereignty while making use of the platform and I would certainly additionally like to attend to why I selected to use it over Substack.
Let’s dive in …
BeeHiiv: Developed For Newsletters
In Problem # 435 of my newsletter called My Leisure activity + A Huge Shift In Strategy, I discussed exactly how and why I made a decision to turn my RV blog site into mainly a newsletter. I decided that was business design I wished to pursue with that residential or commercial property.
However, to deliberately seek it as a newsletter, I desired a platform that was purpose-built for that. I was making use of FluentCRM for the email checklist for Happily RV, but FluentCRM is not an e-newsletter platform. It is developed to be a CRM and marketing automation device and, frankly, using it for e-newsletters is a little a waste. Much more on that particular in a little bit.
As I said because concern of the e-newsletter …
Basically, BeeHiiv is a system with tools built into it specific to my function. Things such as:
- Capability to release (to the blog site) and send out the e-mail at the same time without having it be 2 separate actions.
- Built in newsletter referral program. FluentCRM does not have that and I would require a third-party device like Sparkloop.
- Integrated capacity to do cross-promotions with various other newsletters on the BeeHiiv platform.
- ” Magic Hyperlinks”, which are basically one-click subscription links. Great for promo in various other e-newsletters. FluentCRM has Smart Links, however, so there are ways to do that.
- Ability to do paid “boosts” on the BeeHiiv network to advertise your e-newsletter.
- Integrated advertisement network, if I select to monetize with ads in the e-newsletter. And I may.
- Built-in ability to run a paid e-newsletter upgrade and generally run a premium e-newsletter. And BeeHiiv does not take a cut.
Basically, BeeHiiv is purpose-built for newsletter publishers with features aimed at growth. The platform was actually developed by the people who accumulated the technology for Morning Brew. They understand what they’re doing.
That is the factor right here. BeeHiiv is built from scratch for the objective of running an e-newsletter. FluentCRM has a various function.
And I ended off with this:.
I might undoubtedly be moving The Edge over to BeeHiiv as well. A minimum of, I’m highly considering it.
Well, I didn’t consider it for long. As a matter of fact, I simply went all out. And in fact, The EDGE was re-branded over to The Early morning WP, triggered as it’s very own residential or commercial property to ensure that I can grow it more deliberately too.
The objective is that each e-newsletter has the ability to be branded as it’s very own media entity and expanded independently. Gladly recreational vehicle was young, so simple to transition. Yet, The Morning WP (previously The Side) was buried in a sea of things right 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 undoubtedly always be very closely linked with the Blog Marketing Academy, but doesn’t need to belong of it.
I switched over to BeeHiiv due to the fact that it was developed for this function. FluentCRM was not.
E-newsletters Versus Just A Normal Email Listing
There’s a difference between an e-newsletter system and simply an email listing.
You can host your e-mail list anyplace you desire and there are a number of them out there, from Aweber, ActiveCampaign, Drip, ConvertKit … over to self-hosted options like GroundHogg and FluentCRM.
What’s the distinction?
The primary distinction is that, with an e-newsletter platform, the act of posting means that it is going to your website and to your email clients concurrently.
With both BeeHiiv and Substack, you have a web site. You are publishing to that site. Yet, you are also dispatching to all customers at the same time. The internet site and it’s clients are done in one. This makes management of the platform much less complex.
With the majority of email systems, any newsletter you set up is done as an email campaign. It is constructed entirely separately from your web site. So, for instance, you might publish a post to WordPress yet then you would certainly require to independently develop and send an email to your checklist to send it to subscribers. These are after that 2 different sets of archives and two separate actions due to the fact that article and your e-mails are not inherently linked.
The closest thing that turns WordPress into a true newsletter platform is E-newsletter Glue.
It is a suitable name since it practically “adhesives” your newsletter to your WordPress posts and permits them to be the same point. Absolutely, something like E-newsletter Glue would be a solid option if I wished to remain to self-host every little thing. Nevertheless, you would certainly lose the development devices that come with a system like BeeHiiv.
Publishing an e-newsletter naturally comes with a various collection of requirements than a common e-mail listing.
You don’t normally require much marketing automation. You don’t generally need autoresponder sequences, event monitoring, and all the bells and whistles of a marketing automation system.
What you DO demand, however, is one seamless posting experience and development tools to help you develop your client base that specify to newsletters.
BeeHiiv vs Substack
When I introduced to my clients that I was going to change the newsletter over to BeeHiiv, I had lots of people ask me why I was choosing it over Substack.
To be clear, also besides the truth that I selected to choose BeeHiiv, that does not imply I think Substack draws. In fact, because Substack has actually been around longer, it is elder and has even more features.
Even though BeeHiiv is younger, there are a couple things that at first got my focus:.
- BeeHiiv is particularly customized to newsletter publishers. Actually, it is literally developed by the very same individuals who built the technology behind Morning Brew. On the other hand, SubStack targets authors. In the real life, does not matter. Yet, the obvious positioning of BeeHiiv toward e-newsletter development called me out over the more generic positioning of being a “maker”. Growth is what I’m interested in right here.
- That branding and distinction likewise suggests that BeeHiiv has some relatively huge brand names and huge publications utilizing it. Whereas SubStack is aimed even more at solo makers. Once again, it just informs me the customer character difference between the two business.
Sending our my e-newsletter by means of FluentCRM really did not exactly draw. The only reason I would certainly contemplate trembling points up is if I believed I can GROW the list much faster. And BeeHiiv talked precisely to that objective.
Because of the targeting, I in fact do not check out BeeHiiv and Substack as straight rivals. I believe BeeHiiv is targeting a different type of customer. Actually, if anything, I see BeeHiiv and ConvertKit being a lot more direct rivals.
But, allow’s dive deeper than simply the placing below.
Points That Make BeeHiiv Better Than Substack
On the whole, BeeHiiv seems like it was constructed by people who comprehending email marketing. On the other hand, SubStack appears more tailored toward makers.
As an example, BeeHiiv uses customized fields on clients. Now, it isn’t as developed as something like FluentCRM. But, it has it. Substack does not.
BeeHiiv provides Automations. Actually, it is a visual automation builder that functions a lot like what we have within FluentCRM.
To be clear, the automation functionality is still early-phase. It is still rather limited in triggers and the only activity is the capability to send out an email. Nonetheless, enhancements are coming. Quickly enough, automations will certainly have brand-new triggers in addition to brand-new activities, such as modifying custom-made fields, sending webhooks, and so on. I have actually already seen improvements to their automations just given that I started utilizing the platform. As an example:
- Capability to activate automations based on which certain embed kind they came in on.
- Ability to immediately do re-engagement (and deal with individuals based upon opens up and non-opens).
- Capability to do basic conditional reasoning branches.
Substack does not have automations like this. Likely, it never ever will. Substack just can not do this due to the fact that the target audience of Substack just wouldn’t believe to approach this like an e-mail online marketer.
When it pertains to composing your newsletters, the writing interface of BeeHiiv is just more geared toward e-newsletters. As a matter of fact, it actually has similarities to the WordPress block builder in just how it functions. I find it to be extra intuitive, personally.
Substack’s writing user interface is nice and clean, yet it would be more equivalent to the timeless editor for WordPress. Toolbar at the top.
This difference is greater than simply type. For example, with BeeHiiv you can place a “Area” and after that placed anything you desire in it. Then, you can place Presence alternatives on that particular area to reveal it only to paid customers, hide it from e-mail, hide from customers, reveal just to clients, and so on. Substack supplies absolutely nothing such as this.
And when/if the moment comes that I begin a premium subscription design, BeeHiiv doesn’t take any income. Actually, you essentially connect approximately your own Stripe account and it charges directly to it. With Substack, they will take 10% of your earnings. Relying on the number of clients you obtain, that 10% can be a fair bit more money than the month-to-month cost of BeeHiiv.
Finally, BeeHiiv has an API. This could appear unpopular, however what it indicates is that there are integrations with BeeHiiv. You can actually make BeeHiiv deal with the outdoors using devices like Zapier or Make.com. This is HUGE. Substack essentially has … nothing. No integrations at all.
Generally, I just felt like BeeHiiv was extra constructed towards real email marketing. It was built by people who “get it”. Even the opt-in types and the landing page creates appear far better constructed for conversions. Growth is nitty-gritty with BeeHiiv.
Although there are still features I would like to see BeeHiiv include, I such as the direction it is going greater than Substack.
Things That Make Substack Better Than BeeHiiv
As I have stated, Substack positions itself towards “designers” greater than email online marketers and newsletter proprietors. Because of that, you see some things tailored much more towards individuals who just think in regards to material development.
As an example, Substack supports podcasts. BeeHiiv does not.
Additionally, while BeeHiiv does support multiple magazines, they are dealt with fairly separately. Whereas Substack does have the ability to cross-post to several magazines at the same time. This isn’t something I call for, yet … cool for individuals who could require it.
Substack also has even more social capability built-in. For instance, it has a chat feature to host chats with subscribers. It likewise has a “Notes” feature which functions kind of like a social media newsfeed where you can share points from various other “Stacks” you’re reading. Intriguing. Overall, Substack is established to be much more like a social media network which sustains long-form web content.
In general, Substack is additionally a lot more … minimalist. You either look after that or do not. Personally, I don’t. Nonetheless, if the objective is simpleness of interface and, honestly, features … Substack works rather well.
But, I’ll be clear below …
When it pertains to real marketing, I do not believe there’s much question that BeeHiiv is much better suited. I searched for more points that make Substack better than BeeHiiv, however frankly … I have a tough time locating them.
BeeHiiv Vs ConvertKit
While BeeHiiv and Substack are frequently with to be the closest competitors, I really see BeeHiiv and ConvertKit being the closer competitors. Both are going after the exact same target audience and have comparable capabilities.
ConvertKit is also positioned at makers (like Substack), however it is far more strongly accommodating individuals who do it for business. ConvertKit has great visual automation building, it’s own business platform, and much more. ConvertKit is an actually good platform.
I’m not going to birthed you with a complete feature-by-feature break down here. ConvertKit is popular already. Yet, right here’s exactly how I feel BeeHiiv and ConvertKit compare …
Points ConvertKit Is Better At …
Currently, ConvertKit has extra flexibility when it involves it’s automations. I will certainly also say that I locate ConvertKit’s automation builder to be a little bit more instinctive than that of BeeHiiv.
ConvertKit sustains labeling. This is simply a fundamental feature of e-mail lists that makes it possible for division in a far more flexible means than BeeHiiv currently does. I expect BeeHiiv to sustain tagging at some time soon, truthfully. It feels like an oversight that it is missing How Much Money Can I Make with Beehiiv.
ConvertKit does currently provide the ability to offer things using their very own platform. BeeHiiv does not. If that is very important to you, it might be a big deal for you. For me, nevertheless, I would always pick an extra straight option anyhow. For me, I choose to use my own platform powered by WooCommerce.
ConvertKit has actually been around a lot longer and because of that has way much more integration alternatives. Tons of online devices and WordPress plugins integrate with ConvertKit. ConvertKit even has their very own WordPress plugin that is quite powerful. For example, their plugin now even sustains member-gated web content as well as auto-embed of your newsletter archives right into your site. Essentially, this more carefully puts ConvertKit right into direct competitors by having you have the ability to release to your site and your e-mail listing at the same time.
BeeHiiv is severely lacking in these kinds of third-party integrations right now. It’ll get there. Yet, we’re not there yet with it.
ConvertKit is even active dealing with the growth devices of BeeHiiv. For instance, BeeHiiv has the referral program and the Referral Engine where you can not only incentivize individuals to share your newsletter with benefits, however you can also pay per lead within the internal advertisement network of BeeHiiv to expand your listing. These are truly awesome features of BeeHiiv. Yet …
Did you understand ConvertKit obtained Sparkloop? Sparkloop is among the most popular viral promo systems for e-newsletters … and ConvertKit bought it. You can see the creating on the wall surface for what this suggests for the platform moving forward.
Points BeeHiiv Is Better At … How Much Money Can I Make with Beehiiv
BeeHiiv is a lot earlier in it’s product cycle than ConvertKit. Part of that means less features and less integrations, which is all-natural for this stage of the cycle. However, it also means that they are rapidly creating.
In the short time that I have been a customer of BeeHiiv, I have witnessed nearly once a week launch of brand-new features into the system. And these aren’t undersized little features … but large features that are fairly essential. Their speed of development at this point has actually gone over.
I likewise significantly appreciate how responsive they are. Actually, among their item announcements concerning some design enhancements to the web design features in fact contained a tiny issue with the web content size. I merely replied to that email to tell them. I rapidly got a reply straight from the CEO:.
That exact same day, the concern was taken care of.
Few days later on, I provided an additional tip …
Certainly, in a bit over a week of that exchange, the capability to cause automations based on the embed kind made use of was added to the system.
That kind of responsiveness and straight participation of the group is something I truly appreciate.
Another significant factor of differentiation here is the rate. Both systems offer free plans, however the BeeHiiv free plan offers much more capacity and even more subscribers (2,500 vs 1,000) than ConvertKit.
When you most likely to paid plans, the pricing of BeeHiiv is additionally FAR more desirable. ConvertKit appears more affordable in the beginning glance because their pricing page reveals lower numbers, nonetheless the customer restrictions are much lower and your cost swiftly raises as your list grows.
With BeeHiiv, your first degree paid plan begins at $42/mo (paid yearly), however you can have up to 10,000 subscribers. That very same size listing is mosting likely 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 expand your listing approximately 100,000. A list of that dimension would certainly run you $566/month with ConvertKit. If you desire their referral network, as well, that puts you at the $733/month plan. That’s if you pay each year, also. With BeeHiiv, you can obtain all that for simply $84/month if you pay yearly.
BeeHiiv remains in a completely various league when it comes to pricing (in a good way).
Will BeeHiiv at some point enhance costs? They might as time goes on. However, I’m guessing individuals like myself who are already in will certainly be locked-in. We’ll see just how points continue.
Things I Would Certainly Like BeeHiiv To Add
Among things you absolutely require to remember is that BeeHiiv is relatively young. They do appear to develop instead swiftly and make brand-new item news somewhat usually, however there are some fundamental features I actually wish they had that I require to simply await.
One is that they require to have a setting on subscription kinds where I can select an automation to run right at the kind degree. That would certainly be incredible for a lot of reasons. As of now, registration kinds look OK, however there’s really little setups for them to aid in division.
It would certainly behave to have marking at the subscriber degree. This would be effective.
I think webhooks ought to belong to automations to make built-in automations less complicated and minimize reliance on outside tools like Zapier.
There are additionally some small administrative user interface adjustments that would certainly be handy. As an example:
- Ability to bulk edit/remove clients.
- Ability to mass edit blog posts (as an example, to label a number of them at the same time).
- Having a few standard fields as typical on clients (like the name).
- Some more modification options for the web site (such as more flexible shade options, headline control, etc).
So, yeah … there are some imperfections. Things I wish they perform with it in the future. BeeHiiv is pretty good, however it isn’t ideal and definitely not virtually as developed as something like FluentCRM or any other actual CRM product.
It most likely never will certainly be, either. As I stated, the objective is different so it would not a lot a lot of feeling for BeeHiiv to become a full marketing automation platform. I guess you never understand, though.
Final Ideas On This BeeHiiv Review
I such as BeeHiiv rather a great deal. Enough where I chose to change my own newsletters over to the platform in spite of my personal preference for digital sovereignty and possessing my own system.
Put simply, for the e-newsletter publishing design specifically, I saw adequate value in their platform to require the modification.
Keep in mind, I do not utilize BeeHiiv as my special email listing. I use BeeHiiv for what it is efficient, however I deliberately have things establish to make sure that I likewise maintain my listing “in home” within FluentCRM.
If you utilize BeeHiiv, I recommend you do the exact same. It is just a good insurance policy, for one. Yet, having a full-featured marketing automation platform for your checklist will certainly be of high use (FluentCRM is a full marketing automation platform and BeeHiiv is not and likely never ever will be).
So, the question is … should YOU make use of BeeHiiv?
In my viewpoint, if you are utilizing Substack today, I ‘d certainly take into consideration changing to BeeHiiv. It will just be a lot more business-friendly. It is targeting different abilities and different demands. Plus, BeeHiiv even has import devices for Substack, so the switch needs to be pretty simple.
If you get on ConvertKit now, I ‘d most likely stay put unless you have a large email list and are therefore being fleeced with their high regular monthly expense. You will not (yet) have every feature of ConvertKit with BeeHiiv, yet they are repeating rapidly. There’s additionally a pretty good possibility you’re not also utilizing a few of those fancier features of ConvertKit and you do not also need them. Therefore, BeeHiiv could quickly be a much better and much more affordable fit.
Last but not least, if you plan to be extremely deliberate concerning expanding a newsletter, I believe BeeHiiv is THE system to think about and maintain and eye on for you.
If you use BeeHiiv with eyes wide open concerning what it is made to be, it is just one of the very best games in town now. This is the system to see.
BeeHiiv uses a 14-day trial on their paid plans. It is worth taking a look at on your own. And if you end up not sticking with the paid plan, you’ll discover the totally free account to be fairly feature rich.