I have utilized a great deal of various e-mail list systems for many years. In the last number of years, I’ve been a massive supporter of digital sovereignty and possessing your own system. Because of that (and the amazing features), I have actually been using Invest in Beehiiv.
So, it is undoubtedly an unusual move for me to choose to utilize BeeHiiv. Besides, it is an organized application and I am paying regular monthly for it.
Why did I do this?
In this BeeHiiv testimonial, I intend to look at why I made the button to BeeHiiv for my e-newsletters. I want to address the concern of digital sovereignty while utilizing the platform and I ‘d likewise like to deal with why I chose to use it over Substack.
Allow’s dive in …
BeeHiiv: Developed For E-newsletters
In Concern # 435 of my newsletter called My Hobby + A Large Shift In Method, I spoke about just how and why I determined to transform my motor home blog into mostly an e-newsletter. I determined that was business design I wished to go after keeping that home.
However, to intentionally seek it as a newsletter, I desired a system that was purpose-built for that. I was utilizing FluentCRM for the e-mail list for Happily RV, however FluentCRM is not a newsletter system. It is developed to be a CRM and marketing automation device and, honestly, utilizing it for newsletters is a little a waste. More on that in a bit.
As I stated because concern of the e-newsletter …
Put simply, BeeHiiv is a platform with devices built into it certain to my purpose. Points such as:
- Ability to publish (to the blog site) and send the email simultaneously without having it be 2 separate actions.
- Constructed in e-newsletter referral program. FluentCRM doesn’t have that and I would certainly require a third-party device like Sparkloop.
- Integrated ability to do cross-promotions with other newsletters on the BeeHiiv system.
- ” Magic Hyperlinks”, which are generally one-click registration web links. Great for promo in other e-newsletters. FluentCRM has Smart Hyperlinks, however, so there are means to do that.
- Capability to do paid “boosts” on the BeeHiiv network to advertise your e-newsletter.
- Integrated advertisement network, if I choose to monetize with advertisements in the e-newsletter. And I may.
- Integrated capacity to run a paid newsletter upgrade and basically run a costs newsletter. And BeeHiiv doesn’t take a cut.
Primarily, BeeHiiv is purpose-built for newsletter publishers with features aimed at development. The platform was actually constructed by the people who developed the technology for Morning Mixture. They know what they’re doing.
That is the point right here. BeeHiiv is constructed from scratch for the purpose of running an e-newsletter. FluentCRM has a different purpose.
And I ended off with this:.
I may certainly be relocating The Side over to BeeHiiv also. At the very least, I’m highly considering it.
Well, I didn’t consider it for long. Actually, I just went all out. And as a matter of fact, The EDGE was re-branded over to The Morning WP, triggered as it’s own building to ensure that I can expand it a lot more deliberately as well.
The objective is that each e-newsletter has the capacity to be branded as it’s own media entity and grown individually. Gladly recreational vehicle was young, so simple to shift. But, The Early morning WP (previously The Side) was buried in a sea of things here at the Blog Site Marketing Academy. By dividing it off, I can do what I can to expand it on it’s own. It will undoubtedly constantly be closely tied with the Blog Marketing Academy, yet doesn’t have to belong of it.
I switched over to BeeHiiv due to the fact that it was built for this purpose. FluentCRM was not.
E-newsletters Versus Simply A Typical Email Listing
There’s a difference between an e-newsletter platform and just an email listing.
You can organize your email checklist everywhere you desire and there are a variety of them out there, from Aweber, ActiveCampaign, Drip, ConvertKit … over to self-hosted choices like GroundHogg and FluentCRM.
What’s the distinction?
The primary difference is that, with an e-newsletter system, the act of publishing means that it is going to your web site and to your email customers all at once.
With both BeeHiiv and Substack, you have a site. You are publishing to that website. But, you are additionally sending off to all clients at the same time. The web site and it’s clients are done in one. This makes management of the system much easier.
With a lot of email systems, any type of e-newsletter you set up is done as an email campaign. It is constructed entirely independently from your website. So, for instance, you could release a short article to WordPress however after that you would need to separately build and send out an e-mail to your listing to send it to customers. These are then 2 different sets of archives and two different actions because blog posts and your emails are not naturally connected.
The closest point that turns WordPress right into a real e-newsletter system is Newsletter Glue.
It is a fitting name because it pretty much “adhesives” your newsletter to your WordPress posts and enables them to be the exact same point. Definitely, something like E-newsletter Glue would certainly be a strong option if I wished to remain to self-host everything. Nonetheless, you would certainly shed the growth devices that feature a system like BeeHiiv.
Posting a newsletter naturally features a different set of demands than a regular email list.
You do not generally require much marketing automation. You do not normally need autoresponder series, occasion tracking, and all the bells and whistles of a marketing automation platform.
What you DO need, however, is one smooth posting experience and development devices to help you build your subscriber base that are specific to newsletters.
BeeHiiv vs Substack
When I introduced to my subscribers that I was going to change the e-newsletter over to BeeHiiv, I had lots of people ask me why I was selecting it over Substack.
To be clear, also besides the truth that I chose to select BeeHiiv, that doesn’t indicate I think Substack draws. Actually, due to the fact that Substack has actually been about longer, it is more mature and has more features.
Although BeeHiiv is more youthful, there are a couple things that originally obtained my attention:.
- BeeHiiv is specifically customized to e-newsletter publishers. As a matter of fact, it is actually constructed by the exact same people that built the technology behind Morning Brew. On the other hand, SubStack targets authors. In the real world, does not matter. However, the obvious positioning of BeeHiiv towards e-newsletter growth called me out over the even more generic positioning of being a “designer”. Growth is what I have an interest in right here.
- That branding and differentiation likewise means that BeeHiiv has some relatively large brands and big publications using it. Whereas SubStack is intended even more at solo creators. Once more, it simply tells me the customer avatar distinction in between both companies.
Sending our my newsletter using FluentCRM really did not precisely suck. The only reason I would certainly consider shaking things up is if I thought I can GROW the listing quicker. And BeeHiiv talked precisely to that objective.
As a result of the targeting, I actually do not view BeeHiiv and Substack as straight rivals. I think BeeHiiv is targeting a various type of customer. In fact, if anything, I see BeeHiiv and ConvertKit being more direct rivals.
Yet, allow’s dive deeper than just the placing here.
Things That Make BeeHiiv Better Than Substack
Overall, BeeHiiv seems like it was developed by individuals that recognizing email marketing. On the other hand, SubStack seems more tailored toward creators.
As an example, BeeHiiv uses custom areas on clients. Now, it isn’t as developed as something like FluentCRM. Yet, it has it. Substack doesn’t.
BeeHiiv provides Automations. In fact, it is a visual automation builder that functions a whole lot like what we have inside of FluentCRM.
To be clear, the automation performance is still early-phase. It is still fairly minimal in triggers and the only action is the ability to send out an e-mail. Nonetheless, improvements are coming. Soon sufficient, automations will have brand-new triggers along with new activities, such as modifying custom-made fields, sending webhooks, and so on. I’ve already seen enhancements to their automations simply because I began using the platform. For instance:
- Ability to cause automations based upon which specific embed kind they came in on.
- Capacity to automatically do re-engagement (and deal with people based upon opens up and non-opens).
- Capacity to do basic conditional reasoning branches.
Substack does not have automations like this. Likely, it never ever will. Substack just can not do this since the target audience of Substack simply would not believe to approach this like an e-mail marketing professional.
When it comes to creating your e-newsletters, the writing user interface of BeeHiiv is just a lot more geared toward e-newsletters. As a matter of fact, it in fact has similarities to the WordPress block builder in exactly how it works. I locate it to be extra instinctive, personally.
Substack’s composing user interface behaves and clean, however it would certainly be extra equal to the timeless editor for WordPress. Toolbar on top.
This distinction is more than just type. For instance, with BeeHiiv you can put a “Section” and afterwards placed anything you want in it. Then, you can place Visibility alternatives on that area to reveal it only to paid subscribers, hide it from email, conceal from clients, show just to subscribers, etc. Substack offers absolutely nothing such as this.
And when/if the moment comes that I start a costs subscription model, BeeHiiv doesn’t take any kind of revenue. In fact, you literally connect approximately your very own Stripe account and it bills directly to it. With Substack, they will take 10% of your earnings. Depending on the number of subscribers you get, that 10% can be quite a bit more money than the monthly cost of BeeHiiv.
Last but not least, BeeHiiv has an API. This could seem nerdy, however what it means is that there are integrations with BeeHiiv. You can actually make BeeHiiv collaborate with the outside utilizing tools like Zapier or Make.com. This is HUGE. Substack literally has … nothing. No integrations whatsoever.
Overall, I just seemed like BeeHiiv was much more constructed toward genuine email marketing. It was built by people who “get it”. Even the opt-in forms and the landing page makes seem better developed for conversions. Growth is the name of the game with BeeHiiv.
Although there are still features I would like to see BeeHiiv add, I like the direction it is going greater than Substack.
Points That Make Substack Better Than BeeHiiv
As I have said, Substack positions itself towards “makers” greater than email marketing experts and e-newsletter owners. Because of that, you see some things geared a lot more toward individuals that just believe in terms of content production.
For instance, Substack supports podcasts. BeeHiiv does not.
Additionally, while BeeHiiv does support numerous publications, they are dealt with fairly individually. Whereas Substack does have the ability to cross-post to numerous publications at the same time. This isn’t something I call for, however … amazing for people who may require it.
Substack also has even more social functionality built-in. As an example, it has a conversation function to host talks with customers. It additionally has a “Notes” feature which works type of like a social media sites newsfeed where you can share points from other “Stacks” you read. Interesting. Generally, Substack is set up to be much more like a social network which sustains long-form web content.
Generally, Substack is additionally extra … minimalist. You either look after that or don’t. Directly, I don’t. Nonetheless, if the objective is simplicity of interface and, honestly, features … Substack functions rather well.
However, I’ll be clear below …
When it comes to real marketing, I don’t assume there’s much doubt that BeeHiiv is better matched. I looked for even more points that make Substack far better than BeeHiiv, however frankly … I have a tough time discovering them.
BeeHiiv Vs ConvertKit
While BeeHiiv and Substack are frequently via to be the closest competitors, I really see BeeHiiv and ConvertKit being the closer competitors. Both are pursuing the exact same target market and have comparable capabilities.
ConvertKit is additionally positioned at designers (like Substack), yet it is much more strongly accommodating people who do it for company. ConvertKit has great aesthetic automation building, it’s own commerce platform, and more. ConvertKit is a really wonderful system.
I’m not going to bore you with a full feature-by-feature malfunction right here. ConvertKit is popular currently. Yet, below’s exactly how I feel BeeHiiv and ConvertKit compare …
Things ConvertKit Is Better At …
Currently, ConvertKit has extra adaptability when it concerns it’s automations. I will certainly additionally claim that I locate ConvertKit’s automation builder to be a little bit extra intuitive than that of BeeHiiv.
ConvertKit sustains labeling. This is simply a basic function of email lists that allows segmentation in a much more adaptable method than BeeHiiv presently does. I anticipate BeeHiiv to support marking eventually soon, honestly. It feels like an oversight that it is missing Invest in Beehiiv.
ConvertKit does currently give the capacity to offer things via their own platform. BeeHiiv does not. If that’s important to you, it might be a big deal for you. For me, nevertheless, I would constantly pick a much more straight option anyway. For me, I like to utilize my own platform powered by WooCommerce.
ConvertKit has actually been around much longer and because of that has way a lot more integration options. Tons of web-based tools and WordPress plugins incorporate with ConvertKit. ConvertKit even has their very own WordPress plugin that is quite powerful. For instance, their plugin now also supports member-gated material as well as auto-embed of your newsletter archives right into your website. Fundamentally, this much more very closely places ConvertKit into straight competition 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 kinds of third-party integrations presently. It’ll arrive. But, we’re not there yet with it.
ConvertKit is also busy tackling the development tools of BeeHiiv. As an example, BeeHiiv has the referral program and the Recommendation Engine where you can not only incentivize people to share your e-newsletter with perks, however you can additionally pay per lead within the inner ad network of BeeHiiv to expand your list. These are really awesome features of BeeHiiv. Yet …
Did you know ConvertKit acquired Sparkloop? Sparkloop is one of the most well known viral promo platforms for e-newsletters … and ConvertKit bought it. You can see the composing on the wall wherefore this implies for the system moving forward.
Points BeeHiiv Is Better At … Invest in Beehiiv
BeeHiiv is a lot previously in it’s product cycle than ConvertKit. Part of that implies much less features and much less integrations, which is all-natural for this stage of the cycle. However, it additionally suggests that they are swiftly creating.
In the short time that I have actually been a customer of BeeHiiv, I have witnessed practically weekly launch of new features right into the system. And these aren’t puny little features … yet huge features that are fairly crucial. Their speed of development at this point has been impressive.
I likewise significantly appreciate just how receptive they are. Actually, among their item statements about some layout enhancements to the website design features really consisted of a little trouble with the material size. I just replied to that e-mail to tell them. I rapidly got a reply directly from the chief executive officer:.
That same day, the issue was fixed.
Couple of days later, I provided an additional tip …
Indeed, in a bit over a week of that exchange, the capability to activate automations based on the embed kind made use of was contributed to the system.
That sort of responsiveness and direct involvement of the group is something I truly appreciate.
An additional significant point of differentiation right here is the price. Both systems use complimentary plans, nonetheless the BeeHiiv free plan offers much more capability and more clients (2,500 vs 1,000) than ConvertKit.
Once you most likely to paid plans, the pricing of BeeHiiv is also FAR more desirable. ConvertKit seems more affordable in the beginning glimpse since their pricing web page shows lower numbers, however the subscriber restrictions are much lower and your cost swiftly enhances as your checklist expands.
With BeeHiiv, your initial degree paid plan starts at $42/mo (paid annually), however you can have up to 10,000 clients. 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 personally make use of), you can expand your checklist up to 100,000. A checklist of that size would run you $566/month with ConvertKit. If you desire their referral network, too, that puts you at the $733/month plan. That’s if you pay each year, as well. With BeeHiiv, you can get all that for simply $84/month if you pay each year.
BeeHiiv is in a totally different organization when it pertains to pricing (in an excellent way).
Will BeeHiiv eventually boost rates? They might as time takes place. However, I’m thinking people like myself that are currently in will certainly be locked-in. We’ll see just how points continue.
Things I Would Certainly Like BeeHiiv To Include
One of things you definitely need to keep in mind is that BeeHiiv is reasonably young. They do appear to progress rather quickly and make new item announcements rather typically, but there are some fundamental features I truly wish they had that I require to simply wait on.
One is that they require to have a setup on subscription kinds where I can pick an automation to run right at the type level. That would certainly be outstanding for so many reasons. Already, membership kinds look OK, but there’s extremely little settings for them to help in division.
It would be nice to have labeling at the client degree. This would certainly be effective.
I think webhooks ought to be part of automations to make built-in automations less complicated and minimize reliance on outdoors tools like Zapier.
There are likewise some minor management user interface modifications that would certainly be handy. For example:
- Ability to bulk edit/remove subscribers.
- Ability to bulk edit blog posts (for instance, to identify a bunch of them at the same time).
- Having a couple of fundamental areas as standard on subscribers (like the name).
- Some more modification alternatives for the web site (such as even more flexible color selections, headline control, etc).
So, yeah … there are some drawbacks. Points I wish they make with it in the future. BeeHiiv is respectable, however it isn’t best and certainly not almost as created as something like FluentCRM or any other genuine CRM product.
It possibly never ever will be, either. As I stated, the purpose is different so it wouldn’t a lot a lot of feeling for BeeHiiv to come to be a complete marketing automation system. I presume you never recognize, however.
Final Thoughts On This BeeHiiv Testimonial
I like BeeHiiv rather a lot. Enough where I chose to switch my very own e-newsletters over to the platform despite my personal preference for digital sovereignty and possessing my very own platform.
Simply put, for the e-newsletter posting version especially, I saw sufficient worth in their platform to require the adjustment.
Bear in mind, I do not use BeeHiiv as my exclusive e-mail list. I utilize BeeHiiv for what it is efficient, but I deliberately have points set up to make sure that I also maintain my checklist “in house” inside of FluentCRM.
If you make use of BeeHiiv, I suggest you do the exact same. It is just a good insurance policy, for one. However, having a full-featured marketing automation system for your checklist will certainly be of high usage (FluentCRM is a complete marketing automation platform and BeeHiiv is not and likely never ever will certainly be).
So, the inquiry is … should YOU make use of BeeHiiv?
In my viewpoint, if you are utilizing Substack today, I ‘d certainly think about switching over to BeeHiiv. It will merely be extra business-friendly. It is targeting different abilities and various demands. And also, BeeHiiv also has import tools for Substack, so the button needs to be rather simple.
If you get on ConvertKit now, I ‘d possibly stay put unless you have a large e-mail checklist and are therefore being wooled with their high monthly costs. You will not (yet) have every feature of ConvertKit with BeeHiiv, yet they are iterating quickly. There’s likewise a respectable chance you’re not even utilizing several of those fancier functions of ConvertKit and you do not even need them. Because of that, BeeHiiv can conveniently be a better and more affordable fit.
Finally, if you plan to be really intentional regarding expanding an e-newsletter, I believe BeeHiiv is THE platform to consider and keep and eye on for you.
If you utilize BeeHiiv with eyes wide open concerning what it is created to be, it is one of the best games in town right now. This is the platform to enjoy.
BeeHiiv supplies a 14-day trial on their paid plans. It is worth checking out for yourself. And if you end up not sticking to the paid plan, you’ll locate the cost-free account to be fairly feature abundant.