I have utilized a great deal of different e-mail list systems for many years. In the last number of years, I’ve been a big supporter of digital sovereignty and owning your own platform. Because of that (and the outstanding features), I have actually been making use of Beehiiv API Docs.
So, it is undoubtedly an unusual move for me to make a decision to use BeeHiiv. Besides, it is an organized application and I am paying month-to-month for it.
Why did I do this?
In this BeeHiiv evaluation, I intend to discuss why I made the switch to BeeHiiv for my e-newsletters. I intend to attend to the concern of digital sovereignty while utilizing the system and I ‘d likewise like to address why I picked to use it over Substack.
Allow’s dive in …
BeeHiiv: Constructed For E-newsletters
In Issue # 435 of my e-newsletter called My Hobby + A Big Shift In Technique, I spoke about exactly how and why I made a decision to turn my recreational vehicle blog right into mostly a newsletter. I decided that was the business design I wished to pursue with that said residential or commercial property.
But, to intentionally pursue it as a newsletter, I wanted a platform that was purpose-built for that. I was using FluentCRM for the e-mail listing for Gladly recreational vehicle, but FluentCRM is not an e-newsletter system. It is built to be a CRM and marketing automation device and, frankly, utilizing it for e-newsletters is a bit of a waste. A lot more on that in a bit.
As I said because problem of the e-newsletter …
Basically, BeeHiiv is a system with devices built into it particular to my function. Points such as:
- Capacity to release (to the blog site) and send the e-mail at the same time without having it be 2 separate activities.
- Built in newsletter referral program. FluentCRM does not have that and I would have needed a third-party tool like Sparkloop.
- Built-in capacity to do cross-promotions with other newsletters on the BeeHiiv system.
- ” Magic Hyperlinks”, which are essentially one-click registration web links. Great for promo in various other e-newsletters. FluentCRM has Smart Links, however, so there are ways to do that.
- Capability to do paid “boosts” on the BeeHiiv network to advertise your e-newsletter.
- Integrated advertisement network, if I pick to generate income from with advertisements in the newsletter. And I may.
- Built-in capacity to run a paid newsletter upgrade and essentially run a costs e-newsletter. And BeeHiiv doesn’t take a cut.
Basically, BeeHiiv is purpose-built for newsletter publishers with features focused on development. The system was actually built by the people that accumulated the technology for Morning Mixture. They understand what they’re doing.
That is the factor below. BeeHiiv is constructed from scratch for the purpose of running a newsletter. FluentCRM has a various purpose.
And I finished off with this:.
I might indeed be moving The Edge over to BeeHiiv too. At the very least, I’m strongly considering it.
Well, I didn’t consider it for long. In fact, I simply went for it. And as a matter of fact, The EDGE was re-branded over to The Early morning WP, triggered as it’s very own building to make sure that I can grow it extra deliberately too.
The objective is that each e-newsletter has the ability to be branded as it’s own media entity and grown individually. Happily recreational vehicle was young, so very easy to shift. But, The Early morning WP (formerly The Side) was buried in a sea of things below at the Blog Marketing Academy. By dividing it off, I can do what I can to grow it on it’s own. It will obviously constantly be closely linked with the Blog site Marketing Academy, but does not have to belong of it.
I switched to BeeHiiv since it was constructed for this objective. FluentCRM was not.
Newsletters Versus Just A Typical Email Listing
There’s a difference between a newsletter system and just an e-mail list.
You can host your email checklist anyplace you desire and there are a variety of them out there, from Aweber, ActiveCampaign, Drip, ConvertKit … over to self-hosted options like GroundHogg and FluentCRM.
What’s the difference?
The key distinction is that, with a newsletter platform, the act of posting means that it is going to your web site and to your e-mail subscribers concurrently.
With both BeeHiiv and Substack, you have a website. You are publishing to that site. Yet, you are also dispatching to all customers at the same time. The website and it’s customers are done in one. This makes monitoring of the system much simpler.
With the majority of email platforms, any kind of newsletter you set up is done as an e-mail campaign. It is developed completely independently from your website. So, as an example, you might publish a post to WordPress but after that you would require to individually build and send out an email to your listing to send it to subscribers. These are then two separate sets of archives and two separate activities since article and your emails are not inherently connected.
The closest thing that turns WordPress into a true newsletter platform is Newsletter Glue.
It is a suitable name because it pretty much “glues” your e-newsletter to your WordPress blog posts and allows them to be the same point. Absolutely, something like Newsletter Glue would certainly be a strong option if I intended to continue to self-host every little thing. Nonetheless, you would certainly lose the growth devices that come with a platform like BeeHiiv.
Publishing an e-newsletter naturally includes a different set of demands than a typical email listing.
You do not normally need much marketing automation. You don’t usually need autoresponder sequences, event monitoring, and all the bells and whistles of a marketing automation platform.
What you DO demand, though, is one seamless posting experience and development tools to aid you construct your client base that are specific to e-newsletters.
BeeHiiv vs Substack
When I announced to my subscribers that I was going to switch over the e-newsletter over to BeeHiiv, I had lots of people ask me why I was choosing it over Substack.
To be clear, even besides the truth that I picked to select BeeHiiv, that does not suggest I think Substack sucks. As a matter of fact, because Substack has been around 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 especially tailored to newsletter authors. In fact, it is essentially constructed by the same folks that built the innovation behind Morning Mixture. On the other hand, SubStack targets writers. In the real life, doesn’t matter. Yet, the noticeable positioning of BeeHiiv toward newsletter development called me out over the even more common positioning of being a “maker”. Growth is what I’m interested in below.
- That branding and differentiation also indicates that BeeHiiv has some rather huge brands and huge publications utilizing it. Whereas SubStack is intended even more at solo makers. Once again, it simply tells me the customer avatar distinction in between the two companies.
Sending our my newsletter using FluentCRM didn’t exactly suck. The only reason I would contemplate drinking points up is if I believed I might expand the list much faster. And BeeHiiv spoke precisely to that goal.
Because of the targeting, I really do not watch BeeHiiv and Substack as straight competitors. I think BeeHiiv is targeting a different kind of consumer. Actually, if anything, I see BeeHiiv and ConvertKit being extra straight rivals.
Yet, let’s dive deeper than simply the positioning below.
Things That Make BeeHiiv Better Than Substack
Generally, BeeHiiv seems like it was developed by individuals who comprehending email marketing. On the other hand, SubStack appears more geared toward developers.
As an example, BeeHiiv offers custom-made fields on clients. Now, it isn’t as established as something like FluentCRM. Yet, it has it. Substack does not.
BeeHiiv provides Automations. In fact, it is an aesthetic 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 rather minimal in triggers and the only action is the capacity to send an email. Nonetheless, improvements are coming. Quickly enough, automations will certainly have new triggers along with brand-new actions, such as changing personalized areas, sending webhooks, etc. I’ve already seen enhancements to their automations simply because I started making use of the system. For instance:
- Capability to activate automations based upon which details embed kind they came in on.
- Capability to automatically do re-engagement (and deal with individuals based upon opens and non-opens).
- Capability to do standard conditional reasoning branches.
Substack does not have automations such as this. Likely, it never ever will. Substack simply can not do this since the target audience of Substack just would not believe to approach this like an email marketing professional.
When it pertains to writing your e-newsletters, the composing user interface of BeeHiiv is simply much more tailored toward e-newsletters. As a matter of fact, it really has resemblances to the WordPress block builder in exactly how it works. I discover it to be extra user-friendly, directly.
Substack’s writing user interface behaves and clean, but it would be much more comparable to the traditional editor for WordPress. Toolbar at the top.
This difference is more than simply form. For instance, with BeeHiiv you can insert a “Section” and after that placed anything you desire in it. Then, you can put Exposure choices on that particular area to reveal it only to paid subscribers, conceal it from e-mail, hide from clients, reveal only to customers, and so on. Substack provides nothing such as this.
And when/if the time comes that I start a premium registration model, BeeHiiv doesn’t take any kind of profits. Actually, you essentially link approximately your very own Stripe account and it charges directly to it. With Substack, they will take 10% of your revenue. Relying on the amount of subscribers you get, that 10% can be quite a bit more money than the regular monthly price of BeeHiiv.
Last but not least, BeeHiiv has an API. This may appear unpopular, however what it indicates is that there are integrations with BeeHiiv. You can actually make BeeHiiv deal with the outside using devices like Zapier or Make.com. This is HUGE. Substack essentially has … absolutely nothing. No integrations whatsoever.
Generally, I just seemed like BeeHiiv was a lot more developed towards genuine email marketing. It was developed by people who “get it”. Even the opt-in forms and the landing page designs appear better built for conversions. Development is nitty-gritty with BeeHiiv.
Despite the fact that there are still features I would like to see BeeHiiv add, I like the instructions it is going more than Substack.
Things That Make Substack Better Than BeeHiiv
As I have claimed, Substack placements itself towards “developers” greater than email online marketers and newsletter proprietors. Therefore, you see some points geared a lot more toward individuals who just think in terms of content creation.
For instance, Substack sustains podcasts. BeeHiiv does not.
Also, while BeeHiiv does support numerous magazines, they are treated rather independently. Whereas Substack does have the ability to cross-post to numerous magazines at the same time. This isn’t something I call for, yet … awesome for individuals who may need it.
Substack likewise has even more social capability built-in. For example, it has a chat feature to host chats with subscribers. It likewise has a “Notes” function which works kind of like a social networks newsfeed where you can share points from other “Stacks” you read. Fascinating. On the whole, Substack is set up to be much more like a social media network which supports long-form content.
In general, Substack is likewise a lot more … minimal. You either look after that or don’t. Directly, I don’t. However, if the goal is simpleness of user interface and, truthfully, features … Substack functions quite well.
However, I’ll be clear here …
When it involves actual marketing, I don’t believe there’s much doubt that BeeHiiv is better fit. I looked for even more factors that make Substack much better than BeeHiiv, yet honestly … I have a hard time discovering them.
BeeHiiv Vs ConvertKit
While BeeHiiv and Substack are often through to be the closest rivals, I really see BeeHiiv and ConvertKit being the closer rivals. Both are going after the exact same target audience and have comparable capabilities.
ConvertKit is also positioned at developers (like Substack), but it is much more highly satisfying people who do it for business. ConvertKit has wonderful visual automation building, it’s own business platform, and more. ConvertKit is an actually good platform.
I’m not going to birthed you with a complete feature-by-feature break down below. ConvertKit is well known already. However, here’s how I feel BeeHiiv and ConvertKit contrast …
Points ConvertKit Is Better At …
Currently, ConvertKit has extra adaptability when it concerns it’s automations. I will certainly likewise say that I discover ConvertKit’s automation builder to be a bit much more intuitive than that of BeeHiiv.
ConvertKit supports labeling. This is just a basic feature of email checklists that makes it possible for segmentation in a far more versatile way than BeeHiiv presently does. I expect BeeHiiv to support labeling eventually quickly, honestly. It seems like an oversight that it is missing Beehiiv API Docs.
ConvertKit does now supply the capacity to market points through their very own platform. BeeHiiv does not. If that is necessary to you, it may be a big deal for you. For me, however, I would certainly always pick an extra direct alternative anyway. For me, I like to use my very own system powered by WooCommerce.
ConvertKit has actually been about much longer and therefore has way more integration options. Tons of web-based tools and WordPress plugins integrate with ConvertKit. ConvertKit even has their very own WordPress plugin that is quite effective. As an example, their plugin currently even sustains member-gated web content as well as auto-embed of your newsletter archives right into your site. Fundamentally, this a lot more carefully puts ConvertKit into straight competitors by having you be able to publish to your website and your email list at the same time.
BeeHiiv is seriously lacking in these sort of third-party integrations presently. It’ll arrive. Yet, we’re not there yet with it.
ConvertKit is also busy dealing with the growth tools of BeeHiiv. For instance, BeeHiiv has the referral program and the Suggestion Engine where you can not just incentivize people to share your e-newsletter with advantages, yet you can also pay per lead within the internal advertisement network of BeeHiiv to grow your listing. These are truly outstanding features of BeeHiiv. However …
Did you know ConvertKit acquired Sparkloop? Sparkloop is one of one of the most well known viral promotion platforms for e-newsletters … and ConvertKit bought it. You can see the writing on the wall wherefore this implies for the platform going forward.
Points BeeHiiv Is Much Better At … Beehiiv API Docs
BeeHiiv is a lot earlier in it’s product cycle than ConvertKit. Part of that indicates much less features and less integrations, which is natural for this stage of the cycle. Nevertheless, it also indicates that they are rapidly establishing.
In the short time that I have been a customer of BeeHiiv, I have observed almost weekly release of brand-new features into the system. And these aren’t undersized little features … but large features that are rather vital. Their rate of advancement now has been impressive.
I also significantly value just how responsive they are. As a matter of fact, one of their product statements regarding some layout improvements to the web design features actually contained a tiny trouble with the material width. I merely responded to that email to tell them. I rapidly got a reply directly from the CEO:.
That very same day, the problem was taken care of.
Couple of days later on, I gave them an additional suggestion …
Sure enough, in a bit over a week of that exchange, the capacity to trigger automations based on the embed type used was contributed to the system.
That type of responsiveness and straight participation of the group is something I truly appreciate.
One more significant point of distinction right here is the cost. Both systems offer totally free plans, nevertheless the BeeHiiv free plan offers more capacity and more subscribers (2,500 vs 1,000) than ConvertKit.
When you go to paid plans, the pricing of BeeHiiv is additionally FAR more desirable. ConvertKit appears less costly in the beginning glance since their pricing page reveals lower numbers, nonetheless the client limits are much reduced and your price rapidly boosts as your listing expands.
With BeeHiiv, your initial level paid plan starts at $42/mo (paid every year), nevertheless you can have up to 10,000 customers. That very same dimension list is mosting likely to run you $100/month with ConvertKit.
If you update to the “Scale” plan with BeeHiiv (their finest plan and the one I personally utilize), you can grow your listing as much as 100,000. A list of that dimension would run you $566/month with ConvertKit. If you want their referral network, as well, that places you at the $733/month plan. That’s if you pay each year, as well. With BeeHiiv, you can obtain all that for simply $84/month if you pay annually.
BeeHiiv is in an entirely different league when it concerns pricing (in a great way).
Will BeeHiiv eventually raise prices? They may as time goes on. But, I’m guessing individuals like myself that are currently in will certainly be locked-in. We’ll see just how things continue.
Things I Would Like BeeHiiv To Include
Among the important things you certainly require to remember is that BeeHiiv is fairly young. They do seem to progress instead rapidly and make brand-new product statements somewhat commonly, yet there are some fundamental features I really desire they had that I need to just wait on.
One is that they require to have a setting on subscription types where I can pick an automation to run right at the type degree. That would certainly be remarkable for so many factors. As of now, membership kinds look OK, however there’s extremely little settings for them to assist in division.
It would certainly behave to have tagging at the subscriber degree. This would certainly be effective.
I believe webhooks ought to be part of automations to make integrated automations much easier and minimize dependence on outdoors devices like Zapier.
There are likewise some small management user interface adjustments that would come in handy. As an example:
- Capability to mass edit/remove clients.
- Capability to mass edit blog posts (for example, to label a lot of them at the same time).
- Having a few basic fields as standard on subscribers (like the name).
- Some even more modification options for the website (such as even more adaptable shade choices, heading control, etc).
So, yeah … there are some shortcomings. Things I wish they finish with it in the future. BeeHiiv is pretty good, yet it isn’t best and absolutely not nearly as created as something like FluentCRM or any other genuine CRM product.
It most likely never will certainly be, either. As I claimed, the purpose is different so it wouldn’t a lot a great deal of sense for BeeHiiv to come to be a full marketing automation system. I think you never ever recognize, though.
Last Ideas On This BeeHiiv Evaluation
I such as BeeHiiv fairly a whole lot. Enough where I chose to change my own e-newsletters over to the platform regardless of my personal preference for digital sovereignty and owning my very own system.
Simply put, for the e-newsletter publishing design especially, I saw adequate worth in their system to require the change.
Remember, I do not use BeeHiiv as my unique e-mail checklist. I make use of BeeHiiv of what it is proficient at, however I intentionally have things establish to ensure that I additionally keep my checklist “in home” inside of FluentCRM.
If you use BeeHiiv, I suggest you do the very same. It is simply a great insurance policy, for one. However, having a full-featured marketing automation system for your listing will be of high usage (FluentCRM is a complete marketing automation system and BeeHiiv is not and likely never ever will be).
So, the inquiry is … should YOU use BeeHiiv?
In my point of view, if you are using Substack today, I ‘d most definitely consider switching to BeeHiiv. It will merely be extra business-friendly. It is targeting different capabilities and different needs. Plus, BeeHiiv even has import tools for Substack, so the switch must be quite uncomplicated.
If you are on ConvertKit now, I ‘d most likely stay unless you have a large email listing and are therefore being wooled with their high regular monthly bill. You will certainly not (yet) have every feature of ConvertKit with BeeHiiv, yet they are iterating swiftly. There’s likewise a respectable possibility you’re not even utilizing several of those fancier functions of ConvertKit and you do not also need them. For that reason, BeeHiiv can conveniently be a better and a lot more affordable fit.
Lastly, if you plan to be really intentional about expanding a newsletter, I believe BeeHiiv is THE platform to take into consideration and maintain and eye on for you.
If you utilize BeeHiiv with eyes wide open about what it is developed to be, it is one of the best games in the area now. This is the system to enjoy.
BeeHiiv offers a 14-day trial on their paid plans. It is worth taking a look at for yourself. And if you wind up not sticking to the paid plan, you’ll find the totally free account to be rather feature abundant.