I have made use of a great deal of different email list systems throughout the years. In the last couple of years, I have actually been a big proponent of digital sovereignty and possessing your very own system. For that reason (and the outstanding features), I have actually been utilizing Beehiiv Ad Network.
So, it is undoubtedly a strange move for me to choose to utilize BeeHiiv. Besides, it is a hosted application and I am paying monthly for it.
Why did I do this?
In this BeeHiiv review, I want to go over why I made the switch to BeeHiiv for my newsletters. I intend to resolve the concern of digital sovereignty while using the platform and I ‘d also such as to resolve why I chose to use it over Substack.
Let’s dive in …
BeeHiiv: Built For Newsletters
In Problem # 435 of my e-newsletter called My Pastime + A Huge Change In Technique, I talked about how and why I made a decision to transform my recreational vehicle blog into mostly a newsletter. I made a decision that was the business version I wanted to pursue with that said residential or commercial property.
Yet, to intentionally seek it as an e-newsletter, I wanted a platform that was purpose-built for that. I was utilizing FluentCRM for the e-mail checklist for Happily recreational vehicle, however FluentCRM is not an e-newsletter system. It is developed to be a CRM and marketing automation device and, truthfully, utilizing it for newsletters is a bit of a waste. A lot more on that in a bit.
As I said in that problem of the e-newsletter …
Simply put, BeeHiiv is a system with devices built right into it details to my function. Things such as:
- Ability to publish (to the blog) and send the e-mail concurrently without having it be two different actions.
- Constructed in e-newsletter referral program. FluentCRM doesn’t have that and I would have needed a third-party device like Sparkloop.
- Integrated capacity to do cross-promotions with various other newsletters on the BeeHiiv system.
- ” Magic Links”, which are generally one-click registration web links. Great for promotion in various other newsletters. FluentCRM has Smart Links, however, so there are ways to do that.
- Capability to do paid “boosts” on the BeeHiiv network to promote your newsletter.
- Built-in advertisement network, if I choose to monetize with ads in the e-newsletter. And I may.
- Integrated capacity to run a paid newsletter upgrade and basically run a costs e-newsletter. And BeeHiiv doesn’t take a cut.
Generally, BeeHiiv is purpose-built for newsletter authors with features aimed at development. The system was actually developed by the individuals who accumulated the modern technology for Morning Brew. They know what they’re doing.
That is the factor right here. BeeHiiv is developed from scratch for the objective of running a newsletter. FluentCRM has a various purpose.
And I ended off with this:.
I might undoubtedly be relocating The Edge over to BeeHiiv also. A minimum of, I’m strongly considering it.
Well, I didn’t consider it for long. As a matter of fact, I simply went for it. And in fact, The side was re-branded over to The Early morning WP, triggered as it’s very own home to ensure that I can expand it a lot more intentionally also.
The goal is that each e-newsletter has the capability to be branded as it’s own media entity and grown separately. Gladly motor home was young, so simple 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 certainly always be carefully connected with the Blog site Marketing Academy, but doesn’t need to be a part of it.
I switched over to BeeHiiv due to the fact that it was developed for this purpose. FluentCRM was not.
E-newsletters Versus Just A Typical Email List
There’s a difference in between a newsletter platform and simply an email list.
You can organize your e-mail listing anyplace you want and there are a variety of them available, from Aweber, ActiveCampaign, Drip, ConvertKit … over to self-hosted alternatives like GroundHogg and FluentCRM.
What’s the distinction?
The main difference is that, with an e-newsletter system, the act of publishing implies that it is going to your site and to your e-mail subscribers at the same time.
With both BeeHiiv and Substack, you have a website. You are releasing to that web site. However, you are also sending off to all subscribers at the same time. The web site and it’s customers are done in one. This makes management of the system much less complex.
With many email platforms, any kind of newsletter you set up is done as an email campaign. It is developed entirely individually from your site. So, for example, you could release an article to WordPress yet after that you would certainly need to individually construct and send an email to your list to send it to subscribers. These are then two separate collections of archives and two separate actions because post and your e-mails are not naturally linked.
The closest thing that turns WordPress into a real e-newsletter system is E-newsletter Glue.
It is a fitting name due to the fact that it practically “adhesives” your newsletter to your WordPress messages and allows them to be the exact same thing. Certainly, something like E-newsletter Glue would certainly be a solid choice if I wanted to remain to self-host every little thing. However, you would certainly shed the growth tools that feature a platform like BeeHiiv.
Posting an e-newsletter naturally includes a various collection of requirements than a normal email list.
You do not normally need much marketing automation. You don’t normally require autoresponder series, event tracking, and all the bells and whistles of a marketing automation platform.
What you DO requirement, though, is one seamless publishing experience and development devices to aid you develop your client base that are specific to e-newsletters.
BeeHiiv vs Substack
When I announced to my subscribers that I was going to switch the e-newsletter over to BeeHiiv, I had many individuals ask me why I was selecting it over Substack.
To be clear, even besides the truth that I selected to select BeeHiiv, that does not indicate I believe Substack sucks. As a matter of fact, since Substack has actually been around much longer, it is more mature and has even more features.
Despite the fact that BeeHiiv is younger, there are a pair things that originally obtained my attention:.
- BeeHiiv is specifically customized to e-newsletter publishers. As a matter of fact, it is essentially constructed by the same folks who constructed the technology behind Morning Brew. On the other hand, SubStack targets writers. In the real life, doesn’t matter. However, the evident positioning of BeeHiiv toward e-newsletter growth called me out over the more common positioning of being a “designer”. Development is what I want below.
- That branding and distinction also means that BeeHiiv has some rather large brands and big publications utilizing it. Whereas SubStack is aimed even more at solo creators. Once more, it simply tells me the customer avatar difference between both companies.
Sending our my newsletter via FluentCRM didn’t precisely suck. The only reason I would certainly contemplate trembling points up is if I assumed I could expand the checklist faster. And BeeHiiv spoke exactly to that goal.
Due to the targeting, I actually don’t view BeeHiiv and Substack as direct competitors. I think BeeHiiv is targeting a various kind of customer. In fact, if anything, I see BeeHiiv and ConvertKit being much more direct competitors.
However, allow’s dive much deeper than simply the positioning here.
Points That Make BeeHiiv Better Than Substack
In general, BeeHiiv appears like it was developed by individuals who understanding email marketing. On the other hand, SubStack seems more geared towards developers.
For instance, BeeHiiv offers personalized areas on customers. Now, it isn’t as established as something like FluentCRM. However, it has it. Substack does not.
BeeHiiv offers Automations. Actually, it is an aesthetic automation builder that works a whole lot like what we have inside of FluentCRM.
To be clear, the automation performance is still early-phase. It is still quite restricted in triggers and the only action is the capacity to send out an e-mail. However, improvements are coming. Quickly sufficient, automations will have new triggers along with brand-new activities, such as customizing personalized fields, sending out webhooks, and so on. I have actually currently seen improvements to their automations simply because I began making use of the platform. For instance:
- Ability to set off automations based on which specific embed form they can be found in on.
- Capability to immediately do re-engagement (and take care of individuals based on opens and non-opens).
- Capacity to do standard conditional logic branches.
Substack does not have automations such as this. Likely, it never will. Substack simply can not do this since the target audience of Substack simply would not believe to approach this like an email online marketer.
When it pertains to creating your e-newsletters, the writing user interface of BeeHiiv is just more geared towards e-newsletters. Actually, it really has similarities to the WordPress block builder in how it works. I locate it to be a lot more intuitive, personally.
Substack’s creating interface is nice and clean, however it would certainly be more equivalent to the traditional editor for WordPress. Toolbar at the top.
This difference is greater than just kind. As an example, with BeeHiiv you can place a “Area” and after that put anything you want in it. Then, you can place Presence alternatives on that area to show it just to paid customers, hide it from email, hide from clients, show just to subscribers, and so on. Substack supplies absolutely nothing such as this.
And when/if the time comes that I begin a costs registration design, BeeHiiv doesn’t take any kind of profits. As a matter of fact, you literally attach up to your own Stripe account and it charges directly to it. With Substack, they will take 10% of your profits. Relying on the amount of subscribers you get, that 10% can be a fair bit more money than the month-to-month expense of BeeHiiv.
Lastly, BeeHiiv has an API. This could appear unpopular, but what it indicates is that there are integrations with BeeHiiv. You can really make BeeHiiv work with the outside utilizing tools like Zapier or Make.com. This is HUGE. Substack actually has … nothing. No integrations whatsoever.
In general, I just seemed like BeeHiiv was a lot more constructed toward actual email marketing. It was built by people that “get it”. Also the opt-in kinds and the landing page makes seem far better built for conversions. Growth is nitty-gritty with BeeHiiv.
Despite the fact that there are still features I would love to see BeeHiiv include, I such as the instructions it is going greater than Substack.
Things That Make Substack Better Than BeeHiiv
As I have actually said, Substack settings itself toward “designers” more than e-mail online marketers and e-newsletter proprietors. Because of that, you see some points geared extra towards people who simply assume in terms of web content creation.
For instance, Substack supports podcasts. BeeHiiv does not.
Likewise, while BeeHiiv does support multiple magazines, they are treated quite independently. Whereas Substack does have the ability to cross-post to multiple publications at the same time. This isn’t something I require, however … amazing for individuals who might require it.
Substack likewise has even more social capability built-in. For instance, it has a conversation feature to host chats with customers. It also has a “Notes” function which works type of like a social media sites newsfeed where you can share points from other “Stacks” you read. Interesting. In general, Substack is established to be more like a social network which supports long-form material.
In general, Substack is additionally extra … minimalist. You either take care of that or don’t. Personally, I don’t. Nonetheless, if the objective is simpleness of interface and, truthfully, features … Substack functions pretty well.
Yet, I’ll be clear below …
When it comes to real marketing, I do not think there’s much doubt that BeeHiiv is much better matched. I tried to find more factors that make Substack much better than BeeHiiv, yet frankly … I have a difficult time locating them.
BeeHiiv Vs ConvertKit
While BeeHiiv and Substack are usually with to be the closest rivals, I in fact see BeeHiiv and ConvertKit being the closer rivals. Both are pursuing the same target market and have comparable capacities.
ConvertKit is additionally positioned at designers (like Substack), but it is far more highly accommodating people that do it for business. ConvertKit has wonderful visual automation structure, it’s very own business system, and extra. ConvertKit is an actually good system.
I’m not going to bore you with a complete feature-by-feature break down below. ConvertKit is popular currently. But, here’s just how I feel BeeHiiv and ConvertKit compare …
Things ConvertKit Is Much Better At …
As of now, ConvertKit has more versatility when it comes to it’s automations. I will certainly also say that I find ConvertKit’s automation builder to be a bit a lot more instinctive than that of BeeHiiv.
ConvertKit supports labeling. This is just a fundamental feature of e-mail lists that enables division in an even more versatile means than BeeHiiv currently does. I expect BeeHiiv to support tagging at some time quickly, honestly. It seems like an oversight that it is missing Beehiiv Ad Network.
ConvertKit does currently offer the capability to market things via their own platform. BeeHiiv does not. If that’s important to you, it might be a big deal for you. For me, however, I would certainly always pick a more straight alternative anyhow. For me, I prefer to use my very own platform powered by WooCommerce.
ConvertKit has been about a lot longer and because of that has way much more integration options. Lots of online tools and WordPress plugins integrate with ConvertKit. ConvertKit even has their very own WordPress plugin that is quite effective. As an example, their plugin now even sustains member-gated material along with auto-embed of your newsletter archives right into your site. Fundamentally, this extra closely places ConvertKit into straight competition by having you have the ability to release to your website and your e-mail checklist at the same time.
BeeHiiv is significantly lacking in these sort of third-party integrations at the moment. It’ll get there. But, we’re not there yet with it.
ConvertKit is also busy dealing with the growth tools of BeeHiiv. For example, BeeHiiv has the referral program and the Recommendation Engine where you can not only incentivize people to share your newsletter with perks, yet you can likewise pay per lead within the inner ad network of BeeHiiv to expand your list. These are actually incredible features of BeeHiiv. However …
Did you understand ConvertKit got Sparkloop? Sparkloop is one of the most popular viral promotion platforms for e-newsletters … and ConvertKit bought it. You can see the composing on the wall of what this suggests for the platform moving forward.
Points BeeHiiv Is Much Better At … Beehiiv Ad Network
BeeHiiv is a lot previously in it’s item cycle than ConvertKit. Part of that indicates much less features and less integrations, which is all-natural for this stage of the cycle. Nonetheless, it likewise indicates that they are rapidly creating.
In the short time that I have actually been a customer of BeeHiiv, I have actually witnessed nearly once a week launch of brand-new features into the system. And these aren’t puny little features … however huge features that are rather vital. Their rate of growth at this moment has actually gone over.
I additionally significantly value exactly how responsive they are. Actually, one of their product news regarding some style enhancements to the web design features really had a little problem with the web content size. I just responded to that e-mail to tell them. I swiftly obtained a reply directly from the CEO:.
That very same day, the issue was fixed.
Few days later, I provided an additional suggestion …
Sure enough, in a bit over a week of that exchange, the capability to set off automations based on the embed form utilized was added to the system.
That kind of responsiveness and direct involvement of the group is something I actually value.
An additional major factor of differentiation right here is the cost. Both systems provide free plans, nonetheless the BeeHiiv free plan supplies much more ability 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 beneficial. ConvertKit appears cheaper in the beginning glance because their pricing page shows lower numbers, however the subscriber limitations are much reduced and your cost quickly enhances as your checklist expands.
With BeeHiiv, your very first degree paid plan starts at $42/mo (paid each year), nonetheless you can have up to 10,000 customers. That very same size listing is going to run you $100/month with ConvertKit.
If you update to the “Scale” plan with BeeHiiv (their finest plan and the one I directly utilize), you can grow your listing approximately 100,000. A checklist of that dimension would 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, as well. With BeeHiiv, you can get all that for simply $84/month if you pay each year.
BeeHiiv is in a completely various league when it involves pricing (in a great way).
Will BeeHiiv eventually increase prices? They could as time takes place. But, I’m guessing people like myself who are already in will certainly be locked-in. We’ll see how things continue.
Things I Would Certainly Like BeeHiiv To Include
One of the things you certainly need to bear in mind is that BeeHiiv is fairly young. They do seem to develop rather promptly and make new product statements somewhat frequently, yet there are some basic features I truly wish they had that I need to just await.
One is that they need to have a setting on subscription kinds where I can select an automation to run right at the type degree. That would be incredible for so many reasons. Already, registration forms look OK, however there’s extremely little settings for them to help in segmentation.
It would certainly behave to have labeling at the customer level. This would be effective.
I think webhooks must belong to automations to make integrated automations much easier and reduce dependence on outdoors tools like Zapier.
There are additionally some minor management user interface adjustments that would be handy. For instance:
- Ability to bulk edit/remove subscribers.
- Capacity to bulk edit articles (for example, to identify a bunch of them at the same time).
- Having a couple of fundamental fields as conventional on customers (like the name).
- Some more personalization options for the site (such as more adaptable shade options, heading control, and so on).
So, yeah … there are some shortcomings. Points I wish they perform with it in the future. BeeHiiv is pretty good, but it isn’t perfect and definitely not nearly as established as something like FluentCRM or any other real CRM item.
It most likely never will certainly be, either. As I said, the purpose is different so it wouldn’t much a lot of sense for BeeHiiv to become a complete marketing automation platform. I guess you never ever know, though.
Final Ideas On This BeeHiiv Evaluation
I like BeeHiiv quite a great deal. Sufficient where I chose to change my very own newsletters over to the platform regardless of my personal choice for digital sovereignty and possessing my very own platform.
Put simply, for the newsletter posting design especially, I saw adequate worth in their platform to warrant the adjustment.
Remember, I do not utilize BeeHiiv as my exclusive email list. I use BeeHiiv wherefore it is proficient at, however I deliberately have things set up so that I likewise keep my listing “in home” inside of FluentCRM.
If you utilize BeeHiiv, I recommend you do the same. It is just a great insurance policy, for one. But, having a full-featured marketing automation system for your checklist will certainly be of high usage (FluentCRM is a complete marketing automation system and BeeHiiv is not and likely never will be).
So, the question is … should YOU use BeeHiiv?
In my viewpoint, if you are making use of Substack now, I ‘d absolutely think about switching to BeeHiiv. It will just be extra business-friendly. It is targeting various capacities and different requirements. And also, BeeHiiv also has import tools for Substack, so the switch ought to be rather uncomplicated.
If you are on ConvertKit currently, I ‘d probably stay unless you have a huge email listing and are for that reason being fleeced with their high monthly expense. You will not (yet) have every feature of ConvertKit with BeeHiiv, yet they are repeating rapidly. There’s likewise a pretty good possibility you’re not even making use of a few of those fancier features of ConvertKit and you don’t even require them. Therefore, BeeHiiv can easily be a far better and a lot more economical fit.
Last but not least, if you plan to be extremely willful about expanding an e-newsletter, I think BeeHiiv is THE system to take into consideration and keep and eye on for you.
If you utilize BeeHiiv with eyes wide open about what it is designed to be, it is just one of the very best video games in the area right now. This is the platform to view.
BeeHiiv uses a 14-day trial on their paid plans. It deserves taking a look at for yourself. And if you end up not sticking with the paid plan, you’ll discover the totally free account to be quite feature abundant.