I have used a lot of various e-mail list systems over the years. In the last couple of years, I have actually been a significant advocate of digital sovereignty and possessing your own platform. For that reason (and the remarkable features), I have been making use of Beehiiv Phone Number.
So, it is indeed a weird move for me to decide to make use of BeeHiiv. Nevertheless, it is a held application and I am paying monthly for it.
Why did I do this?
In this BeeHiiv testimonial, I wish to look at why I made the switch to BeeHiiv for my newsletters. I want to resolve the problem of digital sovereignty while utilizing the platform and I ‘d likewise such as to attend to why I selected to utilize it over Substack.
Let’s dive in …
BeeHiiv: Developed For E-newsletters
In Problem # 435 of my e-newsletter called My Pastime + A Large Change In Strategy, I discussed exactly how and why I determined to transform my recreational vehicle blog site into largely a newsletter. I chose that was business model I intended to seek keeping that property.
However, to intentionally pursue it as an e-newsletter, I wanted a system that was purpose-built for that. I was using FluentCRM for the email listing for Gladly motor home, however FluentCRM is not a newsletter platform. It is developed to be a CRM and marketing automation device and, honestly, using it for e-newsletters is a little a waste. Much more on that particular in a little bit.
As I stated because problem of the newsletter …
Simply put, BeeHiiv is a system with devices developed right into it details to my purpose. Points such as:
- Capacity to release (to the blog) and send the email at the same time without having it be two different actions.
- Built in e-newsletter referral program. FluentCRM does not have that and I would certainly require a third-party tool like Sparkloop.
- Built-in ability to do cross-promotions with various other e-newsletters on the BeeHiiv system.
- ” Magic Hyperlinks”, which are basically one-click membership links. Great for promo in various other e-newsletters. FluentCRM has Smart Hyperlinks, though, so there are methods to do that.
- Capacity to do paid “boosts” on the BeeHiiv network to promote your newsletter.
- Built-in advertisement network, if I choose to monetize with advertisements in the e-newsletter. And I may.
- Integrated capability to run a paid newsletter upgrade and essentially run a costs e-newsletter. And BeeHiiv does not take a cut.
Essentially, BeeHiiv is purpose-built for newsletter publishers with features targeted at development. The system was essentially developed by the individuals that accumulated the modern technology for Early morning Brew. They recognize what they’re doing.
That is the factor right here. BeeHiiv is built from the ground up for the purpose of running a newsletter. FluentCRM has a different function.
And I finished off with this:.
I may undoubtedly be moving The Edge over to BeeHiiv also. A minimum of, I’m highly considering it.
Well, I didn’t consider it for long. In fact, I just went for it. And as a matter of fact, The side was re-branded over to The Morning WP, set off as it’s very own home to ensure that I can grow it extra purposefully too.
The goal is that each newsletter has the ability to be branded as it’s own media entity and expanded individually. Happily recreational vehicle was young, so easy to shift. But, The Early morning WP (formerly The Side) was hidden in a sea of things below at the Blog Marketing Academy. By dividing it off, I can do what I can to expand it on it’s very own. It will certainly constantly be very closely linked with the Blog site Marketing Academy, however does not need to belong of it.
I switched over to BeeHiiv due to the fact that it was built for this function. FluentCRM was not.
Newsletters Versus Just A Normal Email List
There’s a difference between a newsletter platform and simply an email checklist.
You can organize your email list just about anywhere 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 key difference is that, with an e-newsletter system, the act of posting indicates that it is mosting likely to your website and to your e-mail clients at the same time.
With both BeeHiiv and Substack, you have an internet site. You are releasing to that website. Yet, you are additionally sending off to all customers at the same time. The web site and it’s customers are all in one. This makes management of the system much simpler.
With a lot of email systems, any type of e-newsletter you set up is done as an email campaign. It is built completely independently from your internet site. So, as an example, you may release a post to WordPress however after that you would need to independently construct and send out an e-mail to your listing to send it to subscribers. These are after that two separate sets of archives and two separate actions due to the fact that blog posts and your emails are not naturally connected.
The closest thing that transforms WordPress into a true e-newsletter system is Newsletter Glue.
It is a fitting name due to the fact that it basically “glues” your newsletter to your WordPress messages and enables them to be the same thing. Certainly, something like Newsletter Glue would certainly be a solid choice if I intended to continue to self-host everything. However, you ‘d lose the development tools that include a platform like BeeHiiv.
Publishing an e-newsletter inherently features a different collection of demands than a normal e-mail list.
You do not generally need much marketing automation. You do not normally require autoresponder series, event monitoring, and all the bells and whistles of a marketing automation platform.
What you DO demand, though, is one smooth publishing experience and growth devices to help you build your subscriber base that are specific to e-newsletters.
BeeHiiv vs Substack
When I revealed 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 selecting it over Substack.
To be clear, also besides the fact that I selected to opt for BeeHiiv, that does not mean I think Substack sucks. In fact, since Substack has actually been around much longer, it is elder and has more features.
Even though BeeHiiv is more youthful, there are a couple points that at first got my focus:.
- BeeHiiv is specifically tailored to e-newsletter authors. As a matter of fact, it is literally built by the very same folks that developed the technology behind Morning Brew. On the other hand, SubStack targets authors. In the real world, does not matter. However, the noticeable positioning of BeeHiiv towards newsletter growth called me out over the more common positioning of being a “designer”. Growth is what I have an interest in here.
- That branding and differentiation also suggests that BeeHiiv has some relatively large brand names and big magazines using it. Whereas SubStack is intended even more at solo creators. Once more, it simply informs me the customer avatar distinction between the two firms.
Sending our my newsletter using FluentCRM didn’t specifically draw. The only reason I would consider shaking points up is if I assumed I can GROW the listing faster. And BeeHiiv spoke specifically to that goal.
As a result of the targeting, I actually don’t watch BeeHiiv and Substack as straight rivals. I believe BeeHiiv is targeting a various type of consumer. In fact, if anything, I see BeeHiiv and ConvertKit being more straight rivals.
However, allow’s dive deeper than simply the placing below.
Points That Make BeeHiiv Better Than Substack
On the whole, BeeHiiv looks like it was constructed by people who understanding e-mail marketing. On the other hand, SubStack appears much more tailored toward makers.
For instance, BeeHiiv supplies customized areas on clients. Now, it isn’t as established as something like FluentCRM. But, it has it. Substack does not.
BeeHiiv provides Automations. In fact, it is a visual automation builder that works a lot like what we have inside of FluentCRM.
To be clear, the automation functionality is still early-phase. It is still fairly restricted in triggers and the only action is the ability to send an e-mail. Nevertheless, improvements are coming. Quickly enough, automations will certainly have new triggers in addition to brand-new actions, such as changing custom-made fields, sending webhooks, and so on. I’ve currently seen enhancements to their automations just given that I began making use of the system. For example:
- Capacity to activate automations based on which certain embed type they was available in on.
- Ability to immediately do re-engagement (and manage people based upon opens up and non-opens).
- Ability to do basic conditional logic branches.
Substack does not have automations like this. Likely, it never ever will. Substack simply can’t do this since the target market of Substack simply wouldn’t think to approach this like an e-mail marketing professional.
When it comes to creating your e-newsletters, the creating user interface of BeeHiiv is simply much more geared toward e-newsletters. Actually, it really has resemblances to the WordPress block builder in just how it functions. I locate it to be extra user-friendly, directly.
Substack’s writing user interface behaves and clean, yet it would certainly be much more comparable to the timeless editor for WordPress. Toolbar at the top.
This difference is greater than simply form. For instance, with BeeHiiv you can insert a “Area” and afterwards placed anything you desire in it. After that, you can place Exposure options on that area to show it just to paid customers, hide it from email, hide from customers, show only to customers, and so on. Substack offers absolutely nothing similar to this.
And when/if the time comes that I begin a premium membership design, BeeHiiv doesn’t take any income. As a matter of fact, you essentially connect up to your very own Stripe account and it charges straight to it. With Substack, they will take 10% of your earnings. Relying on the amount of customers you obtain, that 10% can be quite a bit even more cash than the regular monthly cost of BeeHiiv.
Lastly, BeeHiiv has an API. This could seem nerdy, but what it means is that there are integrations with BeeHiiv. You can in fact make BeeHiiv deal with the outside making use of tools like Zapier or Make.com. This is HUGE. Substack literally has … nothing. No integrations in any way.
Overall, I simply felt like BeeHiiv was more built towards genuine e-mail marketing. It was built by people who “get it”. Even the opt-in kinds and the landing page creates appear far better built for conversions. Growth is nitty-gritty with BeeHiiv.
Even though there are still features I would like to see BeeHiiv include, I like the instructions it is going greater than Substack.
Things That Make Substack Better Than BeeHiiv
As I have said, Substack placements itself toward “developers” greater than e-mail marketing professionals and newsletter proprietors. For that reason, you see some points tailored a lot more toward people who just believe in regards to material development.
For example, Substack sustains podcasts. BeeHiiv does not.
Additionally, while BeeHiiv does support numerous magazines, they are dealt with rather independently. Whereas Substack does have the ability to cross-post to multiple magazines at the same time. This isn’t something I call for, but … great for individuals that may need it.
Substack additionally has even more social functionality built-in. For instance, it has a conversation function to host talks with customers. It also has a “Notes” feature which functions sort 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 extra like a social network which sustains long-form web content.
On the whole, Substack is also a lot more … minimalist. You either look after that or don’t. Directly, I do not. However, if the objective is simpleness of user interface and, honestly, features … Substack functions pretty well.
However, I’ll be clear right here …
When it concerns real marketing, I don’t think there’s much doubt that BeeHiiv is much better matched. I tried to find even more points that make Substack far better than BeeHiiv, however truthfully … I have a hard time finding them.
BeeHiiv Vs ConvertKit
While BeeHiiv and Substack are commonly through to be the closest rivals, I in fact see BeeHiiv and ConvertKit being the closer competitors. Both are going after the very same target market and have similar capabilities.
ConvertKit is also placed at makers (like Substack), however it is a lot more strongly satisfying individuals that do it for company. ConvertKit has wonderful aesthetic automation building, it’s own business platform, and extra. ConvertKit is an actually good system.
I’m not going to bore you with a complete feature-by-feature break down here. ConvertKit is well known currently. However, right here’s how I feel BeeHiiv and ConvertKit contrast …
Things ConvertKit Is Much Better At …
Already, ConvertKit has a lot more versatility when it involves it’s automations. I will certainly also claim that I find ConvertKit’s automation builder to be a bit more user-friendly than that of BeeHiiv.
ConvertKit sustains marking. This is simply a standard feature of e-mail checklists that makes it possible for division in a much more versatile means than BeeHiiv currently does. I anticipate BeeHiiv to sustain marking at some point quickly, frankly. It feels like an oversight that it is missing Beehiiv Phone Number.
ConvertKit does currently provide the ability to offer points via their own platform. BeeHiiv does not. If that is very important to you, it may be a big deal for you. For me, however, I would certainly always select a more straight alternative anyway. For me, I like to utilize my own system powered by WooCommerce.
ConvertKit has actually been around a lot longer and because of that has way more integration choices. Lots of online devices and WordPress plugins integrate with ConvertKit. ConvertKit also has their own WordPress plugin that is rather powerful. For instance, their plugin currently also supports member-gated web content as well as auto-embed of your newsletter archives right into your website. Fundamentally, this much more closely puts ConvertKit into straight competitors by having you have the ability to release to your site and your email list at the same time.
BeeHiiv is drastically lacking in these sort of third-party integrations currently. It’ll get there. However, we’re not there yet with it.
ConvertKit is even hectic taking on the growth tools of BeeHiiv. For instance, BeeHiiv has the referral program and the Suggestion Engine where you can not only incentivize people to share your newsletter with rewards, yet you can additionally pay per lead within the internal ad network of BeeHiiv to expand your list. These are truly outstanding features of BeeHiiv. But …
Did you know ConvertKit got Sparkloop? Sparkloop is just one of one of the most well known viral promotion systems for e-newsletters … and ConvertKit bought it. You can see the composing on the wall for what this indicates for the platform going forward.
Things BeeHiiv Is Better At … Beehiiv Phone Number
BeeHiiv is much previously in it’s item cycle than ConvertKit. Part of that indicates less features and much less integrations, which is natural for this stage of the cycle. However, it also indicates that they are swiftly establishing.
In the short time that I have been a customer of BeeHiiv, I have witnessed nearly weekly release of new features into the system. And these aren’t puny little features … yet large features that are rather vital. Their rate of growth at this moment has actually gone over.
I also significantly appreciate how receptive they are. In fact, one of their item announcements concerning some style enhancements to the website design features actually consisted of a little trouble with the content width. I simply replied to that e-mail to tell them. I quickly got a reply directly from the chief executive officer:.
That exact same day, the problem was fixed.
Couple of days later on, I gave them one more pointer …
Indeed, in a little bit over a week of that exchange, the ability to trigger automations based upon the embed type made use of was added to the system.
That kind of responsiveness and straight involvement of the team is something I actually value.
An additional major point of differentiation here is the price. Both systems offer free plans, nevertheless the BeeHiiv free plan offers extra ability and even more clients (2,500 vs 1,000) than ConvertKit.
Once you go to paid plans, the pricing of BeeHiiv is additionally FAR more favorable. ConvertKit seems less expensive at first look because their pricing page shows lower numbers, nevertheless the subscriber restrictions are FAR lower and your cost quickly boosts as your checklist expands.
With BeeHiiv, your very first level paid plan begins at $42/mo (paid every year), nevertheless you can have up to 10,000 customers. That very same size checklist is going to run you $100/month with ConvertKit.
If you upgrade to the “Range” plan with BeeHiiv (their best plan and the one I directly make use of), you can expand your checklist up to 100,000. A list of that dimension would run you $566/month with ConvertKit. If you desire their referral network, too, that places you at the $733/month plan. That’s if you pay every year, as well. With BeeHiiv, you can obtain all that for simply $84/month if you pay every year.
BeeHiiv is in a totally different organization when it involves pricing (in a great way).
Will BeeHiiv eventually enhance prices? They might as time takes place. But, I’m guessing individuals like myself who are already in will be locked-in. We’ll see just how things proceed.
Points I Would Certainly Like BeeHiiv To Include
Among the things you most definitely need to keep in mind is that BeeHiiv is fairly young. They do seem to evolve instead promptly and make new product statements rather often, however there are some standard features I truly desire they had that I require to simply wait for.
One is that they need to have a setting on subscription forms where I could pick an automation to run right at the type level. That would be incredible for so many reasons. Currently, membership kinds look OK, however there’s very little setups for them to help in division.
It would behave to have tagging at the subscriber level. This would certainly be effective.
I think webhooks ought to become part of automations to make built-in automations less complicated and lower dependence on outdoors tools like Zapier.
There are likewise some small management user interface modifications that would certainly be handy. For instance:
- Capability to mass edit/remove customers.
- Capability to mass edit posts (as an example, to identify a lot of them at the same time).
- Having a couple of standard areas as conventional on subscribers (like the name).
- Some even more modification options for the website (such as even more versatile color options, heading control, etc).
So, yeah … there are some shortcomings. Things I hope they make with it in the future. BeeHiiv is pretty good, yet it isn’t best and definitely not almost as created as something like FluentCRM or any other actual CRM item.
It possibly never ever will certainly be, either. As I claimed, the objective is various so it wouldn’t a lot a great deal of feeling for BeeHiiv to end up being a full marketing automation system. I presume you never know, though.
Final Thoughts On This BeeHiiv Testimonial
I such as BeeHiiv quite a great deal. Enough where I decided to switch my own newsletters over to the platform despite my individual choice for digital sovereignty and owning my own platform.
Simply put, for the newsletter posting version specifically, I saw enough worth in their system to necessitate the adjustment.
Remember, I do not use BeeHiiv as my exclusive e-mail checklist. I make use of BeeHiiv of what it is proficient at, yet I purposefully have things establish so that I additionally keep my listing “in house” inside of FluentCRM.
If you make use of BeeHiiv, I recommend you do the very same. It is just a great insurance coverage, for one. But, 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 will be).
So, the concern is … should YOU make use of BeeHiiv?
In my point of view, if you are using Substack right now, I ‘d definitely consider switching over to BeeHiiv. It will just be much more business-friendly. It is targeting different abilities and various needs. Plus, BeeHiiv even has import tools for Substack, so the switch ought to be rather simple.
If you are on ConvertKit currently, I ‘d most likely sit tight unless you have a big email checklist and are therefore being wooled with their high month-to-month costs. You will certainly not (yet) have every feature of ConvertKit with BeeHiiv, but they are iterating quickly. There’s likewise a pretty good chance you’re not also utilizing several of those fancier features of ConvertKit and you do not also require them. Because of that, BeeHiiv might quickly be a better and a lot more affordable fit.
Lastly, if you plan to be extremely willful regarding expanding a newsletter, I assume BeeHiiv is THE platform to think about and keep and eye on for you.
If you use BeeHiiv with eyes wide open about what it is created to be, it is one of the very best games in town now. This is the platform to watch.
BeeHiiv offers a 14-day trial on their paid plans. It is worth checking out on your own. And if you end up not sticking with the paid plan, you’ll find the totally free account to be quite feature rich.