I have actually used a great deal of various email list systems for many years. In the last number of years, I have actually been a big proponent of digital sovereignty and owning your own system. For that reason (and the remarkable features), I have been utilizing Beehiiv Referral.
So, it is certainly an odd move for me to determine to make use of BeeHiiv. Besides, it is an organized application and I am paying monthly for it.
Why did I do this?
In this BeeHiiv evaluation, I intend to look at why I made the switch to BeeHiiv for my newsletters. I want to address the problem of digital sovereignty while using the system and I ‘d additionally like to attend to why I chose to utilize it over Substack.
Allow’s dive in …
BeeHiiv: Developed For E-newsletters
In Concern # 435 of my e-newsletter called My Hobby + A Huge Change In Technique, I discussed exactly how and why I determined to turn my recreational vehicle blog right into largely a newsletter. I chose that was business model I intended to seek with that said property.
But, to purposefully pursue it as a newsletter, I desired a system that was purpose-built for that. I was making use of FluentCRM for the email listing for Gladly RV, but FluentCRM is not an e-newsletter platform. It is constructed to be a CRM and marketing automation device and, truthfully, using it for e-newsletters is a bit of a waste. Extra on that particular in a little bit.
As I stated because problem of the newsletter …
Put simply, BeeHiiv is a platform with devices constructed into it certain to my purpose. Things such as:
- Ability to publish (to the blog) and send the email at the same time without having it be two separate actions.
- Constructed in newsletter referral program. FluentCRM doesn’t have that and I would require a third-party device like Sparkloop.
- Built-in capacity to do cross-promotions with other e-newsletters on the BeeHiiv system.
- ” Magic Links”, which are primarily one-click membership web links. Great for promo in various other e-newsletters. FluentCRM has Smart Hyperlinks, though, so there are methods to do that.
- Capability to do paid “boosts” on the BeeHiiv network to advertise your newsletter.
- Integrated advertisement network, if I pick to monetize with advertisements in the e-newsletter. And I may.
- Built-in capability to run a paid e-newsletter upgrade and primarily run a premium e-newsletter. And BeeHiiv doesn’t take a cut.
Generally, BeeHiiv is purpose-built for e-newsletter publishers with features targeted at growth. The system was literally developed by the people that developed the technology for Morning Brew. They understand what they’re doing.
That is the point here. BeeHiiv is developed from scratch for the function of running an e-newsletter. FluentCRM has a various purpose.
And I ended off with this:.
I might certainly be moving The Side over to BeeHiiv too. At the very least, I’m strongly considering it.
Well, I didn’t consider it for long. As a matter of fact, I just went all out. And as a matter of fact, The side was re-branded over to The Morning WP, triggered as it’s own building to make sure that I can expand it much more purposefully too.
The objective is that each e-newsletter has the ability to be branded as it’s own media entity and expanded individually. Happily motor home was young, so easy to shift. But, The Morning WP (formerly The Edge) was buried in a sea of stuff right here at the Blog Marketing Academy. By dividing it off, I can do what I can to expand it on it’s own. It will obviously always be closely connected with the Blog Marketing Academy, however doesn’t need to belong of it.
I switched to BeeHiiv due to the fact that it was developed for this purpose. FluentCRM was not.
E-newsletters Versus Simply A Typical Email List
There’s a difference between an e-newsletter system and just an email list.
You can hold your email listing everywhere you desire and there are a number of them available, from Aweber, ActiveCampaign, Drip, ConvertKit … over to self-hosted alternatives like GroundHogg and FluentCRM.
What’s the difference?
The main distinction is that, with an e-newsletter system, the act of posting implies that it is mosting likely to your web site and to your email customers simultaneously.
With both BeeHiiv and Substack, you have an internet site. You are publishing to that website. However, you are additionally sending off to all clients at the same time. The internet site and it’s customers are done in one. This makes monitoring of the platform much easier.
With many email systems, any type of e-newsletter you set up is done as an e-mail campaign. It is built totally independently from your site. So, as an example, you may release an article to WordPress but then you would certainly need to separately construct and send an e-mail to your checklist to send it to customers. These are after that two separate sets of archives and 2 separate actions due to the fact that article and your emails are not naturally linked.
The closest point that transforms WordPress into a true newsletter platform is E-newsletter Glue.
It is a suitable name due to the fact that it basically “glues” your newsletter to your WordPress articles and allows them to be the very same point. Absolutely, something like Newsletter Glue would certainly be a solid alternative if I intended to remain to self-host whatever. However, you would certainly lose the development devices that feature a platform like BeeHiiv.
Publishing an e-newsletter naturally features a different collection of needs than a normal e-mail list.
You don’t typically require much marketing automation. You don’t generally need autoresponder sequences, occasion tracking, and all the bells and whistles of a marketing automation platform.
What you DO need, however, is one smooth publishing experience and development devices to help you construct your client base that are specific to newsletters.
BeeHiiv vs Substack
When I announced to my clients that I was mosting likely to switch over the newsletter over to BeeHiiv, I had lots of people ask me why I was picking it over Substack.
To be clear, even besides the truth that I selected to opt for BeeHiiv, that doesn’t mean I believe Substack sucks. Actually, due to the fact that Substack has actually been around longer, it is elder and has even more features.
Although BeeHiiv is younger, there are a couple things that originally obtained my interest:.
- BeeHiiv is especially tailored to newsletter publishers. As a matter of fact, it is essentially built by the very same people who built the modern technology behind Early morning Mixture. On the other hand, SubStack targets writers. In the real world, does not matter. However, the evident positioning of BeeHiiv towards e-newsletter development called me out over the even more common positioning of being a “designer”. Growth is what I want right here.
- That branding and differentiation also means that BeeHiiv has some relatively huge brand names and large publications using it. Whereas SubStack is aimed more at solo developers. Once more, it just informs me the consumer character difference in between both firms.
Sending our my newsletter by means of FluentCRM didn’t specifically draw. The only reason I would certainly contemplate trembling things up is if I thought I could GROW the checklist quicker. And BeeHiiv spoke specifically to that objective.
Due to the targeting, I really don’t view BeeHiiv and Substack as direct competitors. I assume BeeHiiv is targeting a various sort of customer. As a matter of fact, if anything, I see BeeHiiv and ConvertKit being extra straight rivals.
However, allow’s dive deeper than simply the placing here.
Things That Make BeeHiiv Better Than Substack
In general, BeeHiiv looks like it was constructed by individuals who comprehending email marketing. On the other hand, SubStack appears more geared towards creators.
As an example, BeeHiiv uses personalized fields on clients. Now, it isn’t as developed as something like FluentCRM. Yet, it has it. Substack does not.
BeeHiiv offers Automations. In fact, it is a visual automation builder that functions a great deal like what we have inside of FluentCRM.
To be clear, the automation performance is still early-phase. It is still rather minimal in triggers and the only activity is the ability to send out an email. Nonetheless, improvements are coming. Soon sufficient, automations will have new triggers in addition to brand-new actions, such as changing custom fields, sending out webhooks, etc. I have actually currently seen enhancements to their automations just considering that I started making use of the system. For instance:
- Capacity to activate automations based upon which details embed kind they came in on.
- Ability to automatically do re-engagement (and take care of individuals based upon opens up and non-opens).
- Ability to do standard conditional reasoning branches.
Substack does not have automations like this. Likely, it never ever will. Substack simply can not do this due to the fact that 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 composing user interface of BeeHiiv is just much more tailored towards e-newsletters. Actually, it in fact has similarities to the WordPress block builder in how it functions. I discover it to be a lot more instinctive, directly.
Substack’s composing user interface behaves and tidy, but it would certainly be a lot more comparable to the classic editor for WordPress. Toolbar on top.
This difference is more than simply kind. For example, with BeeHiiv you can insert a “Area” and after that put anything you want in it. After that, you can put Presence options on that particular section to reveal it only to paid clients, hide it from e-mail, conceal from subscribers, show just to subscribers, and so on. Substack supplies nothing like this.
And when/if the time comes that I start a premium registration version, BeeHiiv does not take any type of profits. In fact, you actually attach approximately your own Stripe account and it bills directly to it. With Substack, they will certainly take 10% of your revenue. Depending on how many clients you obtain, that 10% can be quite a bit more money than the regular monthly price of BeeHiiv.
Lastly, BeeHiiv has an API. This may appear unpopular, but 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 … nothing. No integrations at all.
On the whole, I simply felt like BeeHiiv was more developed toward genuine email marketing. It was built by individuals who “get it”. Even the opt-in forms and the landing page creates appear better built for conversions. Growth is nitty-gritty with BeeHiiv.
Despite the fact that there are still features I want to see BeeHiiv add, I like the direction it is going more than Substack.
Points That Make Substack Better Than BeeHiiv
As I have stated, Substack settings itself toward “creators” greater than e-mail online marketers and newsletter proprietors. For that reason, you see some points geared much more towards individuals that just believe in regards to web content creation.
For example, Substack sustains podcasts. BeeHiiv does not.
Also, while BeeHiiv does support multiple publications, they are dealt with fairly individually. Whereas Substack does have the ability to cross-post to numerous magazines at the same time. This isn’t something I require, however … cool for individuals that may require it.
Substack additionally has even more social functionality built-in. For instance, it has a conversation feature to host chats with clients. It also has a “Notes” feature which works type of like a social media sites newsfeed where you can share things from other “Stacks” you read. Intriguing. On the whole, Substack is set up to be extra like a social network which supports long-form web content.
Generally, Substack is likewise more … minimal. You either take care of that or do not. Personally, I don’t. Nonetheless, if the goal is simplicity of interface and, frankly, features … Substack works pretty well.
But, I’ll be clear here …
When it concerns real marketing, I don’t assume there’s much doubt that BeeHiiv is much better suited. I searched for even more points that make Substack far better than BeeHiiv, but honestly … I have a tough time finding them.
BeeHiiv Vs ConvertKit
While BeeHiiv and Substack are frequently through to be the closest competitors, I actually see BeeHiiv and ConvertKit being the closer rivals. Both are going after the very same target market and have comparable capabilities.
ConvertKit is additionally placed at makers (like Substack), yet it is much more strongly catering to individuals that do it for business. ConvertKit has good visual automation building, it’s own commerce system, and much more. ConvertKit is an actually good system.
I’m not mosting likely to birthed you with a complete feature-by-feature failure here. ConvertKit is well known already. However, here’s how I feel BeeHiiv and ConvertKit contrast …
Things ConvertKit Is Much Better At …
Currently, ConvertKit has a lot more adaptability when it comes to it’s automations. I will certainly additionally say that I find ConvertKit’s automation builder to be a little bit more intuitive than that of BeeHiiv.
ConvertKit supports tagging. This is simply a fundamental feature of email checklists that allows segmentation in a far more versatile means than BeeHiiv presently does. I expect BeeHiiv to support marking at some point soon, truthfully. It feels like an oversight that it is missing Beehiiv Referral.
ConvertKit does currently offer the capability to market points via their 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 constantly select an extra direct alternative anyway. For me, I choose to utilize my own platform powered by WooCommerce.
ConvertKit has actually been about a lot longer and because of that has way more integration alternatives. Tons of web-based devices and WordPress plugins integrate with ConvertKit. ConvertKit also has their own WordPress plugin that is fairly powerful. As an example, their plugin currently even supports member-gated material as well as auto-embed of your e-newsletter archives right into your website. Fundamentally, this extra carefully puts ConvertKit into direct competition by having you have the ability to release to your website and your e-mail list at the same time.
BeeHiiv is drastically doing not have in these type of third-party integrations presently. It’ll arrive. Yet, we’re not there yet with it.
ConvertKit is also hectic taking on the growth devices of BeeHiiv. As an example, BeeHiiv has the referral program and the Referral Engine where you can not just incentivize individuals to share your newsletter with perks, but you can likewise pay per lead within the internal ad network of BeeHiiv to expand your list. These are actually amazing features of BeeHiiv. Yet …
Did you know ConvertKit obtained Sparkloop? Sparkloop is among one of the most well known viral promo systems for e-newsletters … and ConvertKit bought it. You can see the composing on the wall surface wherefore this suggests for the system going forward.
Things BeeHiiv Is Better At … Beehiiv Referral
BeeHiiv is a lot earlier in it’s product cycle than ConvertKit. Part of that implies much less features and much less integrations, which is natural for this stage of the cycle. Nonetheless, it also implies that they are quickly developing.
In the short time that I have actually been a customer of BeeHiiv, I have actually observed almost once a week release of new features into the platform. And these aren’t puny little features … yet huge features that are rather important. Their speed of growth at this point has actually been impressive.
I also quite value just how responsive they are. In fact, one of their item statements about some layout improvements to the website design features actually included a small problem with the web content width. I simply responded to that e-mail to tell them. I swiftly got a reply directly from the CEO:.
That very same day, the concern was dealt with.
Few days later on, I gave them an additional recommendation …
Indeed, in a little bit over a week of that exchange, the ability to trigger automations based upon the embed kind made use of was included in the system.
That sort of responsiveness and direct participation of the team is something I truly appreciate.
One more significant factor of distinction right here is the cost. Both systems offer free plans, nevertheless the BeeHiiv free plan provides a lot 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 also much more beneficial. ConvertKit seems more affordable initially glance because their pricing page reveals reduced numbers, nonetheless the customer restrictions are FAR reduced and your price quickly boosts as your checklist expands.
With BeeHiiv, your initial level paid plan starts at $42/mo (paid yearly), nonetheless you can have up to 10,000 subscribers. That very same dimension listing is going to run you $100/month with ConvertKit.
If you upgrade to the “Range” plan with BeeHiiv (their ideal plan and the one I personally make use of), you can expand your list up to 100,000. A listing 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 every year, also. With BeeHiiv, you can obtain all that for just $84/month if you pay yearly.
BeeHiiv is in a totally different league when it concerns pricing (in a good way).
Will BeeHiiv at some point enhance costs? They may as time takes place. However, I’m presuming people like myself that are already in will be locked-in. We’ll see exactly how things proceed.
Things I Would Certainly Like BeeHiiv To Include
One of the things you certainly need to keep in mind is that BeeHiiv is relatively young. They do seem to develop rather rapidly and make new item statements somewhat usually, but there are some standard features I actually desire they had that I need to just await.
One is that they require to have a setup on subscription types where I could choose an automation to run right at the type degree. That would be amazing for so many reasons. Already, subscription forms look OK, yet there’s really little setups for them to aid in segmentation.
It would certainly be nice to have identifying at the subscriber degree. This would certainly be powerful.
I assume webhooks should become part of automations to make built-in automations simpler and reduce reliance on outside tools like Zapier.
There are also some small management interface changes that would certainly come in handy. For example:
- Capacity to bulk edit/remove customers.
- Capacity to mass edit blog posts (for example, to label a bunch of them at the same time).
- Having a few fundamental fields as basic on clients (like the name).
- Some even more customization options for the web site (such as even more versatile shade options, headline control, etc).
So, yeah … there are some drawbacks. Things I hope they perform with it in the near future. BeeHiiv is pretty good, but it isn’t best and definitely not nearly as developed as something like FluentCRM or any other real CRM item.
It most likely never will be, either. As I said, the purpose is various so it would not much a lot of sense for BeeHiiv to end up being a complete marketing automation system. I think you never ever recognize, though.
Final Ideas On This BeeHiiv Testimonial
I such as BeeHiiv rather a whole lot. Enough where I decided to switch my own e-newsletters over to the system regardless of my personal preference for digital sovereignty and owning my own platform.
Put simply, for the newsletter publishing design particularly, I saw adequate value in their system to call for the change.
Bear in mind, I do not make use of BeeHiiv as my exclusive e-mail list. I use BeeHiiv wherefore it is efficient, however I purposefully have points set up so that I likewise keep my listing “in house” within FluentCRM.
If you use BeeHiiv, I suggest you do the same. It is simply a great insurance coverage, for one. However, having a full-featured marketing automation system for your checklist will be of high use (FluentCRM is a complete marketing automation system and BeeHiiv is not and likely never will certainly be).
So, the question is … should YOU use BeeHiiv?
In my opinion, if you are using Substack now, I ‘d certainly consider switching over to BeeHiiv. It will merely be 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 pretty uncomplicated.
If you are on ConvertKit currently, I ‘d probably stay unless you have a large e-mail checklist and are for that reason being fleeced with their high regular monthly expense. You will certainly not (yet) have every feature of ConvertKit with BeeHiiv, however they are repeating swiftly. There’s likewise a pretty good chance you’re not also using a few of those fancier functions of ConvertKit and you do not even need them. Therefore, BeeHiiv could easily be a much better and a lot more economical fit.
Finally, if you plan to be extremely deliberate regarding growing a newsletter, I assume BeeHiiv is THE system to consider and maintain and eye on for you.
If you utilize BeeHiiv with eyes wide open concerning what it is designed to be, it is just one of the very best video games around right now. This is the system to see.
BeeHiiv uses a 14-day trial on their paid plans. It deserves taking a look at on your own. And if you wind up not sticking to the paid plan, you’ll discover the totally free account to be rather feature rich.