Beehiiv Review: Extensive Newsletter Tool Review

Welcome to my Beehiiv review.

If you’re here to learn more about Beehiiv you’re at the right place.

In this post, I’m going to evaluate the main features of Beehiiv to find out if it is worth your time and if it will give you a better chance to achieve your goals.

Beehiiv strives to make email marketing as simple as possible and as a result, they chose to focus on only offering the most essential features needed for email marketing.

In exchange for that, they have put more time into improving the quality of these essential features but is it enough to create successful email campaigns?

Find out by reading my comprehensive Beehiiv review below.

Beehiiv’s Review: Overview

Name: Beehiiv
Website: Beehiiv.com
Founder: Tyler Denk, Benjamin Hargett
Product Type: Email Newsletter Tool
Price: Starts at $0 and ends at $84/month
Overall Rating: 8.36/10

Summary:
Beehiiv is a newsletter tool created for creators who want to send out their content through email similar to Buttondown and Ghost.

What makes Beehiiv stand out is the many features you normally don’t see run within a newsletter platform. A few examples of these features are their ad network, referral program creation, and more.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one tool for creating and sending out your newsletter then this might be a game changer.
Similar to: Buttondown, Ghost
Recommended: Yes

Main Features

Here’s a list of all the features Beehiiv offers:

• Website Builder & Hosting
• Email builder
• Form Builder
• autoresponder
• Automation workflows
• Integrations
• Analytics
• A/B Testing
• Email Templates
• Email broadcasting
• Premium subscriptions
• Segmenting
• Ad Network
• referral program creation

Pros and Reasons to Get Service:

Since I value your time I’ll give you a review spoiler right now. Beehiiv has had some problems with glitches in the past but right now it’s a great solution for creating email marketing campaigns.

Here are a few reasons I think Beehiiv is a good email newsletter service.

• 30-day free trial
• Ease-of-Use
• advanced marketing automation
• A/B testing
• A fixed price for every plan
• SEO Features
• No cap emails even with the free plan
• Newsletter promotion features
• You can create an Affiliate program in-platform
• Affiliate marketing is allowed

Cons of Service

I think Beehiiv is a great option for email marketing, but there are some cons you should consider if you’re going to start using Beehiiv. Here are the things I think Beehiiv can improve upon.

• Limits the addition of custom fonts
• Some features that make Beehiiv stand out are only available to the highest plans.
• No refunds under any circumstances
• Payment processing can only be done through Stripe

Who would benefit the most from Beehiiv?

The service is made specifically for creators but there are a lot of groups that could benefit from Beehiiv here’s a list of the groups that I believe would benefit the most from investing in Beehiiv:

• Solopreneurs
• Small businesses
• Bloggers
• People in search of a tool that can save unlimited subscribers, send emails, etc
• People who don’t want to deal with a learning curve when creating a newsletter.

That being said, Beehiiv is mostly for creators who want to create a newsletter that they can send out consistently.

If you’re a marketer specifically interested in marketing a product through email marketing a tool like Getresponse might be a better option because of their sales components.

Free Plan and Limitations

Beehiiv’s process of introducing people to the tool is great in my opinion. They start by offering a 30-day free trial with access to everything the platform has to offer.

No matter which plans you choose for the 30-day trial, you’ll be upgraded to their highest plan called Scale. If after the 30-day trial, you won’t select a paid package you’ll be downgraded to Beehiiv’s free plan.

The free plan comes with some limitations. You’ll have a limit to how many subscribers you can on a list but you can still send unlimited emails.

The most noteworthy limitations of the free plan are:

• The inability to create paid newsletters
• No A/B Testing
• No automation and segmenting
• No personal affiliate program
• No ad Network

You’re still good to go in terms of website hosting, content creation, and broadcasting.

Ease-of-Use

The platform is intuitive making it very fairly easy to get a decent campaign up and running even if you have zero experience with email marketing.

The newsletter crafting itself isn’t done with the traditional drag-and-drop system but is still easy to pick up. No coding is needed to create anything on the platform.

I do think the advanced features could use a little work when it comes to ease-of-use. They might seem a bit overwhelming for tose with zero experience.

Website Builder and Landing Pages

Beehiiv provides its members with website hosting from within the platform. This makes it possible to make a personal website where you can place all your content, landing pages, etc.

You can also optimize your Beehiiv website for search engines so that they can be indexed efficiently and give you a higher chance to rank on the first page of search results.

You can edit not only the editorial content but also the title tag and meta description so you can influence what people get to see when they find your pages on Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

An example of a fully functional website made with Beehiiv is The Daily Bite.

Unlike some Newsletter services that say they provide websites but only give you the capability to create a one-page website, Beehiiv’s websites are indistinguishable from websites hosted on WordPress for example.

Marketing Automation

Beehiiv comes with advanced marketing automation features which makes it possible to create a welcome series that spans multiple emails. Beehiiv also can create a set of responses that can be used based on the actions of your email subscribers.

Beehiiv gives you a bird’s eye view of the entire process with the help of a flow chart in which you can connect all actions.

The action can be categorized into 4 sets:

• Messages
  When to send specific emails
• Data
  Actions that can be done based on the status of your subscribers
• Delays
  Set in breaks between actions
• Flow control
  Giving subscribers choices and sending them to another part of the flow chart based on their choice.

Analytics

Beehiiv keeps track of your analytics and converts them into 3 easily digestible reports. One is for subscriber data, and the others are for posts and clicks.

You’ll get information about:

• Subscriber count
• Subscriber information
• Sign-ups
• Affiliate information
• Free and Premium newsletter data
• Open rates
• Click rates
• and more.

The decision of the 3 reports doesn’t mean that cross-reporting doesn’t occur to discover new developments but it brings a clean oversight of everything that is going on with your newsletter website and subscribers.

It goes just in-depth enough to be able to tweak your campaigns so that they can be optimized to the best of their abilities.

Management and Segmentation

Beehiiv’s segmentation features are pretty advanced.

Every segment can be divided into 2 categories which are dynamic and static segments. A static segment is a group of subscribers that don’t change.

An example could be a group of people you met in a certain city on a specific day interested in building a newsletter that earns money.

The dynamic segment could be the same type of people but when someone new that fits those criteria subscribes to your list he’ll be added to that segment.

You can segment people based on age, location, activity, and everything else most high-quality email marketing services offer as options for segmentation.

Beehiiv also provides its members with the ability to create polls and surveys to contribute to making more targeted lists which will lead to better results.

A/B Testing

Unlike a lot of other Newsletter tools, Beehiiv comes with A/B testing capabilities so you can optimize your campaigns.

Beehiiv has chosen to limit the factors you can A/B test to the subject lines of the emails you send out. From within the platform you can choose the sample size and the length of the test.

In my opinion, this is a good decision. Unless you’re a veteran email marketer having too many factors to test can sometimes do more harm than good.

As someone who has been doing email marketing for years, I can’t stress enough how valuable A/B testing can be to optimizing your campaigns.

Integrations

Beehiiv has over 600 integrations to make your life easier by connecting other programs with Beehiiv. Some of the most popular integrations are WordPress, Webflow, Zapier, Shopify, Wix, Zapier, Privy, etc.

This is a huge plus because there are some newsletter tools out there that only integrate with Zapier.

Zapier gives you a lot of connections but not everyone is willing to invest in Zapier so they can get access to all these connections.

How to market your newsletter in Beehiiv

Newsletter tools always come with the greatest features but they often don’t help you with the biggest hurdle in any online entrepreneurial endeavor.

Marketing!

How do you get newsletter subscribers in the first place?

By working with Beehiiv I’ve found 4 handy methods that are offered within the platform to start growing your list.

• Affiliate Program
• Recommendations
• Magic Links
• Boosts

1. Referral Program

Beehiiv makes it possible for subscribers to promote your newsletter in exchange for rewards and discounts.

You can see the performance of all your referrals and there’s even a leaderboard that you can use.

The rewards can be put into 2 categories.

• Promo codes
• Physical reward

You can also create milestones for your referrals that they need to reach to get these rewards. It’s not exactly like an affiliate program but does seem to be effective.

Here’s a YouTube comment from someone who got into Beehiiv through the rewards he received.

2. Recommendations

The second option is recommendation.

Through this feature you can recommend other publications and other people can recommend you.

You can place these recommendations in your content. The idea is to stimulate people to create high-quality content so they get recommended by others.

Promotion through recommendation is a bit out of your control unless you network with others but could be effective if used properly.

That being said, if you’re new to the platform I wouldn’t recommend this as your #1 strategy to getting readers.

3. Magic Links

Magic links are comparable to the sign-up links on YouTube.

For those that don’t know these are special links that immediately subscribe you to a channel or in this case a newsletter by clicking.

The only problem I have with this feature is that it also bypasses surveys and polls that can be used for segmentation.

Luckily, in this area, you also get the chance to create normal links that can redirect to any space on your website that you want.

Before you start to put your magic link all over the internet, you need to know that it only works on a handful of platforms.

Beehiiv, ActiveCampaign, AWeber, ConvertKit, Drip, HubSpot, Klaviyo, MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, MailerLite, Constant Contact, Postup, and Sailthru.

4. Boosts

Boosts are similar to Google Ads and their ad network. Beehiiv has created a network of newsletters that you can advertise on.

You transfer money to your account ($50 minimum) and decide how much your budget will be for advertising. After that, you can pick which publications your ad will be shown.

It’s an effective way to get eyes on your content.

Monetization

The monetization features are one of the biggest reasons people gravitate toward Beehiiv. Beehiiv has come up with multiple ways to earn money such as:

• Ads
  Earn money through ads that can be placed in your newsletters through the Beehiiv Ad Network.
• Subscriptions
  Offer manual or monthly plans to your visitors.
• Partner Program
  Promote Beehiiv and earn a commission of 50% per sale.
• Boosts
  Earn money by promoting other letters on the Beehiiv network.

In terms of monetization, Beehiiv is a great option for those aiming to create newsletters.

Customer Support

Beehiiv provides people with multiple assets to support them on their journey. When you click on help on the Beehiiv dashboard you’ll find multiple options to support you while you build your newsletter.

The Beehiiv help section contains:

• A knowledgebase
• Newsletter Courses
• Beehiiv tutorials
• Blog with educational content
• API Documentation

Beehiiv also has a support team that you can contact through their ticket system.

Pricing

Beehiiv memberships come in 3 pricing plans Launch, Grow, and Scale.

Launch, $0
Launch is a forever-free plan for those who are building their first email newsletter. It’s great for creating websites, opt-in pages, and getting your first 2500 email subscribers.

Grow, $49/month or $42/ month (yearly)
Grow is for the people who are trying to build a community and want to use in-platform methods to start earning money. This plan comes with premium subscription features and the space to build a community for newsletter members.

Scale, $99/month or $84/ month (yearly)

Scale is all about precision growth. On this plan, you get the option to communicate with your segmented groups independently. On this plan, you can also start your referral program to increase subscribers.

The Beehiiv Partner Program

Beehiiv hasn’t been around for a long time but it’s growing every day. One of the methods they use for growing is the Beehiiv affiliate program.

Beehiiv offers a commission of 50% per sale for the first 12 months. The cookie duration is 60 days so they must go for a premium plan within those 60 days.

The commission is only paid out through Paypal on the 15th of every month. It’s also important to the into account that there’s a 30-day hold before you get paid.

If done properly, a lot of money can be made with this affiliate program.

Beehiiv Reviews

In an attempt to add more objectivity, I thought it was a good idea to take a look at how others perceive Beehiiv. Here are the user ratings of other websites that covered Beehiiv.

Product hunt: 4.7/5All time (25 reviews)
Trustpilot: 4.0/5 (45 reviews)

As you can see, there are mostly positive testimonials but it seems not everyone is happy with Beehiiv.

The negative testimonials were about people who might be abusing the system to send newsletters that contain spam offers.

Luckily, you can report and block these people from continuing to spam you with newsletters that don’t offer any value.

Beehiiv alternatives

There are a lot of platforms on the internet with similar functions. Here are the most noteworthy ones and how they compare to Beehiiv.

Beehiiv vs Ghost

Beehiiv and Ghost are similar when it comes to the services they offer. The biggest difference between the 2 platforms is the ability to market your newsletter inside the platform.

Getting traffic is hard and I like the fact that Beehiiv is addressing that issue more than Ghost does.

Beehiiv vs Substack

Unlike Ghost, Substack is rated much higher when it comes to getting eyes on your content. The content on the website borrows authority from the main website making it easier to rank.

That being said it is more of a regular publishing platform. It lacks the email and marketing automation features that Beehiiv has.

Beehiiv vs Buttondown

Buttondown has more plans that you can take advantage of if you don’t have a lot of money but also provides fewer features.

Buttondown lacks A/B testing features and the marketing automation is a bit less advanced but as I said it can be a decent option for those on a budget.

You might’ve noticed that I have left out some email marketing services that others do use for comparisons such as Mailerlite, convertkit, Flodesk, Getresponse, and more.

That’s because those are platforms that are used for marketing products rather than sharing content with subscribers.

Conclusion: Is Beehiiv Worth Your Time?

Beehiiv is a great option for creators who want to earn money through their newsletter. It’s a bit expensive but the price is justified when looking at the features you receive.

When it comes specifically to creating newsletters and using those to generate income Beehiiv is the best option out there by far.

I like that they took the time to come up with ways to help their members get people to their newsletters. It makes them stand out from other newsletter platforms.

That’s all for today.

If you’ve had any experience with Beehiiv or you’re interested in giving it a shot I’d love to hear from you in the comment section.

For now, I’ll end this post by saying, I hope to see you in my next post!