There’s no doubt that you need to use an email marketing platform if you want to build an email list.

But with so many email marketing platforms to choose from, it can be hard to know which one you should use in your author business.

Choose the wrong one and it will make building an email list a hellish experience for you.

That’s where an email marketing platform like Beehiiv comes in.

Not only that it comes with so many amazing tools that can help you with building and growing your email list easily.

But it also provides you with many tools that you can use to monetize your email list.

Even better? You can even create your own website using Beehiiv with no technical know-how.

If Beehiiv gives you a similar vibe to Substack, then you’re right.

It is the alternative to Substack but better.

Just to be clear I have never used Substack before. So, what I hear about the not-so-good things about Substack are coming from those who switch to using Beehiiv after being on Substack for quite some time.

But as for everything that I share about Beehiiv in this post, they’re all based on my personal experience trying out Beehiiv for the first time.

A note about Beehiiv

Just to let you know everything I share on this post is based on my experience with using the free plan.

While I did have a chance to try out all the premium features during the 14-day free trial, I don’t see any reason to give them a try when I don’t even see the need to do so.

Yes, I know I should give every feature a try while I have the chance.

But for some reason, I decided not to.

Another thing to note here is this post will be focusing more on Beehiiv’s list-building features for the most part.

I will briefly touch on Beehiiv’s other features such as monetization and website building throughout the blog post.

But the post will be mainly about using Beehiiv to build and grow an email list since that was my reason for trying Beehiiv in the first place.

My thought about Beehiiv as an email marketing platform

Let’s be honest here, we all know how hard it is to build and grow an email list.

Ask any authors and they will tell you that it can feel like watching the paint dry sometimes.

That’s where Beehiiv’s Recommendation and Boost features come in.

With the Recommendation feature, you can recommend other newsletters that you think your audience might be interested in joining.

So, why should you care about promoting other people’s newsletters, you ask?

Well, if you recommend other newsletters to your audience, they’re more likely to reciprocate by promoting you to their audience.

That’s a big boost to your email signup when the people you recommend have a large audience.

The good news is that Beehiiv makes things easier for you to recommend other people’s newsletters by choosing who to recommend within your dashboard.

But the caveat? It’s hard to recommend newsletters when there’s barely anyone you can recommend to your audience.

The same goes for the Boost feature. Think of it as a paid ad to drive newsletter signups.

You’re bound to face the same issues with the Boost feature even if you have the money to throw at ads.

That’s the thing with Beehiiv – there aren’t that many people there. Even if they are, you just don’t know how good they are since you have no way to gauge their content.

The last thing you want is your audience is coming at you with a pitchfork only because you recommend crappy newsletters to them.

What you should know about Beehiiv

While my reason for having a look at Beehiiv has a lot to do with me wanting to make full use of its Recommendation feature, Beehiiv isn’t just about an email marketing platform.

It’s an all-in-one solution, with the website and email being its main component.

With the premium version, you can offer a paid subscription to your subscribers. And if you opt to upgrade to their Scale plan, then you’ll get to advertise your newsletter in other people’s newsletters to drive email signups.

But here’s another amazing thing you can do with Beehiiv.

If you have more than 1,000 subscribers, you can get someone to sponsor your email newsletter.

The way the sponsorship works in Beehiiv is similar to ConvertKit’s Sponsor Network.

What sets ConvertKit apart from Beehiiv is that ConvertKit requires you to have at least 10,000 subscribers.

That makes joining the sponsor network in Beehiiv a lot more attainable since you only need at least 1,000 subscribers to qualify.

And it’s still within the free plan which isn’t the case for ConvertKit.

Just to let you know ConvertKit also has a similar feature called Creator Network. It’s similar to Beehiiv’s Recommendation feature.

But unlike Beehiiv’s Recommendation which is available even on the free plan, the ConvertKit Creators Network is only available for the paid plan.

Who should be using Beehiiv

If the only thing you want to focus on is creating content in the form of an email newsletter without messing around with the technical stuff, then Beehiiv is for you.

It has all the tools you need to post on your website, create a beautiful email newsletter, and monetize your content.

Beehiiv is also perfect for you if you want something similar to Substack but with better features.

Anyone who is already on Substack will tell you how clunky some of the Substack features are and how ugly is the website and email newsletter.

I highly recommend you opt for Beehiiv instead if the aesthetic matters a lot to you.

Will I be upgrading to the premium plan?

Unlike any other apps and services that I tried in the past, this is the one thing that I’m on the fence.

Yes, I admit that Beehiiv was a nay for me at first simply because I find that the Recommendation feature is a total dud.

But now? I’m second-guessing my decision.

I may come back to try Beehiiv once again. But this time, it will be for The Efficient You instead.

As always, I’ll let you know on this blog if Beehiiv turns out to be a much better fit for this website.

And if you’re interested in giving Beehiiv a try, you can sign up with Beehiiv right here:

Sign up with Beehiiv