AudienceBench

How to Set Up Your beehiiv Website, Step by Step (Website Builder, 2026)

A launch-order walkthrough for beehiiv's simple Website Builder: template, theme, navbar, subscribe form, feature pages, publishing, SEO, pixels, domain, and analytics.

By AudienceBench Editorial · Published · Pricing & docs checked

If you created a beehiiv publication on or after September 21, 2026, your website starts in beehiiv’s simpler Website Builder. Setup only takes a few minutes, and your site goes live as soon as you finish onboarding. That’s convenient, but it also means visitors can see your site before you’ve set the navbar, the subscribe form, or how it shows up in Google. This guide walks through setup in a sensible launch order, from the first template pick to SEO, tracking pixels, a custom domain, and analytics.

Still deciding which builder to use? Start with beehiiv Website Builder vs Advanced Website Builder. This guide is the hands-on follow-up for the simpler builder.

This guide is based on beehiiv’s Website Builder help articles (getting started, choosing a look, colors and fonts, navbar, subscribe options, pages, publishing, preview, and custom HTML pages), its SEO settings, tracking pixels, website analytics, subscriber attribution, website performance, and custom domain articles, plus beehiiv’s public pricing page. We re-checked all of them on October 25, 2026.

How we researched this: Every step below comes from beehiiv’s help center and pricing page. We haven’t built a site in beehiiv’s Website Builder ourselves, so we can’t show real screens or say how long each step takes in practice. A few beehiiv articles describe menu paths differently. We point those out where they matter.

About our links: beehiiv links on this page are affiliate links (/go/beehiiv). That’s the only program we earn from here. Our recommendations would be the same either way.

The short version

StepWhere (per today’s sources)Plan
1. Onboarding: template, colors, fontsWebsite → Create your websiteAll plans
2. Theme and saved themeTheme panelAll plans
3. Navbar: layout, logo, links, button labelsGlobals → NavbarAll plans
4. Subscribe form and optional subscribe flowGlobals → Subscribe formAll plans
5. Pages: fix “Needs action,” add feature pagesPagesAll plans. Custom pages: Free 1, Lite 5, Pro unlimited
6. Preview, then publishPreview and Publish changesAll plans
7. SEO and social sharingSite settings → SEO & sharingAll plans
8. Tracking pixels and Google Search ConsoleSite settings → Tracking pixelsAll plans
9. Custom domainSettings → Domains → Set up custom domainPaid plans (Lite and up)
10. Website analyticsWebsite → AnalyticsFree: basic, last 30 days. Lite: all data. Pro: all data + filters

Start on beehiiv

Before you start

  • A publication created on or after September 21, 2026. beehiiv’s choosing article says those publications start on Website Builder. Older publications start on the Advanced Website Builder and don’t have the simple builder yet.
  • Your publication name and description. beehiiv’s navbar article says a text logo pulls your publication title, which you can only change in Settings. The SEO article says your meta title and description default to your publication name and description. Get those right first and you’ll fix less later.
  • A logo image and your brand’s hex colors, if you have them.
  • The Members or Admin role. beehiiv’s SEO, tracking pixel, and analytics articles are written for Members and Admins. Its custom domain article is written for Admins.

Your site is live from the start. beehiiv’s publishing article says finishing onboarding “publishes a simple version of your site automatically.” There’s no hidden draft period, so work through steps 2 to 5 soon after onboarding.

Step 1: Onboarding (template, colors, fonts)

From beehiiv’s getting-started article:

  1. Click Website in the left panel, then Create your website.
  2. Pick a template. This is your site’s layout and structure. Use Sort by to reorder the options. Each template comes with default colors and fonts. Click Next.
  3. Choose colors. Click a swatch to set it yourself, click Generate with AI and describe the feel you want, browse Color palette presets, or click the shuffle icon to try combinations. Click Next.
  4. Choose fonts. Set Heading, Text, and Button fonts, use Generate with AI, or pick from Font combination presets. Click Next.
  5. Review in Desktop or Mobile view. Click Previous to change things, or Start building to finish and open the editor.

Don’t agonize over any of this. beehiiv says you can change every choice later.

Step 2: Fine-tune your theme and save it

beehiiv separates two ideas. A theme is your colors and fonts. A template is your structure and layout. You can apply any theme to any template.

  • Try a whole new look: click Theme, then the arrow next to your theme preview to open the Themes panel. The Library tab groups themes by style (Minimal, Bold, Playful, and others). Clicking one applies it right away in the preview.
  • Match your brand: under Fine-tune your theme, click Colors (then Edit colors to enter hex codes) or Fonts (then Edit fonts for Heading, Body, and Button). The five color roles are Background, Text on background, Primary (buttons and key elements), Text on primary, and Border.
  • Save it: in the Themes panel, click the save icon at the top right. Saved themes appear under the Saved tab.

Know the limit. beehiiv says Website Builder sets font size and color through the theme. You can’t change them for individual elements. If you need that, beehiiv points you to the Advanced Website Builder.

Swap templates early, not late

If you want a different template, change it before you customize your navbar and footer. beehiiv’s “Choosing a look” FAQ says switching your overall template replaces your navbar and footer with the new template’s defaults. Your logo and publication name come back, but custom navigation links, footer groups, and social links don’t. To change only the navbar or footer design later, use the template picker inside Globals, which beehiiv says keeps your content.

Step 3: Set up the navbar

The navbar appears on every page, so beehiiv manages it in Globals. From the navbar article:

  1. Layout: next to Navbar, click Switch template, pick a layout, and click Apply. beehiiv says this keeps your existing links and content.
  2. Logo: under Navbar, click Logo. Choose Text (your publication title) or Image. For an image, you can Upload, Use from library, or Generate image with AI.
  3. Navigation links: click Navigation links. Edit each link’s Label, its destination under Links to, and whether it opens in a new tab. Drag the 6 dots to reorder.
  4. Button labels: change the Log in button label and Subscribe button label to match your voice.

A hidden link means an unpublished page. beehiiv says a link shows as hidden when the page it points to isn’t published. Click the info icon to see how to turn the page on. That leads to step 5.

Step 4: Set up the subscribe form

The subscribe form is also global, so one setup covers every place it appears. From beehiiv’s subscribe article:

  1. In Globals, next to Subscribe form, click Switch template, choose a layout, and click Apply. Your placeholder and button text carry over.
  2. Under Subscribe form, edit the Email field placeholder and the Button label.
  3. Optional: click Subscribe flow (optional), then Create subscribe flow, to add steps after someone signs up, such as picking topics.

The Website Builder article stops there and doesn’t describe the flow steps. If you want a welcome survey in that flow, our beehiiv surveys guide covers what beehiiv documents and what’s still unclear. Surveys need Lite or higher.

Want signups from another website too? That’s a separate tool: see embedded subscribe forms on beehiiv.

Step 5: Work through your pages

Click Pages to see every page with its status:

  • Live: visible on your published site.
  • Needs action: the page exists but isn’t visible yet. beehiiv tells you what’s missing and gives you a shortcut to fix it.

To edit a page, click into it. Its sections are listed in order in the left panel. Click a section, or click text and images right in the preview. Elements marked Global (the navbar and subscribe form) open with Edit in globals. Each page’s three dots menu has Page settings and Hide page. beehiiv notes some default pages, such as Subscribe, can’t be hidden.

Feature pages and what turns them on

beehiiv’s pages article lists six feature pages. You can add and customize any of them right away. Each one goes live on its own once its trigger happens:

Feature pageWhat it doesGoes live once
UpgradeLets free subscribers upgrade to paidYou create a paid tier
ProductLets subscribers browse and buy your productsYou publish a product
PodcastLets subscribers browse and listen to episodesYou publish a podcast episode
AuthorShows posts from one authorYou publish a post
TagShows posts with a specific tagYou publish a post with that tag
SurveyLets subscribers view and answer a surveyYou publish a survey

Source: beehiiv, “Understanding your website’s pages,” updated Sep 21, 2026.

So a brand-new site with no posts will show some pages as Needs action, and that’s expected. Publishing your first post turns on the Author page. Setting up paid subscriptions turns on Upgrade (see how to set up paid subscriptions on beehiiv).

Custom pages are custom HTML

The only custom page type beehiiv’s Website Builder pages article lists is Custom HTML: Pages → + New → Custom HTML, then a Title, a Path (the page’s URL), your HTML, and Add page. Before you build one, know these rules from beehiiv’s custom HTML article (updated Oct 4, 2026):

  • It doesn’t include your navbar or footer. Add your own navigation in the HTML.
  • It can’t be converted to a regular page later, or the other way around.
  • It’s limited to 512 KB of content.
  • beehiiv support won’t troubleshoot your code.
  • It counts toward your custom page limit: Free 1, Lite 5, Pro and Enterprise unlimited.

For a simple About page, check whether your template’s default pages already cover it before you spend your one Free custom page on hand-written HTML.

Step 6: Preview, then publish

  • Preview: click Preview at the top. A Draft Preview banner confirms only you can see it. Switch between the desktop and mobile icons. beehiiv says preview shows unpublished changes exactly as they’ll look once published.
  • Save vs. publish: click the arrow next to Publish changes. Save changes keeps a draft and changes nothing live. Publish changes makes your edits visible right away. Click Publish changes, review the confirmation, and click Publish changes again.
  • Check status: the same dropdown shows whether you have unpublished changes and when the site was last published.

Unlike the Advanced Website Builder, beehiiv’s Website Builder article doesn’t describe publishing page by page. It describes publishing your changes as a whole.

Step 7: SEO and social sharing

beehiiv’s SEO article (updated Oct 1, 2026) lists both builders in its header and covers all plans. Its path is Website → Builder → Settings icon → Site settings → SEO & sharing. (That wording matches the Advanced builder’s menus. The Website Builder articles don’t mention a Settings icon, so the label may differ in your account.)

What to set:

  • Discoverable on the web: on by default. It lets search engines and AI crawlers index your site. Turning it off blocks indexing, but beehiiv notes it doesn’t password-protect your site. On Pro with a custom domain, you can block specific AI bots instead of all crawlers; see our beehiiv AI Crawl Control guide. To hide a single post or page instead (Hide from feed, Archive, per-page indexing), see how to hide a beehiiv post or page from Google.
  • LLMs.txt (paid plans): at the bottom of SEO & sharing. beehiiv auto-generates a summary file for AI tools at yourdomain.com/llms.txt, capped at 6,144 characters; you can customize or reset it. See our beehiiv LLMs.txt guide.
  • Post schema type: Article (default), News Article (for news sites, may help with Google News), or Blog Post. On Pro, you can also add per-post schema blocks (Recipe, Video, Review, and more); see our beehiiv AEO settings guide.
  • Meta title (defaults to your publication name; beehiiv recommends under 70 characters) and meta description (defaults to your publication description; under 156 characters). A search result preview shows how they may look.
  • X settings (with your Username) and Open Graph settings for Facebook, Bluesky, and others: image, title, and description, with a live preview.
  • Sitemap: beehiiv generates one automatically. You can copy its URL with the copy icon.

Check page-level settings too. beehiiv says a page can turn discoverability off on its own, but it can’t turn it on if the site-wide toggle is off. If a page never shows up in search, look at its Page settings under Search engine indexing. Page settings can also override the site-wide SEO title and description.

Footer social icons are separate. beehiiv says they live under Site settings → Socials, not in SEO settings.

Step 8: Tracking pixels and Google Search Console

beehiiv’s tracking pixels article (updated Oct 9, 2026) also covers both builders and all plans. Go to Site settings → Tracking pixels and paste IDs for:

  • Meta (Facebook): numeric ID only
  • X (Twitter)
  • TikTok: alphanumeric code
  • Google Analytics 4: the Measurement ID, starting with G-
  • Google Tag Manager: the Container ID, starting with GTM-
  • Google Search Console: the verification meta tag’s content value only

Changes save automatically. Pixels only run on your website pages, not in your emails. For scripts beehiiv doesn’t list, it suggests running them through Google Tag Manager site-wide.

Common reasons beehiiv gives for a pixel that doesn’t fire:

  • A stray space in the ID. beehiiv warns that a leading space in a GTM ID stops the whole container from loading.
  • The cookie banner. If it’s on, pixels don’t load until the visitor clicks Accept. Test in a private window and accept the banner first.
  • An unpublished GTM container. Saving in GTM isn’t enough. Publish it.
  • A site that has never been published. See the conflict note below.

Once Search Console verifies, submitting your beehiiv sitemap there is optional. beehiiv says search engines find it on their own, but submitting it can speed up indexing.

Step 9: Connect a custom domain (paid plans)

Your publication starts on a beehiiv subdomain. A custom domain needs a paid plan. The pricing table shows Custom domains on Lite, Pro, and Enterprise, not Free. beehiiv’s custom domain article (updated Oct 23, 2026) says one domain can do up to four jobs: web domain, website redirect, email domain, and branded link. Its steps:

  1. Click Settings (bottom left), then Domains → Set up custom domain.
  2. Choose Host my website, Send my newsletters, or Set up both (beehiiv recommends both for most publications).
  3. Enter your Web domain or subdomain (for example, www.yoursite.com). Turn on Website redirect (optional) only if your root domain should land on beehiiv. Leave it off if your root domain runs another site.
  4. Add the DNS records automatically through beehiiv’s partner Entri, if your provider is supported, or manually.

beehiiv suggests using a subdomain where you can. If you use Cloudflare, set beehiiv’s records to DNS only, not Proxied. beehiiv also says it will never ask you to change your nameservers. Our custom domain guide has more detail, and branded links covers the link domain.

Replacing an old site? beehiiv says connecting your domain replaces your current website and old page addresses won’t carry over on their own. Plan redirects with our beehiiv site redirects guide. Redirects need Lite (10) or Pro (unlimited).

Step 10: Check your website analytics

Go to Website → Analytics. beehiiv’s analytics article (updated Oct 5, 2026) says new Website Builder sites start collecting data as soon as the site is published. The top chart shows Unique Visitors, Page Views, Sessions, Bounce Rate, and Session Duration.

What you see depends on your plan:

PlanWebsite analytics (per the analytics article and pricing table)
FreeGraphs for the last 30 days, no filters or data charts. Pricing table: Basic
LiteGraphs and data charts, up to 12 months of history. Pricing table: All data
Pro and EnterpriseGraphs, all date filters, and data charts. Pricing table: All data + filters
Free trialFull access during the trial

The paid data charts break traffic down by Pages, Traffic (referrers, sources, mediums, campaigns), Countries, and Platforms (OS, browsers, devices). Any URL with /p/ is a newsletter post.

Tag your links with UTMs. beehiiv’s attribution article says when a visitor arrives with UTM parameters and signs up through a form on your beehiiv site, beehiiv stores utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term, and utm_content on their subscriber profile. You can then filter the Subscribers Report or build segments on them. beehiiv notes one gap: readers who go straight to paid through the built-in Stripe checkout may show as “direct/(none).”

Keep it fast

beehiiv’s performance article says it already handles image resizing and lazy loading, a global CDN, browser caching, deferred tracking scripts, and font loading. What’s left to you:

  • Compress images before you upload them.
  • Don’t load dozens of post images on one page. beehiiv says a homepage with many images loads more slowly, even with lazy loading.
  • Use third-party embeds sparingly, especially near the top of the page.
  • Limit the number of font families and weights.

Plan prices (context)

The Website Builder, templates, SEO settings, and tracking pixels are on every plan, including Free. A custom domain, more custom pages, redirects, and fuller analytics need a paid plan. From beehiiv’s pricing page, checked October 25, 2026:

SubscribersLite (billed yearly / monthly)Pro (billed yearly / monthly)
1,000$49 / $59 per month$95 / $109 per month
2,500$69 / $79 per month$129 / $149 per month
5,000$95 / $109 per month$169 / $199 per month
10,000$119 / $139 per month$199 / $239 per month

The pricing table’s Website section shows: Website builder and Website templates on every plan; Custom domains — on Free, Yes on Lite and up; Custom pages 1 / 5 / Unlimited / Unlimited; Website analytics Basic / All data / All data + filters / All data + filters; Site redirects — / 10 / Unlimited / Unlimited. Remove beehiiv branding is Pro and Enterprise only. Free is $0 up to 2,500 subscribers. beehiiv’s FAQ says Lite and Pro include a free trial with no credit card needed, and yearly billing saves up to 20%. Full tables: beehiiv pricing explained.

Launch checklist for your beehiiv site

  • Publication name and description set in Settings
  • Template chosen before customizing navbar and footer
  • Brand colors and fonts set, theme saved
  • Logo, navigation links, and button labels updated
  • Subscribe form text set, subscribe flow added if you want one
  • Pages list checked; every “Needs action” page is expected
  • Previewed on desktop and mobile, then Publish changes
  • Meta title (under 70 characters), meta description (under 156), and social image set
  • GA4 or GTM added, and Search Console verified
  • Custom domain connected (paid plans), with redirects planned if it replaces an old site
  • Analytics checked a few days after launch

Launching the newsletter too? Our free Newsletter Launch Checklist covers the email side.

Where beehiiv’s docs disagree

  • First publish. Website Builder’s publishing article says the site goes live automatically after onboarding. The tracking pixels article (written for both builders) says pixels stay in draft until you publish “for the first time” via Publish → Publish to live site. If your pixel doesn’t appear, click Publish changes once to be safe.
  • Settings menu path. The SEO and pixels articles use Website → Builder → Settings icon → Site settings. That matches Advanced builder wording, and the SEO article still opens with a notice about “the new Website Builder” (beehiiv’s older name for the Advanced builder). The simple Website Builder articles don’t show this menu.
  • Analytics filters on Lite. The analytics article’s opening notice says “paid plans include full website analytics, with all date filters.” Its plan list and the pricing table give filters only to Pro and Enterprise. We’d go with the plan list.
  • Visual custom pages. The pages article lists only Custom HTML, but the custom HTML FAQ says “custom HTML pages and visual builder custom pages share the same limit.”

What we couldn’t confirm

These aren’t answered in today’s official docs. Ask beehiiv support if they matter to you:

  • What steps a Website Builder subscribe flow supports (survey, topic picker, upgrade redirect).
  • Whether feature pages (Upgrade, Author, Tag, and others) count toward the custom page limit.
  • Where footer content (footer groups, legal links) is edited in Website Builder. The help articles mention footer groups but don’t document the footer editor.
  • Whether Website Builder has version history or a way to roll back a published change. beehiiv’s FAQ only says you can edit and publish again.
  • Whether a page-level SEO title exists for feature pages as well as default pages.

Our take

beehiiv’s Website Builder gets a clean, working site live in minutes, and you can’t really break it. The order matters more than the options. Fix your publication name, pick your final template before you touch the navbar and footer, then set the subscribe form, preview, and publish. Spend ten more minutes on SEO & sharing and a GA4 or Search Console ID. Most new newsletters skip those, and they’re free on every plan. Upgrade to Lite when you want your own domain, more than one custom page, or a year of analytics. Go to Pro for unlimited pages and redirects, analytics filters, and no beehiiv branding.

Try beehiiv · Website Builder vs Advanced · Set up a custom domain · beehiiv site redirects · beehiiv pricing explained

Sources

All sources below were checked October 25, 2026, except where noted.