The Case for Substack

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Hey honeys and hustlers,

As someone who publicly switched from Substack to beehiiv, I often get asked about my experience with how to optimize each. I’m currently happy with beehiiv and have no plans to switch, but I wanted to make the case for why someone should consider Substack. I haven’t totally left the platform, as I still hang out on Notes and Substack Live. I’ve met so many amazing writers on the platform, and all the guest posts (past and future, though I’m open to others) have come from Substack. At the moment, Substack boasts over 63,000 active newsletters, compared to over 26,000 publishers on Beehiiv, per Denk, and just over 25,000 “customers” — paying newsletter creators — on Ghost (source). If those numbers are true, Substack has over twice the writer base of beehiiv and Ghost combined. So today I’m sharing 5 reasons why Substack might be the platform for you, and some bonus resources that may help you in your newsletter writing journey.

1. It’s free. Free is always attractive to people who are looking to publish media but aren’t yet making revenue from it. No matter the amount of subscribers you have, it will always be free to publish on Substack. I have over 1,000 subscribers across my two newsletters, and my annual subscription fee is $729/year (for up to 2,500 subscribers on the Scale plan). Their Scale plans start at $517/year for up to 1,000 subscribers across publications, which can be a lot starting out. While I appreciate the perks that come with paying for an email service provider, not everyone who’s starting out will.

2. Public and private podcasting made simple. You can create and publish your podcast right in Substack, send them as an email with a transcription directly to your audience. It doesn’t get any simpler and accessible than that, making audio newsletters a breeze. People will also be able to access them on Spotify, Apple, and other podcast apps should you choose to submit them.

3. YouTube video integration. Now, once you publish a video on Substack, you can have that same video uploaded to YouTube. Upload once, publish twice. A nifty feature for folks who want to be in two places at once.

4. Substack Notes, aka their social feed. Discovery made easier. This is where you can organically find other writers. I believe when I was using Substack, your published articles were automatically shared to the Notes feed, but you could also choose to make a post with the link to your latest article or using a quote/text from your article. I think the ad-free, calm social feed has been a main point of attraction for many, seemingly making people feel as though Substack is a one-stop shop for publishing and discovery. More on this later.

5. Substack Live. I was skeptical of this feature addition at first, but after using it extensively, I can truly say it’s their best product feature to date. You record once (mobile only for now, which is a bummer), you get a long-form video post, long-form audio post for your RSS feed, a full transcription, and Substack even makes short clips for you to market the livestream. Honestly, I think this is perfect for news journalism and sports journalism folks (aka creative industries that have quick news cycles). I have a laundry list of things I’d like to see them improve on with this, but suffice it to say, the bones are there.

Bonus #1

While Substack doesn’t have an open API (meaning there isn’t a way to integrate Substack with other apps via Zapier, Make, etc), people have been building products on top of Substack anyway. Paul Millerd, author of The Pathless Path, shared mockups for integrating books and products into Substack. These haven’t come to fruition but here are a few products that have:

• Substack API (custom sign-up forms, feed embeds)

• Sidestack (integrate with Discord and sell digital products)

• Substackulous (your Substack AI-writing hub)

• Acta (pay per article)

• Substack Scheduled Notes (a Chrome Extension to help you schedule notes/posts)

Bonus #2

The rumors are true – some of the best writing I’ve read online has been on Substack. There are so many newsletters on growing as a writer, and the wealth of information is unreal. If you’re into the tactical side of writing, here are some newsletters on Substack I recommend:

• Letters by Burk

• Landon’s Letters

• How to Write for a Living

• Marketing Ideas

• Newsletter Circle

There are others, of course, but they lean into the more grimy/regurgitated/universal impersonal side of things, so I’ll just leave it at these since I actually read and recommend them.

Why you shouldn’t consider Substack

I have a laundry list, so let’s just jump in:

• You can’t send from a custom email address. This impacts deliverability and confuses people trying to get in touch with you, as you can’t receive emails at the fake address they give you. Deliverability tells you your true open and read rates, keeps you out of the spam and promotions folder, and legitimizes your email in their inbox. These things matter a great deal to me.

• Substack live functionality isn’t equal across operating systems. Only Apple users can schedule livestreams from the app, which allows your audience to RSVP and be notified more easily. Not sure why this functionality hasn’t been rolled out to Android users yet, but here we are. Substack also allows you to stream via RTMP, but you can’t see comments when you do??? Make it make sense, please. It would be great if people could have their remote streaming setups available for livestreams WITH local backups, but you’re stuck with trying to make it work with your mobile gear, if you have any.

• Substack’s human customer service is basically non-existent. If you have a problem with your account, oh well.

• Not all writers are created equal. There are certain perks that writers and publications with more subscribers (both free and paid) receive that other writers don’t. Substack has even reportedly paid writers to come to their platform exclusively, but indie creators will not get that same princess treatment.

• Substack Notes won’t save you. Substack Notes does feel like a calm social media platform, and it is. It has helped me find tons of people. But like any text-based platform that makes room for virality, there are downsides. The main downside is that you would have to put in a great deal of time to truly reap the benefits of showing up in the Notes feed. The existence of Substack Notes doesn’t mean you can put in less effort into marketing your work, contrary to popular belief. I think the numbers/impressions are giving people a “high” right now that they’ve been missing from Twitter and Linkedin, but I think it will fade as people realize that they still have to put in effort for people to actually subscribe to their newsletter, not just heart a post on a social feed.

• Their analytics dashboard is a joke. YouTube is the standard and always will be. I’ve also heard their podcast analytics aren’t accurate either. So while you can publish all three mediums on Substack, good luck knowing the true resonance and reach of your work. It would be so easy for them to show you how much of an article people read on average, as they show readers how much they’ve read of an article, but clearly I’m asking for too much.

• Substack recommendations are a shaky growth engine. Yes, you can find writers to co-recommend very easily on the platform. But I think the way Substack structures their recommendations in the subscriber journey makes it easy for people to subscribe to your newsletter without knowing. Then, when you land in their inbox, they’re confused and quickly unsubscribe. I’ve found the churn rate to be much lower on beehiiv, and I’ve heard similar from people on Kit.

• There’s virtually no automations to speak of. You can craft a welcome message, an unsubscribe message, and a message to welcome new paid subscribers. But that’s about it. You can’t even create email templates of some of your most-used formats. There’s not an easy way to segment your audience, and you can’t craft a welcome sequence for folks even if you wanted to. When you’re starting out, this may not be a deal breaker, but as your list grows, you’ll want to know more about who’s subscribing and how you can meet and exceed their expectations.

• As your newsletter grows, you will want to make money. And Substack is simply the least optimized email service provider for that purpose. beehiiv has an ever-growing ad network, Kit has robust, native digital product tools, and Ghost doesn’t take a percentage of your paid subscribers (and even includes customizable tiers). Substack only optimizes for paid subscribers, and basically two tiers that aren’t very customizable (annual/monthly and founder/one-time fee). Sure, there are tons of workarounds for digital products. And reaching out to brand partners and potential sponsors is something we should technically always be doing. But let’s be real, writing consistently is a lot of work. Monetizing that work can be time-consuming and difficult. Managing 5 SaaS tools just to sell one product isn’t ideal, and losing 13% of your paid subscription fees adds up very quickly.

TL:DR: higher effort = higher reward. Easy doesn’t always mean best. And free is free, until it isn’t. Substack is banking on newsletter writers garnering paid subscribers, so that they can get 10% of whatever you pull in. That amount just isn’t sustainable over time, given the lack of roadmap transparency and universal rollout of features (whenever they actually get around to rolling out new features).

Have you launched a newsletter on Substack? Are you considering moving to or from Substack? Reply to this email or leave a comment and let me know your thoughts!