In case your plan is to run a e-newsletter as a pastime, Substack is ideal—it’s free, straightforward to arrange, and makes sending out emails and constructing a subscriber base pretty easy. The issue comes if you wish to make a residing publishing your e-newsletter, at which level Substack can shortly turn out to be costly. That’s as a result of, as an alternative of charging a month-to-month price, Substack takes a ten p.c lower of all income.
Flawless as their fame could also be, the economics of utilizing Substack are exhausting to justify over the long run. Say you handle to get 500 folks to pay $10 a month on your e-newsletter—that’s an actual accomplishment. It additionally means your e-newsletter is pulling in $5,000 a month, of which Substack will take $500. Yearly you’ll be paying Substack $6,000, and it solely will get dearer with the extra success you will have. You would possibly assume that is honest, you may not. Both manner, sticking with Substack when different choices could also be more cost effective at that time is leaving cash on the desk.
It might be exhausting to depart Substack, granted. They’re an excellent, regular firm—one which does under no circumstances allow extremism (wink.) Every part Substack does is justified, and good, and pure, and the corporate definitely wouldn’t ship a mob of transphobes into the mentions of a contract service journalist. Being related to Substack isn’t dangerous on your model, in any manner.
With that in thoughts, listed below are some extra inexpensive options which might be price trying out, what they price, and some hyperlinks to e-newsletter publishers who migrated from Substack and mentioned their experiences.
Ghost
Courtesy of Ghost
Ghost is open supply and run by a nonprofit. You possibly can, in idea, set up Ghost by yourself server, although most individuals decide to pay Ghost as an alternative, together with a number of former Substack publishers. Ghost gives an official information for migrating and even a free concierge service that may deal with the migration for you.
