In case your plan is to run a e-newsletter as a passion, Substack is ideal—it’s free, simple to arrange, and makes sending out emails and constructing a subscriber base pretty simple. The issue comes if you wish to make a residing publishing your e-newsletter, at which level Substack can rapidly turn out to be costly. That’s as a result of, as a substitute of charging a month-to-month charge, Substack takes a ten % lower of all income.
Flawless as their repute could also be, the economics of utilizing Substack are onerous to justify over the long run. Say you handle to get 500 individuals 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’ve got. You would possibly assume that is truthful, you won’t. Both means, sticking with Substack when different choices could also be less expensive at that time is leaving cash on the desk.
It might be onerous to depart Substack, granted. They’re an excellent, regular firm—one which does in no way allow extremism (wink.) Every part Substack does is justified, and good, and pure, and the corporate actually wouldn’t ship a mob of transphobes into the mentions of a contract service journalist. Being related to Substack isn’t unhealthy on your model, in any means.
With that in thoughts, listed below are some extra reasonably priced options which can be value 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 source and run by a nonprofit. You would, in idea, set up Ghost by yourself server, although most individuals choose to pay Ghost as a substitute, together with several former Substack publishers. Ghost provides an official guide for migrating and even a free concierge service that can deal with the migration for you.