The Best Substack Alternatives | WIRED

If your plan If you’re running a newsletter as a hobby, Substack is the perfect choice—it’s free, easy to set up, and makes sending emails and building a subscriber base pretty simple. The problem comes if you want to make a living publishing your newsletter, at which point Substack can quickly get expensive. That’s because, instead of charging a monthly fee, Substack takes 10 percent of revenue.

While their reputation may be impeccable, it’s hard to justify using Substack economically in the long run. Let’s say you manage to get 500 people paying $10 a month for your newsletter—that’s a real accomplishment. That also means your newsletter is generating $5,000 a month, of which Substack takes $500. You’ll be paying Substack $6,000 annually, and the cost will increase as you become more successful. You might think this is fair, but it might not. Either way, continuing to use Substack when other options might be more cost-effective at that point is a missed opportunity to make money.

It’s going to be hard to leave Substack, okay. They’re a normal, good company—a company Nothing allow extremism (blink.) Everything Substack does is fair, good, and clean, and the company certainly isn’t going to send a bunch of transphobic people to mention a freelance journalist. Sticking with Substack isn’t going to hurt your brand in any way.

With that in mind, here are some more affordable alternatives worth considering, their costs, and some links to newsletter publishers who have migrated from Substack and discussed their experiences.

The spectre

Thanks to Ghost’s help

The spectre To be open source and run by a non-profit organization. Theoretically, you can install Ghost on your own server, although most people choose to pay for Ghost, which includes Some former Substack publishers. Ghost provides official guide to migration and even one Free reception service will handle the move for you.