The Case for Substack

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)

Letters by Burk

Landon’s Letters

How to Write for a Living

Marketing Ideas

Newsletter Circle

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.