The Best Substack Alternatives

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

Let's set aside, for now, how Substack's reputation might reflect poorly on your publication's brand. The economics of using Substack are simply hard to justify as your newsletter grows. Say you manage to get 500 people to pay $10 a month for your newsletter—that’s a real accomplishment. It also means your newsletter is pulling in $5,000 a month, of which Substack will take $500. Annually you’ll be paying Substack $6,000, and it only gets more expensive as your success builds.

You might think this is fair, you might not. Either way, sticking with Substack when other options may be more cost-effective is leaving money on the table. With that in mind, here are some more affordable alternatives that are worth checking out. I break down what these newsletter platforms cost, and I offer a few links to publishers who migrated to these services from Substack and discussed their experiences.

And it would be remiss of me not to mention that WIRED has a suite of excellent newsletters that you don't want to miss! Take a look here.

Ghost

Ghost is open source and run by a nonprofit. You could, in theory, install Ghost on your own server, though most people opt to pay Ghost instead, including several former Substack publishers. Ghost offers an official guide for migrating and even a free concierge service that will handle the migration for you.

How does the pricing stack up? Here’s a breakdown:

1. The Starter plan begins at $9 a month for up to 500 subscribers, which works out to $108 annually. That's a discount over Substack if you're pulling in more than $1,080 a year.
2. The Creator plan starts at $25 a month for up to 1,000 subscribers, which works out to $300 a year, which is a discount over Substack if you're pulling in more than $3,000 a year. This plan also offers custom themes, integrations with other software, and two user logins.
3. Plans scale up from there. At 10,000 subscribers, for example, the Creator plan costs $99 a month, which works out to $1,188 annually, which is a discount over Substack if you're pulling in more than $11,880 a year.
4. For 205,000 subscribers, the Creator plan costs $1,065 a month, which works out to $12,780 annually. You would have to be pulling in $127,800 a year before that works out as a discount over Substack.

Ghost’s prices scale regardless of whether a subscriber is paying you or getting the free edition, which means Ghost Pro probably isn't the best deal for truly massive audiences. Because Ghost is open source, however, you can migrate the entire newsletter to your own server after it's established.

A few high-profile newsletters have moved from Substack to Ghost. By far the most prominent is Platformer by Casey Newton and Zoë Schiffer, which was among the biggest newsletters on Substack when they left. There's also Citation Needed by Molly White, which is an extremely influential blog that critically covers cryptocurrency and other technology trends.

Buttondown

Buttondown was bootstrapped by one person, Justin Duke, who to this day responds to emails and questions nearly instantly. Being bootstrapped means there are no investors pushing for massive scale growth. We've talked about how to migrate your newsletter from Substack to Buttondown before—it's a straightforward process.

Here's how the pricing works out:

1. The Free plan works for up to 100 subscribers, but you can't use this plan if you want to charge for subscriptions.
2. The Basic plan costs $9 a month, or $108 a year, and works for up to 1,000 subscribers. That's a discount over Substack if you're pulling in more than $1,080 annually.
3. The Standard plan supports up to 5,000 subscribers. It costs $29 a month or $348 a year, which is a discount over Substack if you're pulling in more than $3,480 annually. This plan also allows you to remove all Buttondown branding and adds support for integrations with other software.
4. The Professional plan supports up to 10,000 subscribers and costs $79 a month, which works out to $948 a year. That's a discount over Substack if you're making more than $9,480 annually. You can use one account to run multiple newsletters at this level.
5. The Advanced plan supports up to 20,000 subscribers and costs $139 a month, which works out to $1,668. That's a discount over Substack if you're making more than $16,668 annually.
6. Plans beyond that size don't have a public price—you'll have to reach out to the company.

Newsletters that migrated from Substack to Buttondown include The Hypothesis by Annalee Newitz, which examines the crossroads of culture and science fiction, among other things. (Full disclosure, I also operate a free newsletter run on Buttondown.)

Beehiiv

Beehiiv offers one of the most generous free versions of any application on this list, supporting up to 2,500 subscribers, and offers a straightforward migration tool. There's also a referral program, meaning you can give discounts to readers who persuade their friends to sign up. Here's the pricing breakdown:

1. The Free plan supports up to 2,500 subscribers. You cannot offer paid subscriptions with this plan.
2. The Scale plan costs $39 per month, which works out to $468, for up to 1,000 subscribers. If you're pulling in more than $4,680 annually this is a discount over Substack.
3. The Scale plan costs $99 per month, which works out to $1,188 per year, for up to 10,000 subscribers. If you're pulling in more than $11,880 per year that's a discount over Substack.
4. The Max plan, which allows you to remove all Beehiiv branding and offers support for up to 10 different publications, starts at $199 per month which works out to $2,388 per year. That's a discount over Substack if you're pulling in at least $23,880 per year.

Newsletters that migrated from Substack to Beehiiv include Garbage Day by Ryan Broderick, Young Money by Jack Raines, and The Publish Press by Colin and Samir.

Substack Doesn't Work for Everyone

Substack has raised more than $90 million in venture capital, which is a way of saying that some very rich people expect to see a massive amount of growth from this newsletter company. If you work in media, or have paid attention to the past 20 years of online publishing history, you might be skeptical that such a situation will benefit you financially in the long term. Current trends suggest that skepticism is warranted.

To Substack’s credit, right now it’s relatively easy to migrate your newsletter off its platform and onto other ones. Hopefully it stays that way, but if you’re at all skeptical that might change, I recommend migrating sooner rather than later.