substack.comcontributed by Samuele Ongaro
The value is the network, the data or the infrastructure. Keep paying.
A newsletter platform with payments and a network attached: you write, readers subscribe free or paid, and the app and recommendation system put you in front of other writers' audiences.
Do not build this if the recommendation network is bringing you readers. That is the product and it has no technical replacement. Other writers sending their subscribers to you, and a discovery surface people browse, is a network effect. The sending, the archive and the paid subscriptions are ordinary work; the audience is not. WORK OUT WHICH HALF YOU HAVE - Look at where last quarter's subscribers came from. If a meaningful share arrived through recommendations or the platform's own discovery, that is what you are paying for and it is cheap - If they came from your own site, your posts and your existing audience, you are on a revenue share for sending, which is expensive THE TWO THINGS TO DO TODAY, WHATEVER YOU DECIDE - **Export your subscriber list with the signup dates.** Those dates are what make the list legally usable and they are easy to lose. Do it on a schedule, not once - **Use your own domain.** If your archive lives at a platform address, every link anybody has ever shared belongs to the platform. A custom domain means you can move and keep the links, and it is the difference between renting and owning IF YOU BUILD IT, THE SHAPE IS KNOWN - One delivery row per subscriber per issue, written before sending, so a resume is exact and a duplicate impossible - Bounces and complaints from the provider: hard bounce unsubscribes, complaint unsubscribes permanently - SPF, DKIM and DMARC on a dedicated sending subdomain, warmed slowly. This is the part that is genuinely hard and it is what the platform is doing for you - A public archive with permanent URLs, an RSS feed and generated share images - Paid subscriptions through hosted checkout, with access derived from an active subscription rather than a stored flag - The full shape is under Ghost and Buttondown elsewhere in this catalogue AND THE ARITHMETIC A percentage of revenue is cheap at a hundred paying readers and expensive at five thousand. Work out where your own crossover is — that number, rather than a preference, is when to move. THE ONE-LINE VERSION Own the domain and export the list with its dates. Then check whether recommendations are actually bringing you readers, because that is the only thing you cannot rebuild.
What you lose
- Recommendations from other writers, which is where a large share of new subscribers actually comes from
- Payments, tax handling and payouts for paid subscriptions without you touching Stripe
- The app, the reader and the notes feed, which keep an audience returning between issues
- Deliverability at scale on a platform that publishers already trust
If you would rather not build
- Beehiiv, if you want the network without the cut
What it costs
as published on their pricing page
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly | Last read |
|---|---|---|---|
| — | $0/mo | — | — |
Their pricing page is where these came from. Seeing a different price? Tell us.
The escape hatch
open source · no votes, no paid placement
Ghost
$0Publishing with paid memberships and Stripe built in, self-hostable.
TryGhost/Ghostfree · open source
Why this verdict
our own opinion · changed only by a person
30/100
Verdict no at 30 for the reason a writer cares about: the software is replaceable, the discovery is not. If your subscribers arrive through recommendations, leaving costs growth.
History
tracked since 10 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten
Questions about Substack
answered from the record above
Is Substack free?
No — the plan we track is $0 a month. Free to publish; Substack takes 10% of any paid subscription revenue, so the cost is a share of income rather than a monthly fee.
Can you replace Substack by building your own?
KEEP IT. The value is the network, the data or the infrastructure. Keep paying. Replacement score 30 out of 100, build time longer than it saves. Read what you lose before you decide.
How much does Substack cost?
$0 a month on Free to publish — $0 a year. Recorded 9 Aug 2026.
What do you lose by replacing Substack?
Recommendations from other writers, which is where a large share of new subscribers actually comes from; Payments, tax handling and payouts for paid subscriptions without you touching Stripe; The app, the reader and the notes feed, which keep an audience returning between issues; Deliverability at scale on a platform that publishers already trust. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.
Is there an open-source alternative to Substack?
Yes: Ghost, Listmonk. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.
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