Substack

Substack puts writers, creators and subscribers in charge of a new media model. It is free to start and free to leave.

A newsletter operator can publish posts, mark each post free or paid-only, host podcasts, and grow through recommendations, Notes and the Substack app.

Creators own their content and subscriber list.

Who it is for

Substack is for writers, journalists, media companies, podcasters, video creators, and experts or educators. It is built for everyone from a solo business to a full newsroom.

It suits an operator who wants to write, publish and charge readers without managing a website. There are no plan tiers to choose from.

What you can do with it

Substack has an editor with formatting, embedded media, scheduled publishing and an archive. It also supports written posts, podcasts, live video and subscriber chat.

For growth it has publication recommendations, app discovery, Notes, trending topics and leaderboards. For community it has subscriber chats, comment threads and moderation tools. Revenue tools include welcome sequences, win-back campaigns, boosts and analytics. A writer chooses which posts are free and which are paid only.

Plans and pricing

Substack is free to start, with no tiers or contracts. Writers keep 90% of their revenue minus credit card fees. The card fee rate is not published.

A calculator shows reader prices from $5 to $75 a month. In its example, 1,000 subscribers paying $5 a month would earn $60,000 per year. Paid subscriptions take a few minutes to set up and need no technical knowledge.

What it works with

Podcasts and video publish automatically to Apple, Spotify and YouTube. The Substack Recording Studio hosts podcasts, and there are apps for iOS and Android.

Podcasts can be made natively in the Recording Studio and then sent out to those places. There is also a Substack Reader for readers.

Things to know before you choose

Writers own their content and their subscriber list, and Substack is free to leave.

Subscriber import and export and eligibility rules are not covered here. Help is at the Help Center at support.substack.com. Substack Defender provides legal support for publishers.