Substack
VerifiedPublish a newsletter, podcast, or video, and get paid directly by your subscribers.
See all screenshots - Deployment Cloud Based
- Starting price Free
- Free trial Not offered
- Best for Freelancers, Startups, SMEs
What is Substack?
Substack is a publishing platform that lets writers, podcasters, and video creators send newsletters directly to subscribers' inboxes and get paid through built in subscriptions. Every post is delivered as an email and also published on a customizable web page, with support for free and paid tiers, podcasts with automatic RSS distribution, native video hosting, and live streaming. Creators keep ownership of their content and subscriber list, and can export their data at any time.
The platform is free to use for publishing, with no monthly fee and no subscriber limit. Substack earns revenue only when a creator charges for subscriptions, taking a 10 percent cut of that revenue in addition to standard Stripe payment processing fees. Built in discovery tools, including recommendations, Notes, and category leaderboards, help publications find new readers without external marketing tools.
Key Features of Substack
Substack lists 10 documented features, including Rich text editor with embedded images, audio, video, and paywalled sections, Automatic email delivery of every post to subscribers' inboxes and Native podcast hosting with automatic RSS feed generation and Apple Podcasts/Spotify distribution. The list below covers what the product does rather than how it is marketed.
- Rich text editor with embedded images, audio, video, and paywalled sections
- Automatic email delivery of every post to subscribers' inboxes
- Native podcast hosting with automatic RSS feed generation and Apple Podcasts/Spotify distribution
- Native video hosting and live streaming with real time chat
- Free and paid subscription tiers with monthly and annual billing via Stripe
- Notes, a short form social feed for audience discovery and engagement
- Built in recommendation network and category leaderboards for organic subscriber growth
- Subscriber, revenue, and post level analytics
- Custom domain support and visual website/theme customization
- Post import from WordPress, Ghost, Medium, Beehiiv, Mailchimp, and other platforms
Substack Pricing
Substack lists 2 plans. One is free; the rest are quoted on request.
Free
Free
Unlimited subscribers, no monthly fee
Publishing, sending, and free subscriptions cost nothing regardless of subscriber count.
Paid subscriptions
10% of subscription revenue
Applies only when a creator charges subscribers
Substack takes a 10% platform fee on paid subscription revenue, plus Stripe payment processing fees of approximately 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction and a 0.7% recurring billing fee. Creators set their own subscription price, commonly starting at $5/month.
Substack Specifications
Substack is available on web app and has iOS and Android apps. It has a free plan.
- Deployment
- Cloud Based
- Billing cycle
- Transaction
- Desktop
- Web App
- Mobile
- iOS
- Android
- Languages
- English
- Built for
- Freelancers
- Startups
- SMEs
- Support
- Integrations
- Substack integrates with Stripe for payments, Google Analytics 4 and Google Tag Manager for tracking, and supports content import from WordPress, Ghost, Medium, Beehiiv, Mailchimp, Tumblr, and Webflow. It also auto-publishes video to YouTube and LinkedIn and distributes podcasts to Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
- Public API
- No
- Free trial
- No
- Free plan
- Yes
- Runs in browser
- Yes
- Customisable
- Yes
- Website
- substack.com
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