Why I left Substack, a European perspective. And the surprising alternative that works

In December 2023, I was left with a dilemma regarding the platform I used to send out my newsletters. First, The Atlantic published a piece titled “Substack Has a Nazi Problem”. Later on, when pushed by a couple of users on the topic, Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie’s response post generated a lot of upheaval. 

I read a lot of coverage of the matter at the time and one of the best explainers out there was written by the tech writer Mike Masnick of Techdirt. Masnick used the Nazi bar scenario to describe what McKenzie has signaled to the world.

And this was his second blunder in responding to such calls. The first time occurred when McKenzie was interviewed after Substack launched the Notes feature, a Twitter-like alternative for writers, and refused to answer a content moderation question regarding racism.

The idea of Nazi bar as Masnick described it is basically that if you’re not kicking out Nazis, you get the reputation as “the Nazi bar” even if you, yourself, don’t like Nazis. And even though McKenzie noted he and the team would love a world where people don’t hold such views, they don’t think censorship will make the problem go away.

All of that resulted in Platformer leaving for Ghost. Founded by journalist Casey Newton, Platformer had become one of the biggest technology publications on the platform, with 172,000 overall subscribers. And it wasn’t the only one to leave. Another favorite among media watchers, Today in Tabs also left Substack (for Beehiiv), noting the platform’s stance towards Nazi content was the last straw.

Looking at this from a European perspective, where certain types of expression defined as hate speech are criminalized, the whole saga doesn’t leave much open to interpretation. You’re OK with Nazis? Bye.

When I spoke to a few peers from Europe also running their newsletter on Substack, everyone had the same reaction – this is bad, I have to switch platforms.

On the other hand, in the US I have seen writers I appreciate come to defend Substack’s stance and try to find holes in Newton’s reasoning to leave. 

If we were talking about a decentralized platform that doesn’t have features built to amplify reach, the discussion would be different, but that’s not the case. Substack runs a social network (Notes), has built-in tools to help promote its publications like the recommendation tool and sends out a newsletter that features recommended publications to users.

Even though the platform’s lock-in is almost non-existent when compared to players such as Apple, still, switching to an alternative takes time and if you have paying supporters, it can be difficult (but not impossible).

End of an era

When Substack came around in 2017, the value proposition was unmatched and in many ways is by this day – start a newsletter for free, send out millions of emails, we don’t care, but here you have easy tools to convert your free subscribers to paying subscribers and only then we take a 10 percent cut out of the whole payout.

For writers starting out or even mid-tier creators, the switch at the time meant easy set up, saving on email service provider (ESP) costs and just focusing on content. I remember some of the bigger newsletter writers thinking of switching, but eventually sticking to their setup on WordPress, Squarespace or Wix and combining that with an ESP like MailChimp or ConvertKit.

Some of them cited Substack’s lack of openness at the time and others just didn’t want to risk taking their business to a startup with an unknown future.

For years I have been recommending anyone to start a blog or newsletter on Substack because it was for free and the user interface was well done and simple to navigate. 

The only problem was no other language support which can be challenging in markets with poorer proficiency in English.

Whenever I spoke to someone about starting an independent personal newsletter with no intent to monetise it via a subscription, Substack was a clear winner.

You might be thinking, but I still get my favorite newsletter from Substack. Why hasn’t the writer moved away? Well, it’s not like the platform ceased to exist or a substantial group of creators have moved away. 

For some, it just might be a tough choice to leave it behind and go to an alternative that usually charges for free subscribers as well. Sure, many Substack alternatives will let new creators start for free, but they will fairly quickly hit the limit after which a payment is required.

That means, if you don’t want to share a platform that’s not against Nazis, starting a newsletter in 2024 will mean paying for the service.

Substack alternatives, and why I chose WordPress Newsletter. Also, don’t forget LinkedIn

If you google “Substack alternatives”, an unending list of blogs will pop up with Beehiiv, Ghost, MailChimp and ConvertKit being the ones that come up repeatedly. And these are honestly very good services. Apart from Ghost, you can start any for free and they will start asking for a monthly payment for services after 1000 or 2500 newsletter subscribers.

Yes, I focus firstly on money because as Substack founders could attest, running a free for all service (unless you go paid) did attract a lot of users and it is an important value proposition for upcoming creators.

Of course, each of the platforms mentioned above have some unique features and you will see different creators choosing one for a specific reason. If I was running a subscription-based newsletter, Ghost would be my go to option.

In the last days of 2022, WordPress introduced its Newsletter product – probably to catch up to the likes of Substack and offer a lightweight entry into the world of WordPress. For almost a year I have ignored the product until I had to find a viable Substack alternative for my newsletters.

When compared to the above-mentioned services, WordPress Newsletter offers more or less the same scope of features for significantly less money. Of course, the cost of a service is just one angle to consider and this is not a review. 

To be honest, I worried how the WordPress experience was going to work because platforms like Substack got an opening with a single focus product that was easily accessible. I remember my first time opening WordPress and feeling lost.

Since then I came around, but I was still worried the Newsletter product might be bloated and would need too much effort to do the same tasks I was used to do so easily. I’m glad I was proven wrong and it even had a nice migration flow built in. Also, it has, I think, better analytics than Substack when it comes to both newsletters and the website.

There are a few tradeoffs I have to mention. The delivery of sent emails takes a while, so if you were used to having it sent out to your whole list in a matter of minutes, this might take more. You can customise a lot of things, but many settings are fairly hidden (like the edit of a pop up sign up window).

One other detail is that way it processes some of the embedded elements. For example, a Spotify player embedded in the blog will translate into a single Spotify link in the email.

But overall, I feel happy with the product and the value I’m getting. I also felt like writing about this as WordPress Newsletter was almost never mentioned when writers were asking their peers or communities where they should move from Substack.

Finally, I need to mention LinkedIn’s “newsletters” product as well. I’m using the quotes around the word newsletter because LinkedIn doesn’t really gather emails nor can you receive it outside the social network.

In some ways, LinkedIn newsletters are closer to WhatsApp Channels than classical newsletters. You are locked-in the platform, you amass followers and even though you can promote it outside the platforms, anyone who wants to subscribe needs to be logged in on LinkedIn.

Despite all of that, many news media outlets use them as was presented in a recent NiemanLab story looking at how publishers are using LinkedIn newsletters. 

One of the main advantages is building engagement on the platform and keeping active followers. LinkedIn will notify each newsletter subscriber of a new issue and that’s very powerful. Another benefit is the super easy way to subscribe, just hit a button in the app or on the website or you don’t need to do anything else.

Newsrooms who have been keeping an active LinkedIn profile can now benefit from it and use the newsletter product to draw more eyes (and clicks) to their content. Many are repurposing content from existing newsletters and boosting their LinkedIn presence.

Obviously, the downside is the lock-in you create, but the increased engagement and potential conversion to subscription might be just worth it as many newsrooms have proven.

Source of the cover photo: https://unsplash.com

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