I’ve spent plenty of time on Substack. 

First, as a reader, following content marketers and freelance writers I admire. Then, as a writer, testing its features and seeing how it works behind the scenes.

In my experience, I’ve found Substack is a good fit if you:

In the beginning, Substack feels perfect. It’s free, and it’s easy to use. 

But as your brand grows, so do your needs.

You want more customization and flexibility. You want better website and newsletter analytics. You want to diversify your revenue streams. And you probably want a flat-fee pricing model to cut down expenses. 

beehiiv fills these gaps perfectly.

In this article, I’ll break down Substack’s pros and cons to help you decide whether Substack is worth it for your newsletter, and why beehiiv might be a better fit. I’ve also included a comparison table at the end to help you weigh both options at a glance.

I am passionate about researching and writing about tools that help creators and businesses grow. I also run a newsletter myself, so I understand what to look out for when testing and comparing newsletter tools.

Substack is a platform that lets you publish newsletters by email and as blog-style posts on the web. Substack is free to use, so you get access to all its features right away.

To get started, all you need to do is sign up for an account, create your publication, and bam – you’re ready to start writing. 

Besides writing tools, it has community-building features for engaging with your subscribers. 

When you’re ready to earn from your writing, turn on paid subscriptions. Most Substack writers either run a free newsletter or use a hybrid model, where free readers get access to regular content and paying subscribers unlock exclusive posts or perks.

These features make it ideal for writers, authors, and journalists who want a simple writing platform to build a loyal reader base while earning an income on the side.

Substack has more than 50 million active subscriptions, including five million paid. This shows that many creators not only publish consistently on the platform but also earn from it. Here are some reasons why it works well for them.

After using tools like WordPress and Mailchimp for blogging and newsletters, I immediately noticed how much simpler it is to set up Substack.

Everything is hosted for you, so there’s no need to deal with hosting-related hassles, plugins, SSL certificates, or anything technical. Plus, you automatically get a Substack subdomain (name.substack.com) for your publication. If you prefer using your own domain, you can connect to it.

When you’re ready to start writing, you’ll notice that the editor is clean and free of distractions. It works a lot like Google Docs, with a toolbar at the top and a blank page where you can start wiring.

You can format your text, add images, audio, and video to your content, and insert “Subscribe” or “Upgrade to Paid” buttons.

Writing feels simple and fun with Substack, which helps you enjoy the writing process and stay consistent. 

Thanks to Substack’s built-in reader community, it’s easy to grow your audience from day one inside the platform—no SEO or social media efforts required.

Readers often browse the Explore page. If your publication is categorized correctly and you post regularly, especially using Notes, you can start attracting new subscribers organically.

Notes works mostly like X (formerly Twitter). It lets you share quick thoughts, updates, or link back to your longer posts. These posts can be seen by anyone using Substack, not just your existing subscribers. If people engage with your Notes, they can click through to your newsletter and subscribe.

I personally don’t spend much time there, since there are already enough social platforms to keep up with; but it can definitely help with visibility if you’re active.

Substack also has a recommendation feature. You recommend other publications to your readers, and they recommend yours back. As a reader, this is how I’ve discovered many newsletters around my areas of interest.

The only way to monetize on Substack is through paid subscriptions. You can offer a monthly plan, a yearly plan, or a higher-priced “founding member” option for readers who want to support your work more generously.

Most creators charge between $5 and $20 per month, or $50 to $200 per year. Founding member plans often range from $200 to $350 per year.

In return, paying subscribers get access to premium content. But Substack also lets you turn features like chat, comments, and discussion threads into paid-only perks. 

That means you don’t always need to produce extra content to make your subscription valuable; you can simply monetize access to you and your community discussions.

As your newsletter grows, Substack’s limitations become hard to ignore. Here are some of the common challenges that lead creators to consider Substack alternatives.

Substack is free to use – until you turn on paid subscriptions. Once you start earning, Substack keeps 10% of your revenue, plus Stripe’s standard processing fee of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.

At first, it doesn’t seem like much.

If you have 50 subscribers paying $10 a month, you earn $500, and Substack takes $50.

But as your subscriber base grows, the fee grows with it.

With 500 subscribers, you earn $5,000, and Substack keeps $500 every month, even though you’re still using the same features.

Now imagine you’re earning $100,000 a month. You’d be paying around $10,000 to Substack every single month.

So while the platform is great for getting started, the percentage-based pricing can get expensive once your newsletter begins to scale.

As mentioned earlier, Substack only lets you earn via paid subscriptions.

You can include links to your products, affiliate offers, or tip jars inside your content – but they can’t be the focus of your newsletters. If most of your content is geared toward promoting external offers, it goes against Substack’s terms.

In other words, you can’t treat Substack the same way you would use Kit (formerly ConvertKit), MailerLite, or Mailchimp, where sending promotional emails are a norm. 

It makes sense, since Substack focuses on valuable long-form content and earns when you earn through subscriptions. Still, some creators have reported having their accounts flagged for linking to Medium posts or Amazon books.

Because Substack is built for writing rather than promotional campaigns, its segmentation and automation tools are limited. 

For instance, you can’t set up sequences for product launches, events, or onboarding. The only automated message you can send is a basic welcome email when someone subscribes.

When you create a publication on Substack, you get a simple website with default pages like Home, About, and Archive. You can add extra pages and make basic changes like adjusting the background color, accent color, and typography.

But that’s pretty much it. There’s no website builder, so you can’t change page layouts, move things around, or design it to fully match your brand.

For writers who only need a simple space to publish their content, this setup works fine. 

But if you want more flexibility, and a site that reflects your brand’s personality, Substack restricts you. No matter how much you try to customize, your site will still look like everyone else’s Substack publication. 

Substack is a closed platform, so it can’t connect to other tools in your tech stack. There are no native integrations, and it doesn’t work with connector tools like Zapier or Make. 

How about a Substack API? It's non-existent. 

This means you can't import leads from your CRM software, survey tools, and learning management system (LMS) platforms, or even sync subscriber data in Substack to other platforms. If this is a requirement for your content production workflow, you’re better off without Substack.

Yes, the best Substack alternative is beehiiv. It has Substack’s simplicity, minus the limitations that hold you back. 

It’s built for growth-focused newsletters that want more control and room to scale their earnings.

beehiiv’s editor feels just as easy to use as Substack’s, but it gives you more tools that help you create content faster.

One of these is collaborative editing. You can invite team members, give feedback via comments, and make edits together in one place. Whether you are a solo creator who likes getting input from a friend, or part of a team with writers, editors, and designers, it saves you hours of drowning in email threads and switching between tools.

You can also embed social posts from Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and Bluesky directly into your emails. No more switching tabs, copy-pasting screenshots, or dealing with embed codes. Just browse your connected social content right inside beehiiv and click to insert.

Plus, beehiiv AI is built into the editor. You can use it to draft content, clean up grammar and spelling, adjust content tone to match your brand, or even create unique images with a single click. 

Unlike Substack, beehiiv gives you more ways to earn beyond paid subscriptions.

You can earn through beehiiv Ads, direct sponsorships, and beehiiv Boosts (works similarly to SparkLoop’s paid recommendations tool). You’re also free to promote your paid products, affiliate offers, or donation links inside your emails.

You can take this a step further by setting up subscriber segments and sending them automated email sequences promoting these offers.

In the recent beehiiv 2025 Winter Release, beehiiv introduced a built-in digital products platform. It lets you host and sell courses, templates, ebooks, or any digital product directly inside beehiiv.

Here’s the best part:

All earnings are yours to keep. beehiiv doesn’t take a cut.

You only pay a flat monthly (or yearly) fee to use these earning tools.

For instance, if you have 1,000 paid subscribers paying $10/month, you’ll earn $10,000 each month. On Substack, that means paying $1,000/month in fees.

beehiiv’s pricing works differently. It charges based on your total subscriber count, not your revenue. With a 1% conversion rate, 1,000 paid subscribers would mean 100,000 total subscribers. On beehiiv, that puts you on the Scale plan at $329/month or the Max plan at $459/month.

The graph below shows how both pricing models compare as your earnings grow. You pay significantly less with beehiiv at higher revenue levels while getting access to a wider set of tools (like a website builder, analytics, automation, and integrations) to scale your newsletter business.

beehiiv gives you full control over how your newsletter website looks and feels. With the website builder, you can create a professional, branded site without any design or coding experience.

When I set mine up, it took less than ten minutes. You simply walk through these five steps:

1. Choose from 10+ professional website templates.

2. Pick a color palette that matches your brand.

3. Select your typography.

4. Choose which pages you want to include (Home, About, Blog, etc.)

5. Make final edits in the website builder and publish.

beehiiv also offers post templates to help you present your content beautifully in emails and on your website. 

Whether your niche is tech, wellness, lifestyle, or fashion, there’s a template that fits your style.Customize them once to match your brand, and reuse them for all future posts. 

beehiiv includes growth features that help you attract new subscribers.

Like Substack, it has a recommendation engine for cross-promoting newsletters with other beehiiv creators. You can also set up a referral program, where your subscribers get rewarded for bringing in new readers.

If you’re open to investing in growth, use beehiiv Boosts. It lets you pay other creators for every new subscriber they send your way.

Substack and beehiiv's analytics cover the basic metrics: subscriber growth over time, top subscriber acquisition sources, and newsletter performance (that is, open and click rates). But beehiiv takes it a step further.

Its analytics are split into two dashboards:

The layouts are clean and visual, making it easy to spot trends at a glance. You can filter these reports by specific time periods and export as a CSV file for further analysis.

Here’s a summary of how Substack and beehiiv compare:

If you’re wondering whether starting a Substack is worth it in 2026, the answer depends entirely on your goals and how fast you expect to grow. 

Choose Substack if your goal is to start a free newsletter. While its limited features can be a bit frustrating, it makes the platform generally easier to use. 

Meanwhile, beehiiv also offers a generous free plan that lets you create up to three newsletter publications, publish unlimited posts, and grow to 2,500 subscribers. It’s a better fit if you want more control over design, and need growth and earning tools that scale as your newsletter grows.

Sounds like what you’re looking for?

Sign up for beehiiv’s free plan today!

Substack is free to start. You get access to all of its features without paying a cent. However, when you earn through paid subscriptions, Substakes take a 10% cut of your earnings.

Substack doesn’t use a subscription pricing model. Instead, the platform is free to use and makes money through a revenue share model. When you start earning through paid subscriptions, Substack keeps 10% of your monthly earnings.

Many creators are leaving Substack because the 10 percent revenue share becomes expensive as their income grows. Others feel restricted by the limited design options, lack of automation and segmentation, no integrations with other tools, and the difficulty of earning beyond paid subscriptions. So while Substack works well at the beginning, it doesn’t provide enough flexibility to scale.

Yes, the best Substack alternative is beehiiv. It keeps its interface simple while offering a more comprehensive feature set, including a drag-and-drop website builder, automation and segmentation, built-in growth and earning tools, an integrations library, and an analytics dashboard. It also uses a flat-fee pricing model, so you keep more of your revenue as you grow. 

Substack isn't inherently bad for SEO, but it isn’t designed to help you rank either. You can’t customize meta descriptions, add structured data, or optimize individual pages like you can on platforms with full website-builder functionality. Since you don’t control the technical SEO or site architecture, your content may not perform as well in search compared to a custom website or a platform like beehiiv that supports more detailed SEO settings.