Thoughts on moving to Substack

6 months after the move, here are my pros and cons

Photo by Brigitte Tohm on Unsplash

(It’s a stack, get it?)

Several people have asked for my thoughts on Substack, after moving my newsletter here about 6 months ago, having previously been with Mailchimp, then Flodesk, then Mailerlite.

Overall, I like it and I’m staying. BUT there are some cons, and if you’re thinking of moving your list here, you should be aware of them.

For me the pros outweigh the cons, so I’m sharing those second, but in no particular order, here are the things I (emphasis on the I) think are not great about it.

Cons of using Substack:

I don’t really want another social media platform

I was already off Twitter when Substack launched Notes, and I WANT to want to be on there - I love seeing the notes other people are sharing, and there are a lot of writers on here, so it would be a useful space for me - but I don’t have capacity for another social media platform right now.

This might change. I find text much easier to create than video, and I really appreciate nuance and context, so being here (or LinkedIn) makes more sense than TikTok, where I have been playing around over the last couple of months. But I'm still in the consideration phase, so no changes yet.

The other shift I’ve noticed in the ‘Substack wants to be a social media channel’ is that I’m getting a lot of followers. I only update Notes once in a blue moon so I feel like they aren’t getting much value from that. If you’re here as a follower, I really encourage you to subscribe. It means that, if I end up leaving Substack in the future, you will continue to get my emails in your inbox.

You can only have one welcome email

This is my biggest bugbear. One of the things I encourage all of the authors I work with to do is to set up a welcome sequence. More than one email where you introduce new subscribers to who you are, what you do, how you can help them, where they can connect with you, share important stories, share your books ETC.

On Substack you are only allowed one email. I loved my welcome sequence before. I hate my Substack welcome email. It’s on the list of things to work on, but for some reason, though I find writing emails really intuitive and easy within Substack, I am finding it really hard to write the welcome email. Maybe because I’m trying to get it to do the job 5 emails were doing before!

You can’t segment people

Listen. As if I was doing this. I was not. BUT I LIKED THE IDEA THAT I COULD IF I WANTED TO. This + the welcome sequence are the two things that make me consider moving back to another platform.

The settings area is overwhelming

When I go into the settings area (actually - there are two entirely separate settings areas), my brain basically stops functioning properly. There are so many options and the page is soooooooo long. If you get easily overwhelmed by lots of options, it’s really not a good user experience.

It’s great that there are so many different ways to do things, but I wish there were clearer headings or something because just looking at the page gives me a headache.

It goes down from time to time

Since moving to Substack, it has gone down far more than any of my previous mail clients. A good reminder that you should always have a backup of your list stored somewhere secure (ie: not just an excel spreadsheet on your desktop). This is something I need to rethink because I was backing my list up into Mailerlite, but see point #1 on the Pros list below…

Pros:

It’s free

Since moving to Substack, Mailerlite has started charging for my size of mailing list. The reason I left Flodesk was because I wanted something free. My email list is not thousands of people large, and I don’t do anything complex, so I really like being able to just communicate with my subscribers without paying hundreds of pounds a year.

I also feel like, despite some of my moans above, Substack gives you a LOT of value for free. Yes, there are things you can’t do, but there are a lot of things you CAN (hosting podcasts and videos are two things I haven’t done yet, but which are incredible for a free service).

I make money from it

I have not yet made my fortune on Substack. But I do have a small number of lovely paid subscribers (hello, and thank you!). I create extra content with them specifically in mind, and they help support me and my work. I’ve worked out that the money I earn from Substack now covers my weekly ‘working in a coffee shop’ expenses, and I’m absolutely delighted by that.

This can be offputting, though. I know a lot of people have said - not about my content specifically, but about Substack in general - that they don’t like how many paywalls there are. I’m now only sending out emails with a paywall in them when there is something of value in them for people who are not paying, but this is something I’m still working out.

I want people to know the value of paying (I create content with you in mind, answer reader questions in detail, and am planning on offering feedback to paid subscribers on set topics, plus if you become a founding member, you can get a platform audit for £50 less than when you book it independently) AND I also want to continue to offer a really good, free newsletter for those who can’t add another subscription into their life.

(This feels like a good point to say: if you think you’d benefit from the above, you can upgrade here!)

My list has grown an ENORMOUS amount since moving

This is the main pro of Substack. My list has always grown slowly. It took me years to get my tiny list, and since joining, it just goes up and up every day. Below you can see where I imported my list from Mailerlite, where it shoots straight up, and how it just goes up and up consistently after that. I wish I had a similar graph for my growth prior to that, but I can confidently say that it wasn’t growing nearly as quickly.

People are finding me through the other Substack publications that have recommended me, from my guest posts on other people’s Substacks, me leaving comments on other people’s posts, and - when I use it - from Notes.

This is one of two things that would make it hard for me to move to another platform now. The built in shareability of it all is a really compelling reason to stay.

I get a lot more interaction vs a standard email

The other thing that makes me want to stick around is that I LOVE getting feedback on the content I share, and I get a lot of it on Substack.

Previously, I would get a reply or two to the emails I send out - I’ve always been very lucky that my subscribers are a chatty bunch and will reply to my emails and talk to me about whatever I’m chatting about on here (thanks, guys).

But now, I get those replies AND I get to read what people share about it when they share my articles on Notes AND I get comments on posts, too. It feels kind of like the olden days of blogging, when people would always leave a friendly comment, and I love that.

I feel like there’s community here

This isn’t necessarily something I always feel a part of (see how I feel about notes). But there is definitely a community spirit on Substack that again, feels like the old days of blogging. When I like someone’s email, I am more likely to click through and leave a comment than I might have been to reply to an email. I feel like, as a result, I’m getting to know people better, and they’re getting to know me better, which is nice.

My future here:

All in all, if you’re thinking of moving to Substack, or starting a newsletter for the first time here, there are definitely cons that you need to consider. There are also other issues I haven’t covered, like Substack’s very big moderation problem.

But overall, I like it both as a user and a creator, and I can see myself sticking around for the forseeable future. Once you’re past the settings, it makes writing an email just so easy, and I feel way more in flow here than I have on other platforms.

Thoughts? Questions? Have I left out any of the pros or cons that you’ve noticed with your own Substack? Hit reply or leave a comment!