Newsletters are one popular way to publish one’s self-hosted work, including on a paid subscriber/supporter basis. Substack is one of the most popular newsletter hosts, as it makes it easy to host one’s own digital newsletter. Unfortunately, Substack also brings a lot of downsides. The biggest one, and a major reason to avoid using Substack, is its willingness to host newsletters created by white nationalists and neo-Nazis. When called out on this, Substack’s owners instead doubled down on refusing to remove such newsletters, claiming it’d be “censorship.”
As I’ve written before, the tech world has some serious problems with tech creators letting bigotry slide, if not actively promoting it. Again, forget “don’t be evil”—”don’t be racist” is apparently a bar on the ground that some in Silicon Valley still trip over. And using “free speech” as an excuse doesn’t cut it; my blog isn’t obliged to allow racist remarks in the comments section out of fear of “censorship.”
As such, there’s plenty of people looking for less problematic alternatives to Substack. I’ve listed a few newsletter and subscription-based platform alternatives below.
Buttondown
Site: https://buttondown.com
Buttondown’s an excellent newsletter service, and the one I currently use for this site. It’s easy to use, and treats their customers well. They’re also not pushing AI on its users. Buttondown also allows users to use their address to comply with US anti-spam laws, which require promotional/commercial emails, including newsletters, to have a physical address.
The service is free for newsletters with 100 subscribers or less. After that, the paid tiers start at $9 a month or $90 a year. There’s also some extra services for additional fees, such as removing Buttondown branding, multiple newsletters, or custom domains for archives.
Buttondown has a page describing its advantages over Substack, as well as a free service for migrating Substack newsletters to Buttondown.
Ghost
Site: https://ghost.org
Ghost, created by ex-WordPress staff, is a decent minimalist blogging platform for writers. I once ran this site on Ghost for almost a year.
Ghost also offers newsletter and subscriber-based platform features. Ghost’s software can be self-hosted for free. However, I found doing that a bit more complicated than WordPress, as it doesn’t come built-in with features like comments. Ghost also offers a “Ghost Pro” paid hosting service, starting at $18 a month or $180 a year.
Like Buttondown, Ghost has a page touting its own advantages over Substack.
Ko-fi
Site: https://ko-fi.com
Ko-fi is a third party donation service that processes one-time donations for users. Ko-fi takes its own fee of 5% on donations (one-off and monthly donations, store sales, etc.); also, transactions go through PayPal or Stripe, which take their own processing fees.
One can accept one-time or ongoing monthly donations, as well as sell merchandise through a personal store. Posts can be made to one’s Ko-fi page; followers will receive an email about any new posts.
I have a Ko-fi page for the site here.
Mailerlite
Site: https://www.mailerlite.com
Mailerlite is a standard issue email newsletter service. A free tier is offered for the first 250 subscribers, after which the paid tiers start at $12 a month or $130 a year.
I briefly used Mailerlite, and found it an OK service.
Patreon
Site: https://www.patreon.com/
Patreon is the dominant name in the subscriber-based platform world. While it has its own downsides (fee hikes, etc.), it can be used in a similar way as Substack or the other Substack alternatives above. Patreon charges 10% of any income earned on its platform (one-time or monthly subscriptions, store sales, etc.).
I used to use Patreon, and while it was OK, I didn’t feel I needed two subscriber platforms (plus some of Patreon’s fee changes, etc. got mildly annoying), so canceled it and stuck with Ko-fi.
WordPress
Site: https://wordpress.org/ (self-hosted); https://wordpress.com/ (free/paid service)
The self-hosted version of WordPress can be used (via Jetpack or third-party plug-ins) for basic newsletter functionality, or to email new posts to subscribers. The free/paid WordPress.com service also offers some newsletter functionality. However, for more advanced newsletter or subscriber-based features, you’re probably better off with one of the services I listed above.
Image by Tumisu (Pixabay)
