6 Substack Alternatives for Newsletter Makers in 2025

If you are looking for affordable Substack alternatives, here’s your heaven. Substack has been a popular platform for newsletters, email subscription, and blogging for its easy setup. However, as a creator grows, their needs for advanced features increases. And while establishing yourself as an independent newsletter membership or a journalism team, you must choose the best for the business.

Substack does provide an easy path to build a paid newsletter quickly. Independent creators and bloggers can monetize their work without depending on ads or algorithms. However, the high transaction fees and limited customization options often encourage creators to explore the best Substack alternatives for a more tailored experience.

This post will help you explore the pros and cons of using Substack and provide you with Substack alternatives for scaling newsletters. You may be looking for an affordable option or design-friendly tool, or a tool with better marketing opportunities. This post is a perfect match for you and will help you further in email subscription management setup.

Why Creators Use Substack for Newsletter Subscription

With Substack, you can directly stay connected with your audience via email. Thus, you can be pretty safe from algorithm-driven reach that can potentially limit your visibility on social platforms. But why is Substack used by 17000 writers and accessed by 20 million subscribers?

1. Easy Monetization: You can hop on the platform easily without any coding knowledge. The user-friendly interface makes it easy to just start creating and earning through your content. 
2. Focus on Independence: It is known that creators need control over their creative process. That’s what Substack offers. No ads, no interference. Directly share content with your subscribers in their inboxes by creating an email subscription list. Manage your engagement smoothly, as per your rules. 
3. Community Building: Building audience connection is of great importance for creators. Substack understands this and provides features to comment and reply. A closer connection builds loyalty among subscribers gradually. 
4. Minimal Setup and Design: Substack works on the typical principle of less is more. The minimal design allows creators to focus on their content. Thus, you can easily function without higher design distractions and complexity. 

These advantages work well for most of the creators. However, you must understand its limitations to tweak it as per your advantage. 

What’s the Need to Look for Substack Alternatives?

Substack is a great place to start but not to scale up, simple. Here are some of the limitations that make creators think, ‘Is there something better than Substack?’

1. High Transaction Fees: Substack charges a 10% fee for every paid subscription, and Stripe, its payment processor, adds 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. While this results in 13% being deducted from your earnings, it’s an opportunity to consider platforms with lower fees, especially as your income grows.
2. Limited Customization Options: If you love simplicity, best. But what if you want your newsletter to stand out? Substack offers basic options for personalizing and customizing your work. For creators seeking more branding or design control, exploring other platforms could provide better solutions.
3. Lack of Advanced Marketing Tools: Substack provides basic analytics to get you started. However, creators who require advanced marketing strategies, like audience segmentation and A/B testing, might explore other platforms as they scale to ensure consistent growth.
4. Scalability Constraints: Substack’s tools are ideal for individual creators managing a smaller subscriber base. For those looking to scale operations or build a team, other platforms might offer more robust support for long-term growth.

To overcome these challenges, we are going to look at the best Substack alternative services. These options are bound to help you grow exponentially. 

6 Best Substack Alternatives for Email Subscription for Website

Have a look at these top Substack alternatives. If you want a quick overview, skip to the bottom of the page for a comparative analysis table. 

1. Smore for Design Flexibility

Smore is a dedicated platform for educators, families, and small businesses. Its multiple newsletter templates require no design expertise. The best part? You can create multimedia newsletters and share them directly to your mailing list, and social media channels, or share direct links. This specifically makes it one of the top Substack alternatives.

Key Features:

• Multiple customizable templates. Thus, change background, color, add images, videos, forms, calendar, and a lot more for a truly user-centric Newsletter subscribe. 
• Built-in analytics to keep a check on engagement and readership. 
• Translation capacity into 30+ languages to reach a wider user base across nations and continents.
• Seamless integration with social media for a wider reach and smooth email subscription management. 

Pricing: Explore its free newsletter subscription version for up to 3 newsletters. Go pro with plans starting at $99/year.

Why It’s Better Than Substack: If you are looking to create visually appealing Newsletters without any extensive design skills, Smores is for you.

2. Moosend for Audience Segmentation

If you are looking for a platform that will help you grow, Moosend is your solution. Its drag-and-drop editor helps you customize multiple templates in minutes. It provides automation and audience segmentation tools for advanced Newsletter creation and distribution. 

Key Features:

• Create a content calendar to automate and schedule your newsletter delivery. 
• Segment your audience as per their interests for personalized newsletter campaigns. 
• Wide range of free and customizable templates for newsletter creation.
• Create landing pages as well as subscription forms, all in one place. 

Pricing: opt for a free trial for 30 days to test all their core features. Further, you can opt for the Pro version at $9/month. 

Why It’s Better Than Substack: With Moosend’s marketing tools like automation and A/B testing, you can create an all-rounder Newsletter subscription platform. It is one of the top Substack alternatives if you are planning to scale up.

3. ARMember for an All-rounder Membership Solution

ARMember is an overall WordPress membership plugin that allows you to create multiple tiers. Without relying on any third-party platforms, take the steering wheel of your subscribers in your hands. You can monetize your content, schedule content, sell individual content, and set up a community of your readers using these Substack alternatives.

Key Features:

• Four different types of membership options including Free, Paid (finite), Paid (infinite), and recurring subscriptions. 
• Content restriction and drip content features keep your content safe and intrigue visitors to subscribe. 
• Enable the payment gateway of your choice from 21+ options. 
•  Create a social community just like Instagram/Facebook, but only for your subscribers. This fosters deeper connection and communication. 

Pricing: You can use the ARMember Lite Plugin for free. The premium ARMember Plugin is available just for $69 per year.

Why It’s Better Than Substack: ARMember allows you to create a fully branded site. You have full control and ownership over your content, audience, and pricing decisions. It also has a huge library of addons that can support future growth of newsletter subscription.

4. Buttondown for Independent Writers

Buttondown is a platform created by a person running Newsletters for other such people of the tribe. As a result, it’s going to be very easy to manage the monetization and subscription options for your Newsletter. 

Key Features:

• In-built support for typos, broken links, and low-quality images. 
• Integrates with advanced tools like Zapier, Ghost, and Squarespace. 
• It also provides a subscription option for your audience. Furthermore, the charges do not increase with the success of your paid newsletter. Rather, it increases as per your audience size. 

Pricing: The platform is free for up to 100 subscribers. Further, based on your audience, it increases. For 100-1000 subscribers, it is available at $9/month. You can easily build ‘subscribe to our newsletter’ campaigns and kickstart the newsletter for free.

Why It’s Better Than Substack: Buttondown has a minimal interface similar to Substack. However, when it comes to pricing, it has a huge difference. Thus, an independent creator gets more control over their audience interactions and management in this alternative to Substack.

5. Ghost for Substack Alternative with Additional Features

If you are planning to use Ghost for your newsletter distribution and allow the audience to subscribe news, look at this Substack vs ghost comparison. Ghost, just like Substack, is an open-source platform allowing bloggers to set their subscription lists. However, it provides a complete solution by complementing Subsctack’s limitations.

Key Features:

• Get customizable themes for hosting a full website or newsletter subscription WordPress. 
• Monetize your content by offering memberships and subscriptions to your content. 
• Highly optimized for SEO and support for multiple third-party integrations to extend your functionality and build subscribe to newsletter WordPress.
• Utilize rich media and dynamic cards for an interactive newsletter or email subscription for website.
• Staff users account for teamwork on websites and newsletters. 

Pricing: In the list of alternatives to Substack, for up to 500 subscribers, the Ghost tool is available at $9/month. It goes up to $25, $50, and $199 per month based on your requirements.

Why It’s Better Than Substack: If you want full control over your content and brand, opt for Ghost over Substack. It offers detailed customization options and allows you to scale up your business effortlessly. 

6. Beehiiv for an Advanced Newsletter Solution

Beehiiv is a robust platform with a truckload of features. Created by the business newsletter Morning Brew’s team, this tool is perfect for growing your website, publishing newsletters, and monetizing your content. 

Key Features:

• Create custom email journeys using automation and AI tools. 
• Use growth tools like referral programs, recommended posts, pop-ups, forms, and magic links for single-click subscriptions.
• Utilize various subscription options and ads for monetizing your platform. 
• Audience segmentation, 3D analytics, polls, and survey forms to analyze user insights. 
• Use A/B testing and smooth API integration for further growth. 

Pricing: Use the basic features for free up to 2500 subscribers and allow them to subscribe the newsletter. You can scale up to advanced features for $34/month.

Why It’s Better Than Substack: Beehiiv is a complete solution with multiple tools and integrations. Its growth tools like referrals, analytics, and A/B testing make it a perfect choice for individuals and businesses who have a clear long-term plan and vision.

Comparative Table for Best Substack Alternatives

Did you find the Top Alternatives to Substack for you?

Aren’t these alternatives very promising? Some tools can be used for free in the beginning. You can spend based on how your audience grows. These platforms, unlike Substack, grow with you and your business. Are you currently using any of these alternatives? Let us know our readers in the comments about your experience so they can build a business like The New York Times newsletter subscription.

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