Let Me Help You Leave Substack

On December 21st the CEO of Substack wrote about the fact that he's perfectly fine with having Nazis on the platform. I'm not overexaggerating, that's pretty much exactly it. The site has gone full free-speech absolutionist, which is isn't surprising, because Substack has also been perfectly fine with leaving transphobia on the site as well.

It's time to stop using Substack. And listen, I get it - it's annoying to leave a platform you've already been using, and Substack has some allure to it - it's basically what I hoped Medium would become as far as feature set. But it's not worth it, alright? No amount of eyes on your work is worth sharing that space with Nazis.

You can't just chug through this. The CEO of Substack signaling that he is cool with Nazis means that the website is going to see a surge of Nazis. In fact, it's already seeing a bunch of Nazis appearing in droves on the platform. If you choose to spend time on the site, you're going to spending it with Nazis. It's not worth it.

So it's time to find a new platform. Let me help you with this. The following are a few of Substack alternatives - I've spent time with all of them, so this isn't some SEO-optimized bullshit.

Let's take a look.

Ghost is probably the most well-known blogging/newsletter platform besides Substack. It's open-source and nonprofit. If you're the techy type, you could run it on a droplet for very cheap, or even host it on your own server. Otherwise you can go with the option to pay Ghost instead, and let them handle it for you. Prices start at $9 for 500 subscribers, and goes up from there.

Ghost will literally do the Substack migration for you if you pay for a plan, but even if you don't, they have a migration guide if you decide to self-host.

This is what I use. Buttondown is super simple to use as a markdown newsletter for The Velvet Newsletter. It has a free plan for up to 100 subscribers, although that plan doesn't let you charge for subscriptions. Beyond that, the basic plan costs $9 a month. Migration is extremely simple, or you can literally ask for Justin Duke, its one-man operation, to do it for you if you really want to.

Leave Substack. Use the above, use some shit I've never heard of, use Obsidian Publish if you want to, I don't care. Just stop using Substack. I'm begging.